A Captain’s Log: The Day It Broke

24th January – Morning

Dawn. Excitement hummed through the boat. Today, we would cross the Atlantic’s halfway point. The very nexus of the voyage. The farthest possible point from any land, from any rescue, from anything but deep blue and infinite sky. The nearest humans would be astronauts orbiting above us.

A profound, thrilling isolation for which we had a magnum of Prosecco chilling for the occasion. The morning was rough but manageable, squalls with 36-knot gusts, sail changes, the usual demanding dance. We were tired but buzzing. Then, the ocean reminded us of its sense of timing.

13:17 PM. Halfway.

The plotter showed 1083 nautical miles to go. The symbolic milestone. I was about to call for a toast.

Then, BAM!.

A four-metre rogue wave, a sheer wall of dark green oblivion, crashed broadside. The sound was a sickening, deep-throated CRACK that vibrated through the entire hull. Not the usual slam or shudder, we knew this was worse.

To understand the carnage, you have to picture the setup. Our Code Zero sail flies from the mast, but its forward grip is a thick aluminium bowsprit, a lance jutting from the bow, held down by brute-force with Dyneema ropes to small stainless steel pad eyes near the waterline on the inside of each hull. It’s a system designed for strain, not for sledgehammers.

The wave was the sledgehammer. It hit with such violence that the force translated through the sail, into the rope, and into those innocent-looking pad eyes with the subtlety of a bomb. The Dyneema didn’t break. Instead, it yanked the pad eye clean from its mount, snapping the metal at its base. The bowsprit, now unmoored, was left pointing uselessly at the sky, a broken arm hanging from its socket.

And from that broken arm thrashed the Code Zero? No longer a sail, but a wild, flapping monster, deaf to all commands, tied to a splint of shattered aluminium.

Adrenaline is a cold, clear liquid. Kenet, God bless him, was already moving. “We need to secure that sail.”

If you recall back to blog 041 you know I knew the drill. I’d dealt with a wayward code zero before. It’s a two-person job: one to lower the code zero, another to manage the sail onto the deck and fold it up. More people on a foredeck in a storm is just more risk.

I left Vikki, and Pookie in the cockpit. My mistake? I assumed they understood the danger. I assumed they’d wait to be directed. I assumed. I told Danny to man the helm. This was so we had someone still able to avoid issues, manage the furling lines, turn the boat, start the engine or indeed summon help if, perish the thought, anyone fell overboard.

Kenet and I donned the life jackets, clipped in and went forward. The genoa was let out to depower the flailing Code 0. We moved carefully, and slowly, clipping on for safety at all times. The situation was under control. I needed Danny to roll in the furling line at the cockpit clutch to wind up (albeit messily) as much of the code zero as possible. He did. Good. Vikky watched and Pookie filmed, documenting the salvage.

Then, as Kenet slowly began to lower the sail, and against all sense, Danny left the cockpit and walked up to the bow.

This is the man who, days earlier, explained that in cave rescues, experts rarely enter the danger zone; they coordinate from safety. That training clearly evaporated. He didn’t come to ask what to do. He walked straight to the very point the wave had hit, leaned half his body over the shattered bowsprit, and gazed down. A tourist at the scene of his own potential demise.

The critical task was untangling the main halyard so Kenet could lower the wrecked sail. The sail was still partially unfurled, slapping with enough force to tear itself, or take a head off and now we had no one at the helm to help should anything go wrong. We now had no backup.

I needed Danny away from the edge and back in the cockpit.

“Danny, what are you doing up here?” Nothing. He was two metres away, wearing a comms headset.

“Danny, what are you doing up here? STOP leaning over the front!” He stared fixedly at the broken metal.

“DANNY!” I shouted. “For fuck’s sake, Danny what are you doing!?”

“You need to calm down,” he said.

Calm down. On a broken boat in a rolling sea, with a man playing daredevil, I was told to calm down.

“I am calm Danny. I just don’t know why you’re here! There’s no one on the helm!”

What followed was a surreal, furious loop. Him: “Calm down.” Me: “Go back to the helm or help Kenet.” Five times? Maybe. Meanwhile the sail threatened to shred. The boat bucked. My patience, stretched over weeks of crumbs and clutter and baffling nautical theories, finally snapped.

“For Fcuks sake Danny! Will you just go and help Kenet!” I shouted.

I turned away from him, signalling the conversation was over and began to try and fold up what little of the sail was on the deck. Danny slowly and with some reluctance began to walk to Kenet. Now at this point I was just doing my thing. But the frustration got the better of me and I talked to myself.

