Jo and the Whale

By Ted Filston

Sally is a blue whale calf captured by the US Navy after her mother was killed by orcas (killer whales). She is raised and trained for military purposes by the Navy.

Jo is a career US Navy officer. She is in her mid-twenties and has specialised in marine biology and submarine warfare.

Paul is a thirty-something British doctor and single handed yacht sailor competing in a round-the-world yacht race.

All three are brought together under extraordinary circumstances in the year 2025 and share an adventure in the Southern Hemisphere against a backdrop of ever-deteriorating relations between America and China and an increasingly dangerous world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398431720

Ted Filston

Ted Filston was born in Buckinghamshire, where he met his wife, Jean. They moved to Devon in 1969 and have been there ever since, except for a six-year spell when they lived in Brittany. Laboratory technician, local government officer, shopkeeper, architectural designer, and building surveyor are occupations Ted has performed in his diverse career, and such wide experience has helped in his new pastime, writing. His interests include a lifetime passion for riding and restoring classic motorcycles, sailing and kayaking, flying in light aircraft and gliders, and many others, indulged by the ever-supportive and patient Jean.

Book preview

About the Author

Ted Filston was born in Buckinghamshire, where he met his wife, Jean. They moved to Devon in 1969 and have been there ever since, except for a six-year spell when they lived in Brittany.

Laboratory technician, local government officer, shopkeeper, architectural designer, and building surveyor are occupations Ted has performed in his diverse career, and such wide experience has helped in his new pastime, writing.

His interests include a lifetime passion for riding and restoring classic motorcycles, sailing and kayaking, flying in light aircraft and gliders, and many others, indulged by the ever-supportive and patient Jean.

Dedication

To Jean, thank you for putting up with me.

Copyright Information ©

Ted Filston 2022

The right of Ted Filston to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398431713 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398431720 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Chapter 1

Capsize! 2025

He could not hold on much longer. Paul had long since lost all feeling in his hands and was only instinctively clinging on to the jagged shards of shattered carbon fibre, which was all that remained of the keel of his upturned yacht, as it pitched and bucked in the violent seas and darkness.

It seemed ages since the monstrous wave had hit like a massively high wall of solid glass travelling at a terrifying speed, but really, it was less than an hour ago when the yacht had been suddenly lifted vertically by the stern and hurled into the wave trough.

The Roaring Forties of the Southern Ocean had been living up to reputation before the hurricane struck. Huge waves relentlessly raised and lowered the racing yacht, but Paul thought he had it under control. After all, this was the second time he had traversed the Southern Ocean and the first time, in the 2020/1 race, he had been lucky, having had an easy passage on that occasion.

This time, in the 2024/5 race, it was very different. He had much earlier taken down the previously reefed mainsail and had been creaming along on storm jib only. Although being thrown around he was not overly worried until the wind and seas became even angrier.

In his survival suit, he had climbed with considerable difficulty, from the cockpit, re-clipping his lifeline as he moved about, slamming into things as the boat pitched and yawed below his boots, that struggled for grip on the awash decking. It was a world of water with the turbulent sea below and the air filled with lashing rain and gale driven spray and spume. He reached the bow, which was bucking like a wild stallion and managed to take down the storm jib, which lashed him in the face before he could subdue and stow it. He lost his footing several times while returning aft, but his lifeline saved him each time, as solid water crashed over him and tried to wash him overboard. Fortunately, he was fit and strong enough to cope with the rapidly deteriorating conditions. He threw out the sea anchor and saw its line crack taught as the drogue filled and steadied some of the yacht’s convulsions. He was now sailing under bare poles and the wind screaming through the rigging was almost deafening above the thunderous roaring of the enraged ocean. He could do no more and he went below to ride out the tempest. He made his report to his Race Control in UK.

Apart from being bashed and bruised all over, Paul still had confidence in his and the boat’s ability to cope, but he knew he had to look after himself; he was a doctor after all.

Luckily, he had put his white crash helmet on, which gave good protection as well as keeping his head warm. He hated wearing it though, as it impaired his vision and hearing, but it did have a built-in lamp. It also had a webcam incorporated, which recorded his environments and activities and automatically sent the recordings directly back to Race Control.

