Is any command less welcome on a boat than “all hands on deck!”? And short of “man overboard!” is any cry more guaranteed to wake you instantly from the deepest of slumbers? It came, as such things do, in the wee hours of the darkest of nights.
“The bowsprit’s broken,” the skipper, Casey, said tersely as I blinked myself awake. “Get your gear on and meet me on the foredeck.”
Topside, white-tipped waves reared out of the murk and gleamed briefly in the spreader lights as they raced under the 52-foot ketch. The wind had not abated since I’d gone to my bunk—still blowing a solid 20 knots, still from the north right out of our destination, still whipping up 6- to 8-foot seas against the Yucatan current.
Alongside the cockpit, the boat’s twin backstays whipped loosely in the wind as the masthead wagged back and forth. As I slowly made my way forward on the pitching deck, the lifelines alternately went slack and snapped taut each time the 8-foot bowsprit dug into a wave and lurched upwards, then slapped down again as the bow lifted clear of the water, unpredictable as a fractured limb.
