Severing Dragons
The blood was moving so fast that by the time it hit me it had partially solidified, dusting black-red droplets up my chest and onto my arm. Our skipper, Ross, shuffled past me on the rolling deck, clutching his bleeding hand while 75 kmh winds splashed evidence of his wound all over the boat. He had been at the bow trying to cut loose our foresail which had ripped free of its furling line and was in the process of shredding itself to pieces in the wind. Nick went below to help Ross with his hand, while us three remaining crew watched helplessly as the jib disintegrated, the sheets dancing in a frenzy over the bow. Taiwan sped by us to the east only three or four miles away, but the boat was caught in the Straight’s brutal current and land might as well have been over the horizon for all we could get to it. All we could do was hold fast.
“I realize this is last minute, but are you free to sail from Tokyo to Hong Kong starting next weekend?”
This in an email from a sailing/crew website where I have an open profile that shows my location and availability. The message went on to explain that Ross had purchased a boat in Tokyo (actually Yokohama, but shrug) and needed crew to bring it home to Hong Kong. He wouldn’t be paying for any flights, but provisioning and all boat expenses would be on his account. I thought about it, and was at first reluctant to have to find a flight back to Japan after having so recently arrived there from China. But a Japan – China voyage was an incredibly rare opportunity to see new seas, and the boat, a Swan 56, was a legendary ocean craft that promised to make the trip a safe one. I asked a few questions about safety equipment and crew, etc., then agreed to come up to Yokohama to meet the captain and see the boat.
Alcione had been used as a race boat in Japan for her whole 13-year history, and was set up with minimal comforts aboard. Her mast, boom, and keel were all oversized and she looked like she could carry multiple square miles of canvas. There was only one proper cabin – the captain’s – and otherwise we’d be sleeping in tiny crew bunks or on the galley bench. While she had no fans in the bunks, she did have an air conditioning system powered by a generator that we could run when it got hotter on the southern part of the trip. We had to buy plates and pots and cutlery and food for five guys for two weeks, so there was a lot to do to get her ready for the voyage. We spent a week in the marina prepping the boat and planning the trip, before finally taking off one Friday morning… despite sailor superstition that Friday departures are bad luck.
The weather during the first few days was flaky, forcing us to run the motor most of the time to push against an adverse current. We chugged down the Kansai coast, settling into a routine of sailing, sleeping, eating and star-gazing. Gorgeous sunsets and the occasional dolphin visit reminded me of my trip across the Pacific, and I rediscovered my joy of sleeping at sea. It wasn’t an ideal start to the trip, with the deficiency list mounting up (including a defunct generator; no more AC!) and the weather not cooperating, but I was happy I’d signed on.
Ross asked me about fishermen off Japan, trying to understand where we’d be looking for nets and whether the boats were well-illuminated at night. I reported what little knowledge I had with my limited sailing history in the region. Ross seemed relieved at the evidently courteous nature of the industry, and told me a story about fishermen around China:
“Chinese fishermen have a superstition that when the catch is poor, it’s because the boat has been caught by a dragon that is eating all the fish before they can make it into their nets,” he explained. “So the fishermen will cut very close in front of another boat to peel off the dragon onto the other vessel. They can be fucking reckless, and I’ve been forced into emergency manoeuvres to avoid crashing into some jackass fishermen trying to sever his dragon.”
We didn’t have any problems with Japanese fishermen or their dragons, and made it south to the Okinawa region within a few days. We all wanted to find an anchorage to spend a day diving in the islands, but Japan makes it difficult for foreign vessels to ‘re-enter’ the country after checking out, so I was left staring longingly at the mountainous piles of rock as they drifted past. The wind started to pick up as we sailed west through the island chain into the East China Sea and we were finally able to get all the sails up to reach towards Taiwan.
After only one day of proper sailing, the main sail blew itself out, losing its shape (and efficiency), while the laminate covering began to peel off the carbon core. We had lots of spare foresails on the boat, but only one other piece of cloth to go up the mast, so we rigged the trysail, a tiny little bikini-like triangle of material and hoped it would do more than just make us look stupid. We sailed south for a few days like this, alternating between a regular jib and our asymmetrical spinnaker when we could get a good angle downwind. Despite the ridiculous trysail, we were able to get Alcione up to 8-9 knots over water, and our moods improved in direct correlation with boatspeed.
After a few days living and sleeping on a boat, you become attuned to the various sounds she makes while motoring and sailing, and sudden changes tend to wake you up regardless of their severity. One night I sat up after the engine stopped – I could hear wind in the rigging so the guys could easily have cut the motor to let the boat sail on her own, but something about the way it had rattled to a stop had jarred me. I climbed out of my little bunk and shuffled up on deck, where the captain and Max were on night watch.
“Picked up something on the prop,” Ross told me.
I swore. The wind was heating up and it was the middle of the night – there was no chance of going overboard to see how big the problem was. Anything wrapped around the propeller will stall the engine and usually get tangled such that someone will need to dive to clear it with a knife. It could have been some rope in the water, or a fishing net. Ross shrugged. I shrugged and went back to bed.
By the time I was on shift the next morning, the wind was howling at 25+ knots (~45 kmh). Arni, the only paid delivery crew and the most positive dude you’ll ever meet, was at the wheel and gave me a huge grin.
“Sounds like we gotta dive when this wind dies buddy!”
“Yeah, when’s that gonna be?”
“Not till we get spit out the other end of the Straights of Taiwan I doubt,” he said, scratching his six-day beard absentmindedly. “Next day or two are gonna be fast!”