He was not yet exhausted, but he was tired, almost too tired to eat, but he forced himself to boil some water and pour it into a carton of dehydrated chicken curry. This was no mean feat with the boat heaving and gyrating manically, and he narrowly avoided scalding himself several times, however the effort was worth it to get the calories inside him. The good thing about curry is that it tastes the same coming up as going down, he thought.

Feeling a little warmer and more comfortable and despite being thrown around the cabin like a ragdoll, he felt drowsy.

Tiredness is the enemy of all single-handed ocean racers. Even with reliable modern self-steering and auto-pilotage, you could never relax, what with frequent sail changes necessary in response to changes in wind strength and the need for constant attention to navigation and other shipping, not to mention hazards such as fog and icebergs. But at all times, you must remember you are racing against unseen relentless opponents and must maximise boat-speed over comfort, day and night. The best that most solo helmsmen can manage is catnaps and if lucky, a series of short sleeps, if conditions allow. They develop a sixth sense when their ears continue to monitor the sounds and their bodies, the movements of the boat even while sleeping, ready to instantly wake and spring to action.

Paul had braced himself in the corner of his berth when he thought the worst of the storm may have gone through and permitted himself to doze. He should have typed his log into the laptop and also make his report to RC. He should also have plugged in his suit and helmet to recharge their batteries but in his tiredness, did not. The cabin was in an awful state, with dislodged gear, charts and water everywhere, but due to fatigue and trepidation, he could do nothing about it until things improved. Contrary to his usual shipshape habits, he switched off to drift into semi-unconsciousness. Lulled into this state by the sea anchor slightly calming the boat’s convulsions, giving the false impression conditions were improving, he had uncharacteristically dropped his guard.

Roaring, even above the noise of the wind and tormented ocean, came a new sound in the darkness of this vile night. Warning signals must have seeped into Paul’s torpid brain, but as he forced his aching body off the berth, the yacht’s bow pitched rapidly down as the curling foot of the freak wave hit the transom and it rose, trying to let thousands of tons of water get under hull, but then the vertical cliff wall of the wave struck like a locomotive.

The relatively tiny boat tried to surf down the face, under the umbrella of the snarling curve at the wave crest, but it started to become unglued from the water and it went into free fall. It was as though Neptune had risen out of the sea, taken hold of the stern in his giant hand and thrown this puny little yacht down an abyss, with boiling water at the bottom.

Paul was thrown into the saturated air of the cabin, and like an astronaut in training, he momentarily became weightless along with the cabin debris. The madly gyrating craft next crashed into the trough, the impact slamming Paul into the cabin front.

The hull was being tumbled about as a cork in a washing machine. There was a mighty rending of mast and rigging and a cracking like rifle shots as the bottom section of the keel was wrenched off. At what stage it could be said the boat had capsized is debatable, but it finished riding the waves upside down with a tangle of twisted mast, rigging and sea anchor hanging in the sea like the tentacles of a huge jellyfish.

Paul surfaced in the half-filled cabin to find his stunned head in a pocket of air trapped under the inverted floor. All electrics lost, including his helmet lamp, it was pitch black, but by hand groping, he felt the floor above him and realisation of disaster dawned. He was really scared now. He felt up again to find his head was closer to the floor than a couple of minutes ago and panic seized hold. He had to get out! No thoughts of his life raft yet!

The steps and hatch doorway up from the cabin, no, now down, he realised, into the cockpit, were below water! He thought off triggering the gas to inflate his life jacket but luckily stayed his hand.

He would have to dive to get to the cockpit then dive further to clear the gun’wale and safety rail. But the buoyancy built into his survival suit would counter his dive. Take the suit off? No, suicide! But he would have to forget about his helmet and just go for the hatch or drown in the rapidly filling cabin. He felt around again and made sure he was correctly orientated, pushed his face up into the diminishing air pocket, pumped air with several short breaths to oxygenate his blood, then took a huge lung-full and dived for the exit, the cold hurting his exposed head.

The suit immediately resisted his thrust but feeling for handholds and using all of the strength in his arms, he managed to part swim, part wade and part heave his way down into the cockpit but the time and effort this took, used most of his breath and his lungs were demanding more. He could not pause and made another huge push towards the guardrail. The suit’s buoyancy pushed him upwards against the inverted deck, and he crawled and hauled his way to the rail. With his lungs aching, he was slowly releasing breath involuntarily and seeing the bubbles escaping, he knew his chances were running out.

