Conscience on the Quay

From the series “Smoothing the Sea”

To put to sea or not to put to sea. The crew is on board. We are all stowed away, but... are we ready? I know very well that the compass deviation table has been eaten through by salt and is out of date. At once I recall some of the rulings of the Maritime Board, when captains were accused of failing to check the reliability of the deviation tables and, following the readings of their steering compasses, in fact sailed into the unknown. In the distance, beyond the breakwater, right by the southern entrance to the President’s Basin, I can see the black post of the deviation dolphin. I “note in my head” another essential task before the voyage.

I look down from the height of the deck at the boat. In truth, no one but Neptune knows how big her fuel tank really is and how much the “iron topsail” burns per hour in diesel, how much in oil. What state are the batteries in. How badly have the cables to the navigation lights been eaten away by salt and constant rolling. Is there any grease in the stuffing box, will the steering cables still hold. And how do you even check the condition of the sheave for the halyards at the masthead, how many turns it has left in it. What pipes are used for cooling the engine, and are they by any chance just garden hose, as I discovered last time, when softened by the heat they suddenly curled up like green beans, choking off the flow of cold seawater to the heat exchanger.

As a matter of consistency, I eye the gas stove and its pipework with the same unease. We tap the gas bottles, listening to whether their bellies sound full. I spread the sails out on the quay, we examine the state of the cloth, the lines, the hanks. We flush the sea toilets as a test, but… can everything really be checked. We pump the bilge dry first of all and, after three or four hours, we see how much of it has crept back in while the boat lies in flat water.

As for charts, I do not even mention them, because I have long known there is no point relying on the owner; it is the skipper who is supposed to sort them out for himself. So I carry with me, gathered wherever I can and basically at any price, whole rolls like a proper sea wolf. If charts have once, sometime in the past, been on a yacht, then of course they are without corrections, but thoroughly erased in places, almost down to the chart table top in the nav station.

At last I dutifully climb down into the dried-out bilge and inspect the condition of the main seawater intake valve. From that moment on I no longer sleep soundly at sea. Why did I stick my head in there, why did I need to know…

Having gained at least a rough idea of the yacht’s condition, we sit down in the saloon over the first tea of the trip and assign roles. I look at their sailing books, ask about the young lives, their previous sea time, and I look into the eyes, bright with the joy of the prospect of putting to sea. With a stone face, somewhere deep inside I ask myself why the liferaft, in addition to the hydrostatic release, is shackled to the deck with so many more metal links, whether the fire extinguishers actually have anything inside them, why the lifejackets smell so strangely musty, how often anyone has ever tested the EPIRB, how long the slightly damp batteries in the strobe will last. My head buzzes with questions without answers – whether the bilge pumps are clogged with wads of hair that constrict the diameter to almost nothing, whether the V-belt still has any honour and “refuses to snap”, whether, whether…

Would it not be enough simply to trust the yacht’s owner and follow what seems to be the correct line of thinking that for good money we get a properly equipped, seaworthy and safe boat. No, it is not enough. In such logic the captain’s responsibility is watered down like cabbage soup in a student canteen.

I have worked out my own checklist, just as many of my colleagues who sail charter boats have. Reading out its long coils once, quite unintentionally, I managed to give the unsuspecting crew a proper fright. And my bosun’s toolbox gets bigger and heavier every year, because I usually bring back another lesson from every cruise. Everything I have described above has failed me at least once, and at the same time taught me, showed me where to look before we cast off.

At last we put to sea. When, after a few moments, I turn towards the stern and the quay vanishing in the haze, I see some figure staring at our departing yacht, grey, strange, blurry, hunched. I know that worried silhouette very well. And again I ask myself the question. Whose conscience is loitering there on the quay. Whose.