Nick and I took over and spent the next four hours wrestling to keep Alcione pointed in the right direction as the wind got stronger and the waves grew to 4-5 meters. By 10am Ross had decided that only he and Arni would be driving, with the boat on the edge of control. We had the trysail up and a #3 jib reefed in to about half its normal size. Taiwan’s industrial coast went screaming by us on the port side, with only a few miles of frothy green water between us and the busy shore. The latte foam of our wake stuck to the top of the seas and wouldn’t dissipate before disappearing behind the next wave. It was beautiful and harrowing.
With the wind peaking at 40 knots (~75 kmh) Ross called out for us to bring in the jib so we could sail under the trysail alone. Two of us slowly loosed off the lines while Nick went to work on the winch to roll up the jib. With the wind pressure that high, though, the sail was wrapped so tightly around the forestay that it ran out of furling line before the whole sail was collapsed – at that point we had no idea what to do, with ~2 meters of sail still angrily flapping in the wind, putting huge pressure on the sheets that we were trying to hold steady.
Then, with a massive crack, the jib unrolled itself to full size, wrenching the sheets off their winches and out of our hands. The furling line had snapped, letting the sail unroll dangerously fast – it flew forward over the bow of the boat along with its lines, which quickly became tangled into a ball-like knot that could easily break bones. Ross grabbed a knife and moved forward to try to cut the sail loose while dodging the flapping canvas and the wrecking ball of lines. Something went wrong almost immediately and as he came limping back along the boat I could see blood spraying from a cut on his hand – all things considered at the bow, I think he got off easy.
With Ross and Nick below decks trying to stem the bleeding, Max, Arni and I could only watch as the jib gradually disintegrated. We were lucky that the wind was blowing from astern, pushing the sail and its lines forward of the boat (and us). Little squares of sail began to shake loose and fly away on the wind – it was like watching a satellite crumble on reentry into the atmosphere. The lines broke free from the clew and miraculously ended up safely on deck; one problem down. No one else was hurt, and Ross was soon back with us, duct tape and paper towel wrapped around his wound in a typical MacGuyver medical solution. We eventually managed to drop the jib halyard while pulling the sail slowly onto the deck. The boat slowed down to a manageable 4-5 knots sailing under the trysail alone, and we settled in as best as possible to ride out the rest of the Straights. I let out a breath I felt I’d been holding for two hours.
That night on my watch, the winds had dropped to 15 knots but the seas continued to loom over us. With our propeller still fouled we couldn’t start the engine to push the boat through the swell, so waves would break over the stern of the boat, flooding the cockpit in two feet of water that would only drain in time for the next wave to hit. I eventually caught sight of whatever was fouling the prop, trailing under the water behind us – it was tan coloured and at least 3 meters long, and as it swirled in our wake it looked like nothing so much as a tail behind the boat. At night in rough conditions, there was nothing we could do about it. I joked that we had caught a dragon.
We eventually managed to anchor the boat in the lee of one of the Penghu Islands, off Taiwan’s west coast, then had to wait a full day for the weather to calm down. The next morning, Arni and I jumped into the water to see what was wrapped around the propeller, and were flabbergasted at what we found.
In addition to a square kilometer of fishing net, there was also 8+ meters of thick rope wrapped around the prop and keel – rope heavy enough to moor the goddamn Titanic. How we had even managed to sail over the previous few days was a mystery itself; the drag from that mess must have been enormous. It may have even helped us in the Straights, acting as a sea anchor to slow the boat and prevent us from spinning in the swell. Arni dove with a knife and I kept an eye on him under the water to make sure he didn’t get tangled in the netting. It took an hour for him to cut loose the mess from the propeller and drive shaft. Not wanting anyone else to fall similar victim to that garbage, we brought it all on board and stowed it to discard on land… after posing with our catch, naturally. We had finally severed our own dragon.
With two ruined sails, no generator, a broken rudder bearing, finicky engine performance, 100kg of unsolicited fishing tackle, and adverse weather, we were due for some good luck. It had been ten days of sailing and motoring, and we were still 350 miles from Hong Kong. The five of us were burned out, restless and anxious. Everyone was looking forward to dry land. So after clearing the propeller on the 11th morning, we pointed her southwest and floored it.
The next 48 hours were the kind of ideal sailing that makes us all keep coming back to the sport. We had the wind behind us or on the beam, the seas started to calm down, and nothing else went wrong. With a good current and cooperating winds we were regularly able to push Alcione to 10+ knots over ground, crushing miles as we cruised into the increasingly busy waters approaching Hong Kong. At one point Arni had the main all the way out and a #4 jib flying as we surfed down a trailing swell and managed to get the boat up to 11.5 knots over water, which is easily the fastest I’ve ever been on a sailboat. The experience was only slightly marred by a 200 meter container ship suddenly looming out of the sunset, forcing us to dump the sails in a hurry to avoid being squashed, but by that time we were inured to such petty dramas. We were almost home.
On the morning of the 13th day, I woke up and climbed on deck to see the first islands surrounding Sai Kung, north and east of Hong Kong. A gorgeous sunrise gradually illuminated a lush topography of volcanic islands and thick jungle, interspersed with the glowing white condo towers and university buildings of eastern Hong Kong. The seas flattened out to a glossy mirror as we worked our way into Hebe Haven and found a place to tie up. I jumped onto the dock and swayed as I got reacquainted with solid ground, wobbling for the first few steps as my body adjusted to the lack of motion under my feet.
“Hey Russ, there’s a big race this weekend around Hong Kong – you interested in crewing on a boat?”
“Fuck no, I’m going to the bar.”