Paul whipped out his knife that was in a sheath incorporated into the right leg of his suit and cut twice at a length of tangled rigging rope. He tied one end to a buckled stainless-steel post carrying the safety rail wires and tied the other to the end of the lifeline attached to his suit.

He did not want to be swept away from the boat, which even in its shattered state was still his only hope for life. With the last of his breath and strength, he climbed over the wires and let go.

After what felt like an age, he shot to the surface and audibly gasped for precious oxygen. The seas being in an extreme state of agitation and the cruel gale still provoking the waves meant the hull was moving away from him to take up the slack in the rope and start to tow him through the ice-cold water. What with the sea swamping him and the spray filled air and rain lashing his face, each time he tried to get a breath he took in mouthfuls of salt water with every painful gasp as he clung to his tow rope.

This was no good. He tried to think. He had to get out of the water and onto the hull. He hauled hand over hand on the rope towards the boat but his gloved hands were freezing cold and he kept loosing grip in the moiling sea. The night was still dark but some moonlight was flashing occasionally through the fast-scudding clouds. After a determined effort, he pulled himself close to the sometimes-visible white sides of the upturned hull, just remaining above the surface. But there was another setback. The post to which his tether was attached was well below water.

It was hard to think straight, but Paul’s brain, functioning in survival mode, told him he had to dive again to untie the rope, and he took his gloves off to avoid fumbling but lost them in the process. A big deep breath and pull on the rope to overcome the resistance of his suit, submerged him again to grope for the rope end. Once at the post, he felt for the knot and untied it with difficulty, as he had to keep hold of the safety wire and hitch on to it with his lifeline to avoid being swept away. He had to quickly surface again for air and to catch his breath. He had kept hold of the rope end and now quickly wound it around his waist. Fortunately, the lifeline was just long enough to allow his head back above the water, but on the shorter tether, he was being bashed against the heaving hull and choking on and swallowing water, each time he gasped for air. He thought he was near the aft deck and the keel being the last protrusion on the waterlogged hull, his only refuge, was some way for’ad. He had to work his way towards it and climb onto the hull.

There was nothing for it, he had to go back under and pull himself along the railing. He reached the next post, unclipped his line while hanging on and re-attached the other side before resurfacing. Recovering breath, he dived again to repeat the exhausting process four times until, in a glimmer of filtered moonlight, he glimpsed the up-stand of the broken keel, protruding above the hull like a spiky fin. One more dive brought him level with it.

The hull was settling lower in the water, but how to climb up the slippery side? Screwing his eyes up, trying to squeeze out the stinging salt water, he saw the keel stump again and realised his lifeline was not long enough to reach. Despondently, Paul knew he had to re-attach the rope to the rail. He tied an end to his lifeline and unwound it.

Another dive and a quick knot had the other end back on the rail and he took up as much slack as he could before pulling himself back close to the boat again.

He had to get onto the hull soon, but there were no handholds on the smooth, slippery surface of a racing yacht.

Just as he was despairing of reaching the keel, a short chopping cross-wave slammed him against the side then swept him across the hull in front of the keel and back into the water on the other side of the yacht! This was a bit lucky because he could now pull himself up to the keel. With the last of his strength, he heaved his cold, waterlogged body to the keel. There was nothing to hitch onto with his lifeline so he wound the rope as best he could around the keel stump while hanging on for his life and sat on the hull with his back to the stump.

Now lashed to the corpse of his once sleek racing yacht, with waves swamping over him, he could begin to think about his predicament. It was as bad as it could possibly be! There was no sign of his life raft, which should have deployed and inflated automatically. He triggered the gas and blew up his life jacket. With the keel hammering into his back, it was like riding on the back of a great white shark, propped up by its wounded dorsal fin.

There was something radically wrong with the design or construction or both; the boat should have positive buoyancy built in for all eventualities. It should not be sinking, but it was obviously settling down further in the water. Strangely, he thought of Pete Goss.

Paul remembered when he was ten years old, on a boating holiday in 2000, while sailing out of Dartmouth with his father his dad had told him of Goss’s adventures.

