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The Merlin Factor. Chapter Four.
Topic Started: Dec 16 2015, 11:22 PM (100 Views)
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The Merlin Factor. Chapter Four.

Part One: The World.

Delusions of Grandeur. Pacific Ocean, August, 1990.

Approaching the North Pacific High. (An area of continual high-pressure, where there is little or no wind, weather, and where - normally - very little happens...)

*****

My whole world is thirty-one feet long, by seventeen feet wide, by maybe six feet deep.
It is not a stable place.
It rises and falls, shudders and groans, it pitches and rolls in the vastness of space.

Space.
As far as the eye can see, and very far beyond.
In all this awesome emptiness floats my little world, moving through the void at its own leisurely pace. Sometimes gracefully, often less so, on its way from here to there, from nowhere to nowhere else.

Moving.
My world is not quite barren. Its minor life-forms lie deep within, extending fibrous roots in all directions, seeking water and crisp cellulose, like all life-forms, gradually consuming their environment. Hiding from the deadly ultra-violet and cold of space, unable to survive on the world's lethal surface, preferring to cluster inside its structure where the air is still and warm and moist.
Intermediate life-forms are few now. They come and go. Insects mostly, multiplying in times of plenty, when conditions favor growth. Scavenging for life, somewhere in space.

Patient.
A spider swings - ever optimistic - from its high wire supermarket, whose shelves are mostly bare. The higher life-forms are now reduced to a solitary feline, this world's most successful hunter. She has hunted all-comers to extinction: mice, musk-rats from the Fraser River delta, the small bird that foolishly attempted to build its nest in the furled and flaked mainsail. She now reclines in some unfrequented corner, relentlessly cleaning her fur.

The major life-form on this particular world is myself: a thin and hairy biped, seemingly oversized for my environment, until upon closer examination, one realizes that I am, indeed, accurately proportioned for the business of directing my world through time and space.
My world, then, is moving through time and space.
Traversing the void.
Sparsely inhabited by the several lesser life-forms, and the one who would direct its progress: Me.

Some eyes might see me as a God, little realizing that I have almost no clue of where I am going, or of how to get there...
A long, long time ago, so legend has it, there was born a saying among those who sailed the liquid surface of a watery world. Something along the lines of:
"A boat is that which may be defined as: `A hole in the water into which one pours time and material'."
It is likely known to all just what a boat is. So to what were these seafaring people referring by such a statement? What indeed! A boat is a hole. A greedy crevice upon a liquid realm. But what if there are not one, but three greedy crevices?
Three-in-one.
A combination of power and mystery.
A world with not one, but three hulls. Three times the trouble, three times the expense. But, hopefully, three times the speed.

So now we are familiar with the configuration of this particular world. There is more to know, and more to be told. For example:
Consider: An ocean-going vessel is like an island - surrounded by water - isolated and alone. Ideally it contains all that is necessary to sustain life. Consider though, how much more it is like a world, for it moves, with purpose, from point to point. It can be more or less wholly self-sufficient, and, like a world, can continue to be a going concern until, in advanced old age, its many systems and mechanisms begin to run down and collapse. A world must have its God. The one who would create it from a mere idea. Give it life. Make it go. Direct it through time and space to its ultimate destination. The vessel's creator, who might also be its captain, could be considered in his own small way to be thus...

*****

"What?" I asked myself, shaking my head in wonder. "What on earth am I doing here?"
From horizon to horizon through thirty-two points lay the impressive vista of absolutely nothing. The complete absence of anything for the eye to hold and contemplate. Only the dark-blue waters sliding up and down in ceaseless hypnotic motion, ridge upon ridge of slab-like surfaces, ever-changing, ever the same, out to the ends of vision. A boundless dome of blue above, a searing yellow sun within.

Nine days out, and this was beginning to seem a little hard to justify. No matter how I re-arranged the events that led to my being here, I could not detect one scrap of sense in any of it. Even `here' was a purely relative term. Simply a word to identify to myself and myself alone, the pinpoint in space that I happened to be occupying at this particular moment in time.

I had needed to change my life. But had I really needed to risk it like this, a thousand miles from shore?
I had been sailing generally south-westward for the past nine days, broad-reaching out, forever out, into the featureless wilderness of the endless Pacific. For nine days the wind had held steady from the nor'-nor'-west at between fifteen and twenty-five knots. I was a long, long way from land.
A steady wind like this was not something to be wasted in these higher latitudes. It had seemed so perfect for the boat that I'd felt justified in allowing it to carry me wherever it might, and after nine days, the latitude could not be so very high any more, averaging eight knots the whole time. Some seventeen-hundred miles had slipped astern of the three slender hulls. More or less. I imagined that I must be more than half-way to the equator by now, and going like a train.