“I could swing for you right now,” I growled, the venom real. “What the hell are you doing up here? You’re just a fucking idiot. Why can you just do as you’re told.”

Kenet, pragmatic hero, had nearly sorted the tangle alone. Finally, Danny shuffled over to pretend to help. They both began to lower the halyard and I started gathering more sail in and folding it on the trampoline.

Then, in a move that defied all maritime sense and basic self-preservation, Vikki decided to also abandon the cockpit. She left Pookie alone, who had been asked to film the crisis from the safety of the cockpit window, and began shuffling on her bum up the deck toward the bow.Which left the helm seat as empty and unattended as a politician’s promise.

So to recap: a broken boat, a storm-lashed bow, a flapping sail monster, four adults clustered in the impact zone on a plastic trampoline, one back in the cockpit responsibly documenting it all… and precisely nobody at the wheel. We had achieved the nautical equivalent of a group hug at the scene of a car crash.

Vikki then started hauling the sail towards the back of the boat as I tried to fold it. “Please, stop. Let me do it,” I said, my voice tight. We finally got the sail down and bound it to the deck. The immediate crisis was over. The human one was just beginning.

As we all made our way back to the cockpit, Danny stayed back and tied the bowsprit to the triangle support at the front of the boat.

The Aftermath

Once we were back in the safety of the cockpit Vikky invited me to do a debrief. I thought that was a good idea as in my view it would be to explain, calmly, how leaving the cockpit unmanned and sightseeing at the bow endangered everyone. Danny, who by now had taken his life jacket off and was in his cabin, refused. Of course.

Vikki went down to invite him up but he refused again and she suggested I talk to him privately. I went below.

He was reading a book. “Hi Danny, you wanted to talk to me.”

He didn’t look up. “No. I will only speak to you when you apologise for swearing at me.”

The petulance was breathtaking but I have raised three children so I know how this goes. “I will apologise for swearing at you Danny, when you acknowledge and apologise for ignoring me.”

“No.”

“Do you not think you were ignoring me?”

“Apologise first.”

“Look you are being silly…”

“I’m staying in here until you apologise!”

Remaining calm and with my father knows best head on I simply said “OK… You stay in your room then and I will organise the boat rota without you.”

I turned to walk away but the scream that followed was pure, unfiltered rage. “HOW DARE YOU TREAT ME LIKE A CHILD! WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?” He threw his book down and stormed out of his cabin stopping only inches from my face. Red with fury and swinging one arm he began screaming that he could “take you out with one arm!”

Now being invited to fight a crew member 1,000 miles from land was not my ambition during this voyage (in fact it is probably high on ones worst nightmares… along with leaking boats and power failures but we had those already!) So I just stood there looking at him as he raged on.

When I felt I could get a word in edgeways, I decided that putting up with the “Democracy” we had all been subjected to had reached its conclusion “This is not a democracy, Danny. If I want you to do something, I expect you to do it.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?!” he retorted.

“I am the Captain, and this is my boat.”

I walked away. My heart hammered. Not from fear, but from the sheer, staggering toxicity of it.

I walked back up to shocked faces.

Vikki’s attempt at mediation was a masterpiece of misaligned loyalty. I should apologise first. I tried to explain cause and effect: no reckless bow-gazing, no screaming. She said I was being childish. I gave her a workplace analogy to help her. I don’t know where she has worked but she said she’d expect her boss to apologise first. An irreconcilable chasm opened.

Later, Vikki offered a theory. She said when Danny gets an idea, he zones out, problem-solving. She thought he was looking for a way to secure the bowsprit. I looked at her, weary to my bones. “I have faced this exact situation before, with just Pookie, at night, in darkness and in worse seas. I didn’t ask him for a solution. I simply asked him to man the helm. I have a legal duty of care for everyone on this boat.” I paused. The next thought was dark, but it had to be voiced.

“Now earlier he told me he could “take me out” Vikki, does that mean I should now remove all the knives from the galley and get onto the authorities?”

Vikki looked horrified and possibly for the first time realised the enormity of the issue.

The Prosecco was opened and Danny resurfaced, the halfway point “celebrations” a mere recognition of a geographical point rather than an accomplishment. We were adrift in more ways than one. I had a broken boat, a broken crew, and a man below decks who believed he could, and would, take me out with one hand.

The dream had not just cracked. It had mutinied.