Pete Goss’s was the first British boat to enter the Vendee Globe non-stop single-handed around the world yacht race in 1996/7. Paul was only six then, but the story struck his imagination and was the inspiration that led him to his present jeopardy.

In that race, two sailors died and while racing in the depths of the Southern Ocean Pete Goss received a distress call from fellow racer, Frenchman Raphael Dinelli whose boat was sinking in an 80-mph gale. Dinelli had enough time to deploy and get into his life raft but was a long way back in the race that Goss was winning at the time.

Goss immediately turned back and headed for the distress signals automatically broadcast from the life raft. After two days, in hurricane force winds, amazingly Goss homed in on the raft wallowing in the vastness of the Southern Ocean where there was little hope of rescue by any other means. Dinelli had by then been in the life raft for 48 hours and was dying of hypothermia. Somehow, Goss managed to get Dinelli on board but in doing so lost his chance to win the race.

Goss nursed Dinelli who was stiff with cold and could not move for days as they headed for the nearest land, but he slowly recovered. He must have recovered sufficiently to propose to his girlfriend using Goss’s on-board fax machine! She accepted and eventually, Goss was the best man at their wedding!

Paul could not remember where his father told him Goss landed Dinelli, South Africa or Australia he supposed, but he remembered Goss re-joined the race even though no longer in contention. However, he had injured his elbow in the struggles and it was swollen and painful due to ruptured muscles.

With advice from a surgeon over the radio, Pete Goss sterilised a scalpel and cut into his flesh, without anaesthetic, to fix the problem! He sailed on to finish the race. What a man!

Pete was awarded the MBE by the queen and the Legion d’Honneur by the President of France for his selfless actions in saving Dinelli, who became a firm friend and sailing partner.

Paul’s delirious musings continued as he also remembered Pete Goss’s mishap in the year 2000. During the holiday, his father took him to a boatyard in Totnes where Goss was building a big catamaran of radical new design and construction. To Paul, as a small boy, the cat looked vast, at 120 feet long and 70 feet wide! It was exciting to see, as it sat on the quayside, looking like something out of science fiction, with its insect-like body and curved arms reaching out to the hulls on each side! It looked like a Klingon spacecraft to young Paul.

It was being prepared for sea trials and then for a new, unrestricted, fastest around the world non-stop race.

After the official launch for Team Philips, the cat carefully made its way down the Dart, filling the river with its great width and then with thousands of cheering and waving people lining the banks passed through Dartmouth and sailed out to the open sea.

It looked so elegant with its massive 130-foot high unstayed mast, lack of rigging clutter and blade-like sail. Paul and his dad were thrilled watching it until it disappeared around Castle Point. There was much television news coverage of this high-profile event and they followed its progress avidly.

During sea trials in March 2000, somewhere off the Isles of Scilly if Paul remembered correctly, the nose of the port hull detached from the catamaran in moderate seas! The boat was salvaged, strengthened and the nose section reinstated. Team Philips set off in the race, but in December of that year, in a mid-Atlantic storm, the cat broke up!

Luckily, Goss and his crew were rescued, but the boat was lost on its maiden race. Paul and his dad were mortified!

How ironic, thought Paul, there was something similarly, catastrophically wrong with the design and construction of his yacht in that it should be his unsinkable haven, even upside down, long enough to give a chance of rescue. He remembered reading Tony Bullimore’s book entitled ‘Saved’ that gave a dramatic account of his capsize in the Southern Ocean during the 1996/7 Vendee Globe race.

Tony, at the age of 57, survived for nearly five days in an air pocket in the cabin of his inverted yacht some 1500 miles from Australia, in atrocious weather conditions. An Orion maritime patrol aircraft of the RAAF, at the limit of its endurance, tracked signals from Tony’s beacon and amazingly located the yacht in the vast emptiness of the Southern Ocean. The frigate HMAS Adelaide was in the ocean having already rescued another capsized competitor, Frenchman Thierry Dubois. The ship made full power to the location guided by the Orion. Tony, of course, knew nothing of this and was slowly dying from hypothermia having survived on a little chocolate and bottled water he was able to access in his flooded cabin. Having despaired of rescue, he must have thought he was hallucinating when he heard some tapping on the hull! A Rigid Inflatable Boat (RIB) had been launched from the Adelaide and an Aussie crewman was knocking to see if anyone was at home!