I shook my head in wonder. I had intended following the invisible but well-beaten track of countless cruising sailors before me; to sail out through the diabolic Strait of Juan de Fuca, leaving the coast of British Columbia two hundred miles to the east, before dog-legging southeast for another fifteen hundred miles to southern California. A chance to rest and re-supply before making west to Hawaii. That had been the plan, but how typical it was that once out of sight of land I should throw calculated caution to the wind and make off in unplanned directions. A man without a plan. Or rather, having cooked up some sketchy excuse for a plan, to find myself entirely unable to stick to it.

It had started, I suppose, with an attempt to escape the heavy-handed attentions of the Columbia River mouth. I had sailed so far offshore that I had somehow just kept right on going. After all, I wasn't specifically out here to take a boring vacation in Hawaii. Adventure was the real name of the game I found myself playing, and the further offshore I went, the faster beat the pulse of recklessness. I was committed. I might as well go to Japan or Cape Horn as anywhere else. I had enough stores for three months and optimism to spare, so why not?
Nobody had ever told me about the North Pacific High.

How was I to know I was headed for one of those curious dead-spots where sailors never go? Where the winds die away and nothing ever happens. At least nothing anyone ever gets to hear about afterwards...

I chuckled, satisfied in my ignorance, touching a sliver of exposed wood for luck, and rubbed my stomach, full of the kind of smug satisfaction that comes from so much distance made good without the intrusion of disaster. Sailors generally are a superstitious lot, no matter what manner of craft they entrust their lives to, for against the might of an ocean, one must stack the odds as high as the laws of the universe will allow in one's favor.

I was stunned at my sheer audacity. I had no real idea of where I was. Though I had cunningly equipped myself with a cheap plastic sextant, some dilapidated charts featuring widely unrelated regions, and last-year's nautical almanac, I had very little idea of how to use them. And as if this were not sufficient handicap to navigation, my super-duper dollar-forty-nine Hong Kong liquid crystal watch had mysteriously reset itself to 00.00 about three days ago, rendering everything else redundant anyway...

But wasn't this exactly what I had wanted? Deep-down really? How many times had I argued with know-it-all cruising-types that I really didn't need to know the secrets of offshore navigation? That I wanted only to go where the wind might take me.

They would, of course, regard me with that special look usually reserved for lunatics, and try to persuade me to seek expert advice. Those were the nice ones. The other type would suggest I seek medical help.

"Join our club," they would say, with an air of self- important superiority. "You'll get a lot out of it. And we have special parties about every three months. For only `X' amount of currency you get a regular newsletter as well as a genuine Captain hat." Etc.

Not that I had anything against anybody's chosen club, you understand. It was just that I had never felt the need to subscribe to any particular outfit. The very word 'club' had always had an unpleasant ring to it as far as I was concerned, being the ultra-independent type I fancied myself to be. But even this would not deter some.

"No no no! You don't understand. Our club is a special club for the kind of person that doesn't want to join a club, don't you see?" At this point I would scratch my head and try the mentally subnormal routine. It is amazing how many clubs shy away from enrolling mentally subnormal sailors into their dazzling ranks. One day, I expect, wheelchair athletes will vie with deaf-mute Siamese hemophiliacs to be first around the world on an air mattress, but mentally retarded? That may take a little longer. For offshore sailors are the creme de la creme, and their special clubs-for-those-who-wish-not-to-join-clubs are not to be sullied by the enrollment of anyone of less than gleaming mentality.

So here I really was. Heading nowhere in particular and not too concerned about how I was going to get there, but secretly wondering how long my supplies would really last. Wondering, vaguely, if the vast Pacific might suddenly produce a playful little surprise, like a cyclone or a seiche. Wondering how I would know if land were barreling down on me in the dead of night. About gear failures and falling overboard. About appendicitis, toothache, scurvy...

But for now, the boat was performing wonderfully well, skimming up and down, punching recklessly through foamy crests and slicing down the tight-muscled backs of murmuring rollers, sending spatters of shimmering spray as far back as the cockpit. Life was a golden dream, the gear was strong - or at least adequate - and I was feeling generally competent when, quite suddenly, my whole reality was abruptly, and forever, shattered into a million fleeting pieces...

*****

It was Cleo, the cat, who first noticed it. Or maybe it was I that first noticed the cat, noticing something away off on the starboard bow.
She stood up, stiff and alert, and without any of the usual stretching and time-wasting, pointed her sphinx-like, white-whiskered nose at a low shape on the water. I strained to make out the detail, and with a grunt of impatience, manhandled myself through the hatchway and dug out my binoculars from their hiding place. It dimly registered that I had previously been unable to locate them anywhere for months, but in my haste to regain the cockpit I brushed the thought aside.
Bracing my elbows against the mainsheet traveller, I trained the glasses on the distant shape as it swam around like a wraith in the haze. I gasped as the target came into abrupt focus, revealing an impossible sight...

A man in a dory!

I stared at this unlikely apparition for several seconds while my stunned brain struggled to come up with a suitable reaction. It took considerable effort to switch from day-after-day-cruising-mode, to the kind of mode needed to decide what I would have to do about what was happening right before my eyes.

