English (Core) · Ch 3 — We're Not Afraid to Die... if We Can All Be Together
Summary of the Lesson
Summary of the Lesson
In July 1976 the narrator, a 37-year-old businessman, sets sail from Plymouth, England, with his wife Mary and their children Jonathan (6) and Suzanne (7), to duplicate Captain James Cook's round-the-world voyage of 200 years earlier. Their boat, the Wavewalker, is a strongly built 23-metre, 30-ton wooden-hulled vessel, and the family has spent sixteen years honing their seafaring skills.
The first leg, down the west coast of Africa to Cape Town, passes pleasantly. There they take on two crewmen, Larry Vigil and Herb Seigler, to help tackle the rough southern Indian Ocean. Soon strong gales begin, with waves as high as the main mast.
The killer wave
At dawn on January 2, the seas are gigantic. The crew take precautions — dropping the storm jib, lashing a mooring rope across the stern, double-lashing everything, doing life-raft drill and donning lifelines and life jackets. At about 6 p.m. an ominous silence falls, then a wave 'like no other' — almost vertical and twice the height of the rest — smashes over the ship. The narrator is thrown overboard, cracks his ribs, loses teeth, but is hurled back on deck by another wave and clings to the wheel.
The fight to stay afloat
Mary cries that they are sinking. The decks are smashed, the starboard side is bulging inwards, and water pours in. The narrator makes emergency repairs with canvas and hatch covers, finds a spare electric pump when the others fail, and the family and crew pump, steer and send Mayday calls through a bitterly cold night. Little Sue, hurt badly on the head, hides her injuries so as not to worry her father.
Searching for the island
By morning the leak is under control, but the boat cannot last long enough to reach Australia. The narrator calculates that two small islands — one of them Ile Amsterdam, a French scientific base — lie a few hundred kilometres east: their only hope, mere 'pinpricks in the vast ocean'. A second storm nearly finishes them; that is when Jon says they are not afraid to die if they can all be together, and Sue gives her father a hand-made card of love and thanks.