A Passage from Dante

by Dave and Jaja Martin

	More pleasant conditions...DRIVER under sail on Eyja Fjord, Iceland, May 1999 (photo Gudni Hermannsson)

Many years ago, in 1986 to be precise, I flew to England to help my friend John Connolly sail his new Moody 44 to Annapolis. We set off down the English channel in June, planning to make a stopover in the Azores before cutting a rhumb line to windward for the Chesapeake.

A southwesterly gale off Ireland forced us to heave-to with a triple-reefed mainsail. What a night. We had drifted into a fleet of large trawlers which were hunkering down en mass. Instead of our being able to ride out the gale in relative glory, we spent it dodging fishing boats in the forty-five-knot wind-driven fog and spray.

The conditions were horrendous, causing URSA MAJOR to be tossed around violently. John and I were calm; the storm was bad, but we'd each seen worse. I was awakened around 0100 by a loud thump and an agonized groan. When I switched on a cabin light, I found John laying hunched on the port settee Ð he had lost a hand hold and been thrown across the cabin. I looked at his face. His nose was bent to one side and blood was gushing out of it. A small trickle of blood was also running down his face from a large gash above his hair line. Without much coaxing he sat on the cabin sole and held a damp towel to his battered head.

"I saw the lights of a fishing trawler just before I popped in to make a cup of coffee," came his muffled concern.

I grabbed my raincoat, clipped on my harness, and went into the cockpit. The force of the wind and the cold night spray added reality to the motion. The two points of a trawler's lights were white and fluent, and just to be on the safe side, I eased the mainsail, adjusted the wind vane, and drove us away from the encroaching ship. Safe for the moment, I dropped back below.

"Do you have a concussion?" I asked.

"No, I don't believe so."

"As soon as the storm's over, we're turning back for Falmouth."

"No we're not," John answered. "We'll continue south for the Azores."

I looked at his nose. I grabbed hold of the tip and straightened it back to the middle. I said, "We'll talk about turning back in the morning."

"Nothing to discuss Ð we're not turning back."

I remembered the ship and climbed back into the cockpit. It was disappearing in our wake, and already the running lights were becoming obscured by the argumentative seas. I helped John to the aft cabin where he stretched out with his head elevated. By morning his eyes were swollen shut and his head was pounding. We carried on. Twelve days later we spied the mountains of the Azores rising from a calm sea. John was still having dizzy spells, and was unable to sit up for more than a half hour at a time, but when the harbor sea wall at Horta came into view, he took the helm and confidently steered us up to the custom's jetty.

Later that afternoon we ambled up to the well-known Cafe Sport. I drank a few gin and tonics, but John, despite his longing, sensibly drank water. His eyes were losing their black cast, and his spirits were high, but he still felt light-headed.

We were walking out of the door to the pub, into the yellow glow of early evening, when John had another attack of the spins. He stumbled off the sidewalk into the streetÉright into the path of an approaching taxi. The driver braked to a halt a foot or so from John's kneeling form, threw open the door, and emerged from the car with his fist raised angrily:

"You sailors are all a boat-load of drunken fools!"