Tony just managed to dive and swim out of the hull to hear ‘G’day, mate’ and be hauled into the RIB and taken to the Adelaide.

Tony was incredibly lucky thought Paul ruefully. Like Tony, he had not been able to get into an inflated life raft, with its location beacon, shelter, fresh water and emergency rations. As it was, without fuel for his metabolism, Paul’s body was shutting down, starting from his completely numb extremities and now the cold was gnawing into his core, threatening his internal vital organs. As a doctor, he recognised there was no time left for the Australian Navy to reach ’him’.

He was resigned to his fate; he believed you should not enter the Vendee Globe otherwise. Single-handed sailors knew and accepted the risks and his time had come. His grip relaxed and his lashing rope unravelled. The hull settled further into the water and the next wave that washed over, swept him off his yacht.

Almost comatose, Paul was held up by his life jacket and was floating on his back. The clouds parted and he raised his eyes from his departing yacht to see the spectacular display of the stars of the southern hemisphere. There were worse ways to die; he knew from his doctoring.

As he was passing into unconsciousness, he felt a hole open in the ocean and a vortex sucked him under. Water flooded over his eyes, distorting the stars as he disappeared into a black maw.

Chapter 2

Jo 2022

Jo was strolling informally through the San Diego docks with her commanding officer; they were over-shadowed by the huge grey slab sides of US Navy capitol ships towering above the quayside. It was a lovely sun-shiny day in the early fall of 2022 and pleasantly warm after their recently too hot summer.

Despite the naysayers, emboldened during the Trump presidency, climate change and global warming were accelerating and were playing havoc with the world’s weather; even California was experiencing weather extremes unheard of only twenty years back.

Commander Dwight D. Brahms, known by his junior male officers as ‘Double Dee Bra’ or ‘Diddy Cup’ or similar mammary related, affectionate appellations, was an imposing six foot six and 250 well distributed pounds. He was in pretty good shape for a man approaching fifty. It was not known whether or not he was aware of his various titty sobriquets, but in any case, he had little by way of man boobs.

He looked very smart in his well-tailored, immaculate white uniform and his yellow three bars and one star insignia on his epaulettes and sleeves, glowing in the soft Californian autumn sunlight. Jo felt distinctly under dressed in her blue work fatigues that he had surprised her in, but her lovely, real blonde shoulder length hair vied with his epaulettes.

Exuding a calm, confident yet relaxed manner, he stopped, took off his Ray Bans, and turned to look square on into Jo’s eyes. She recognised the look and realised the pleasantries were over. Due to their great disparity in height, he had to look down and she had to crank her head back, but she was used to having to do that. He registered how extremely pretty her earnest face was.

Jo, you must have worked out by now, you have been specially selected and fast tracked by the Navy; yours has not been a normal career path compared to your fellow recruits! boomed his baritone voice.

No, sir, I mean yes, sir, I realise my progress and promotion has been faster than most. CDR Brahms always had this effect on her, and she was annoyed with herself for her uncharacteristically clumsy response.

You were spotted and sponsored by the Navy while at university, and I guess you and your folks were glad of the financial help?

Yes, sir, very. I don’t think Ma and Pa could have afforded it, even with me having all sorts of part-time jobs. We are very grateful. Thank you, sir.

W-e-l-l, it’s not your gratitude we seek but your comm-it-ment, said Brahms slowly and emphatically, his eyes boring into hers.

I love the Navy and I love my work. I sincerely hope I have commitment, sir, she said with some passion, as if she had been criticised or doubted.

Relax, you have nothing to prove on that score, so far, but if you’ll hear me out, I ‘will’ test you again when I finish. Let’s quickly look back a little; correct me if I get anything wrong. You left university, Florida, wasn’t it? She nodded in the affirmative. With a first in marine science? She nodded again; she knew when to keep her trap shut. He went on, You joined the Navy, did your basic training and passed for officer training; you left with a commendation and a marksmanship award!

Next you headed for officer training; you graduated top of your intake. There’s a pattern emerging here; you’re a right little Miss Smarty Pants, ain’t you? he said with a wry smile on the corner of his mouth.

She did not reply or deny but grinned mischievously. She heard a faint Texan drawl and slight sneer at the end of that question that reminded her of John Wayne, and she knew that she liked