Unrigging the autohelm, I put the tiller over to steer for this strange intruder, taking in the mainsheet and winching in the genoa, hardening up into a reach. The trimaran accelerated abruptly, beginning a swooping, rolling rush, her motion utterly changed as she raced along beam-on to wind and wave. It took only minutes to close the castaway and I imagined how we must look to him, bearing down at eleven knots out of an empty ocean.

With a feeling of immense pride tempered with an unaccountable sensation of butterflies in my stomach, I stepped forward to the mast and let go the jib halyard, dousing the genoa to slow down and maneuver alongside. As we closed, the trimaran coming head to wind and wallowing with her mainsail luffing, I took my first close-up look at the only human being I had seen in almost two weeks. He was lying back in the stern, skin dark and hairy, upon his head a ridiculous straw hat. His hands were clasped behind his neck in a pose of comic contentment and his black beard bisected the gleaming white slash of a dazzling smile that seemed to wrap twice around his head. I stared open-mouthed at this Uncle Tom character with a string line tied around his right big toe that led over the side to a cork float in the water. He was fishing!
In an instant of disorientation, I performed a quick horizon scan in case I had somehow missed something. Like a continent, or at least a low-lying island, but there we were, just the two of us, all alone against an endless blue.

"Ahoy there!" I cried, blushing as I realized that we were by now right alongside each other, "I mean - look here, are you all right?" I couldn't believe how idiotic I sounded.
He seemed to stretch and yawn all in one lazy motion, in no great hurry, before lifting the brim of the dilapidated straw hat and winking at me. He raised a nut-brown finger and made a little `wait-one-moment-please' gesture before defly jerking a large silver-blue albacore into the bottom of the dory and untying the line from his toe. Then he turned to me:
"Salut mon vieux! Ca-va?"

Another shock. French? French Polynesia? Boy, was my navigation bad! Boy, was this boat fast! My mind whirled as I groped for my words:
"Um - ah - that is - bonjour monsieur. Comment-allez vous? Er - je peux vous aider?"
"Ah, non merci," he grinned. "Moi, je vais tres bien. Tres bien, merci."

This went by me rather too fast for my fading grammar school French, and, noticing my puzzled expression, he continued:
"Per'aps we talk the Engleesh, non? It is zat I mus' to sank-you for ze grand offaire, but me, I go very 'appy as I am."

Well, his English was really no better than my French, but like all true English-speaking people, I was quite willing to let him do all the work while I felt superior and smirked at his terrible pronunciation and bizarre grammatical blunders.
There was something I had to know:
"Ah - where is the land, monsieur?"
He looked at me strangely, then grinned once more.
"Zat depend upon which land you want," he declared, the `you want' sounding like `you Ant'.
I phrased my next question very carefully.
"Where have you come from?"
He thought about this for a while, scratching his head before replying:
"From ze same place as you my friend. But I theenk per'aps you are a leetle lost, non?"

And what was I supposed to make of this? I became aware, all at once, that the steady winds of the last nine days had all but died completely away, leaving the mainsail slatting listlessly from side to side. It had become very quiet, the long ocean swells sweeping smoothly under us like thinned molasses.

"I'm lost?" I asked incredulously. "What about you? What on earth are you doing out here? Are you shipwrecked?"
"Ah, but of course," he smiled sheepishly, "It is zat I 'ave ze air of one who is sheepwrecked, but as you see, I 'ave zis fine bateau."

This character was telling me nothing. What the devil was going on here?
"Ah - look - like, how long have you been out here?"
He looked all around him, deep in concentration.
"Hmmmm... 'ow long am I 'ere?" He surveyed the lowering sun. "Is not so long I theenk. Before 'ere anozair place. Not far from 'ere." He shrugged, "Is 'ard to say."

I stared at him blankly, as we bobbed up and down, his big grin still carved into his bushy black beard, his expression one of utter lack of concern. I hadn't a clue what to say next.

"You like ze feesh?" He held up his still dripping catch. "Per'aps we share zis very 'andsome feesh togezair, hein?"
I blinked, I suppose, aware that I really had to start reacting normally again at some point in the near future.

"Oh - ah - yes. Ah - delighted. Please do come aboard, monsieur - ah..?" My eyebrows went up...
"Merlin," he pronounced it `Mayor-Lann'. He made a little bow. "Jacques Merlin at your sairvice - ah - monsieur..?" His eyebrows went up too...
"David," I blurted, determined to start acting a little more sharply and in control of things, "...ah...call me Dave..."

He handed me the painter. I quickly secured it to a cleat on the port outrigger while he scrambled aboard, clutching the shiny fish to his breast like the family jewels. He looked around him with undisguised interest and probably would have spent the next month examining every aspect of the boat had I not invited him below. He moved like a monkey, bow-legged and agile down the companionway steps, slipping into a seat at the table. He didn't even bang his knee.

*****
"Squawk!" said the crow, and then made space.
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