A perfect day for a sail

From time to time rumors reach this column about a Very Important Person who almost emulated Coleridge’s anti-hero in the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner ... alone and helpless on a drifting sailboat, all the crew save he having been claimed by Davey Jones.

Meticulous research, aided by the vivid recollection of two of the participants met recently, has confirmed that the incident did indeed occur and we are now able to bring you this gripping, true, account.

It was a perfect day for a sail, reflected the skipper, and he would do his best to give his guests a memorable time. These included a Very Important Person - a visiting minister of the Crown from a Very Important Country - the minister’s private secretary and a friend of the skipper’s, also, visiting from another island country.

All were big men. Just four of them would have made a good front row to any scrum. Conversely, their vessel was not exactly the Queen Mary, being of about 6 metres, though well-equipped, boasting a small cabin and an outboard motor.

The skipper proposed a voyage of about an hour and a half to a deserted, but very pretty island, where they could snorkel, eat and sup of cool ales before returning in the afternoon to prepare for an official function that evening.

That none but the skipper had ever before ventured on a small yacht was not seen as a problem, the forecast being for balmy south-east tradewinds and clear, sunny weather.

The outward voyage was idyllic, as was the time on the island.

On the return things were so normal the minister retired to the cabin for a snooze while the skipper allowed his friend to take over the tiller.

Approaching port the skipper observed that their course would not allow them to clear the headland so that it would be necessary to go about and set another tack. This, as was his usual practice, he decided to leave until the last moment.

The time arrived and the skipper took over the helm, checked the sheets and put the tiller hard over. The bow of the little vessel came up to wind, mainsail luffing, and then fell back on its original course, metres only from the rocky headland.

The skipper’s eyes bugged slightly and he dived for the pull-cord of the outboard which, fortunately, started first time. Under power he put the tiller over and the yacht turned through the wind and headed out to sea.

Thus convinced of the fickleness of sail and the efficacy of power at least at that moment, he decided to go in on the motor. Passing the tiller back to his friend he went forward to the mast to let go the mainsail halyard and bring in the sail.

At that precise moment a strong gust of wind took the mainsail on the starboard side, heeling the yacht violently to port. ’’Let go the mainsheet” called the skipper to his tiller-holding friend. ’’What’s a mainsheet?” demanded the friend. ’The block, the block, the main bloody block,” howled the skipper. ’’What bloody stock?” responded the tillerman.

The boat continued to list to port.

Up to this point, and despite casual appearances, the situation remained under control. But then the massive form of the private secretary made its fateful move. Believing the skipper, holding on to the mast against the steeply-sloping deck, to be in imminent danger of sliding over the side, he shifted his great bulk from the starboard gunwale and went, as he saw it, to help.

His weight, added to that of the skipper, and of the tillerman who perched on the port gunwale trying to unravel the mysteries of mainsheet halyards, and of the minister, lying on the portside bunk below, was altogether too much. The yacht heeled until its mast

was almost parallel to the water. The private secretary began to slide and, to save himself, seized the skipper around the waist. The skipper did his best, but his grip failed and, locked in close embrace, the two men disappeared over the side. Simultaneously the tillerman was flipped from his precarious position and, with a near-perfect backward somersault, joined his friends in the sea.

Relieved of its portside burdens and helped by a drop in the wind, the little boat quickly righted herself and proceeded serenely out to sea with the unsuspecting, and slumbering, minister still below decks.

Now the skipper well knew, from experience, that without a rope or a ladder, it was impossible to enter the boat from the water because of the shape of the hull. Yet, in a dazzling display of mind over matter, the source of which to this day he cannot explain, the skipper not only caught up with the boat, but got back to the cockpit. He thinks he may have sprinted on top of the water, or been levitated by Divine intervention. But, however it was managed he got there, cut the motor, and brought the yacht about to pick up his other crewmembers.

At this stage the minister emerged from the cabin to ask what was happening. ”Oh, nothing,” replied the friend as he rose from the briny. ”We always go for a bit of a dip to cool off at the end of a sail.”

Should you be disinclined to believe this tale, we can reveal that the minister remains in a very senior position while the others spend most of their time haunting waterfront bars. PIM will gladly accept readers’ suggestions on the identity of the men involved, but promises never, ever to reveal them.

Meantime it may be worth mentioning that another incident, of much more recent vintage, occurred to a senior diplomat currently on station in a Pacific isle. It seems that in the midst of a public campaign to encourage locals to carry such revolutionary devices as distress flares when they ventured in their canoes outside the reef our dignitary went missing in a $50,000 motor boat provided for his use by the taxpayers of his country. This craft was equipped with neither radio nor flares and was discovered by searching aircraft after the alarm was raised next day. It had run out of fuel while outside the reef.

We are told that had the occupants not managed to hook an anchor on a passing coral head there might by now be another tale of Flying Dutchmen and new Joyitas.

“We’d better phone New Zealand and let ’em know he’s on the way!”