The Seaworthy Liver
From the series “Smoothing the Sea”
That autumn the October winds were not kind to us. Nor were they kind to anyone on our southern side of the Baltic. They turned the coast into a blowing range right up to force 11. Listening carefully to the reports from Witowo, we considered that we might actually make it – and quickly – to the Swedish shore as planned, but getting back on time… that was the problem. We had chartered the yacht for only one week. It was our last cruise of the season. So, whether we liked it or not, we “squatted” in Jastarnia so that we could at least sail on the Bay if Neptune eased off. Unfortunately, he did not. We spent yet another day roaming through every corner of little Jastarnia. For a change of “climate” we decided to take the train to Hel.
“It’s just a stone’s throw, there’s the seal sanctuary, maybe some friend is in the harbour, and they do good fried eel…” the Crew argued.
Everyone liked the idea. An hour later we were getting off the train in Hel. First we visited our Polish, domesticated marine mammals.
The seals at the Hel Seal Sanctuary were happily darting through the water at the keeper’s feet as he began the daily feeding. Herrings and other small fish, swallowed at dizzying speed, were disappearing every moment into their whiskered mouths. The idyllic scene, watched by the visitors, was disturbed by a large colourful photograph showing what had been found in the stomach of one of the resident seals. Among the pile of coins of different values and countries I even spotted a plastic yellow token – an old five-złoty piece, the one with the fisherman… The message of that picture was obvious and clear. Humans are bad for the sea.
While the crew lazily watched the seals playing in their pool, I looked towards the harbour through my inseparable binoculars. Intrigued by an unusual sight, I lost interest in the agile seals and stared into the lenses, trying to understand what was happening in the port.
One of the masts of the yachts lying there was swaying like a spar worn out by a heavy storm. In my mind’s eye I could see a yacht laboriously working in the waves, climbing to the crest every moment only to slide down into the trough the next second. The heel was up to forty degrees on each side. “The lads are having fun, swinging on the shrouds,” I thought, because that was the only explanation that came to mind.
Indeed, among the other masts stately nodding on the harbour swell it looked quite amusing.
As we passed through the turnstiles leaving the sanctuary, I managed to persuade the crew to change the plan so that we would go straight to the harbour and only later for “fish”. We reached the marina fairly quickly.
The terrible roll in the yacht basin (a subject for a separate discussion) was yanking at the mooring lines. Two steel J-boats, secured with every possible line and perfectly placed fenders, were moving rhythmically and safely. “Opal”, on the other hand, was lurching in heavy rolls on carelessly or sloppily laid lines, threatening to smash her delicate wooden topsides against the quay. The deck was a mess, fenders thrown about, unsecured gear rolling across the pale teak. Booms, not pulled down with vangs, were flailing in the empty space like enraged flails. In a word – horror.
“This needs fixing right now,” I thought. “Where is the crew, have they left the yacht?”
When I came closer it turned out that the crew was in fact on board, only in… a different state of consciousness.
I walked up to a group of sailors standing right next to the “flooded” yacht. I heard them urging one of the more “under-the-weather” crew who was crawling across the deck to go down to his berth, which would take him in like a mother, rock him, calm him, soothe him – as berths do. The stubborn fellow would not be persuaded. Driven by the last scraps of a sense of duty as a sailor, he was tying knots in the fender line without any logic or order.
The other two members of the crew, with a strange, absent expression on their faces, were clinging with both hands to the shrouds. Knowing the various colours of sailors’ faces and the different states of maritime contemplation and concentration, I expected the standard reactions of the body any minute. Together, a small group of us tried to persuade the “exhausted” crew to wake the skipper so that perhaps together we could secure the yacht. Slurred speech and their reluctance to cooperate – because, as they said, their skipper “hadn’t ordered anything” – completely put me off.
I decided to pull out of the situation. I felt a bit sorry for the man crawling across the deck with the lines for no clear reason, because whatever was going on down below, on top of his thoroughly battered inner ear, must have been sheer hell. I wasn’t thinking then about his destroyed liver; I was more afraid he might crack his head open. I was thinking about the consequences of any action we might take to secure that yacht without the skipper’s knowledge. I stopped thinking about that too when, after a stronger roll, the wandering sailor was simply thrown into the air – straight between the rolling topsides and the hard quay. The skipper from the second J-boat showed reflexes worthy of praise, pulling the man, soaked to the waist, out from between the dangerous piles in a split second.
That was when I made my decision. I knocked on the hull of the yacht lying just next to us and asked if I could use the radio. The sleepy skipper asked what it was about and, when I quickly summed up the situation, he switched on the VHF set. I called the harbour master’s office. In short, seamanlike phrases I described what had just happened and what posed a threat to both people and yacht. The harbour mistress I spoke to promised to come down to the quay shortly and assess the situation herself.
“Some mates you are…” the skipper at the VHF hissed through his teeth with disapproval when he ended this not very engaged conversation. He pulled his sleeping bag over his head and, not bothering much about the matter, turned his back on me. In such a situation I no longer felt like telling him what had happened at the distance of a mooring line from his own yacht.
I went ashore. Just in time, because the stubborn sailor from the rolling boat had crawled out onto the deck again. The skipper who had pulled him from the water a moment earlier was arguing with him once more. I stepped on board and together we tried to talk him out of his idea of “sailing” in that state. We had just managed to stuff the soaked “little beetle” back below deck when the harbour mistress appeared on the quay. She quickly got off her bicycle and with one glance took in the whole situation. Guided, I suppose, by a woman’s or perhaps a harbour master’s intuition, she asked me if I was the one she had spoken to on the radio. I gave her my details once more and, feeling relieved of responsibility, turned on my heel to leave a watch that was not mine and finally go and have the previously mentioned eel in some tavern on a calm shore.
I pushed my way through a group of off-season tourists who were watching the sailors’ antics from a safe distance. It was a telling sight. The tourists were dutifully standing just behind a red-and-white chain separating the public quay from the area reserved for sailors, soaking up that “sporting” atmosphere with flushed faces, and perhaps even with a touch of envy in their hearts – ah, to be a sailor just once…
Two days later, when I was handing the yacht back in Gdynia, I phoned the harbour mistress to find out how the story had ended. During the conversation I learned that, after her intervention, the entire crew, skipper included, had been put ashore into a hotel, the yacht’s safety certificate had been confiscated and they simply waited… until the storm blew itself out.
What did I learn during this “unsuccessful” cruise to Sweden? Certainly that a skipper’s responsibility does not end when he safely reaches his destination, nor when the yacht passes the harbour entrance, nor even when she is already at the quay rocking on her lines. I think you can breathe out only when the disembarked crew are standing on the shore and the yacht has been handed over to the owner or the next skipper, together with remarks about her condition and seaworthiness. Yes, only then can you light your favourite cigar and sip something from a crystal glass – in moderation. All right, Captain, but what are you to do with your sense of responsibility when the voyage is over, you are relaxed, strolling around the harbour, and you see what I saw in Hel?
You do not need six years of medical studies to know that a “seaworthy” liver is bad news. It does damage locally, but the impact is global. It harms the body, the soul, the crew, the hull, the lines and the sails. It does not only harm the owner of that particular liver. It harms everyone who cares about the good image of sailing and, in the end, it harms the sea itself when it is viewed through the prism of sailors who are permanently “under the weather”.
It is probably better to be flooded by real sea waves, slightly salty, edged with foam, with a playful hint of fishy smell that impregnates, hardens and protects against stupid ideas… probably.