A Ravel of Waters

Chapter 2

Thomsen stood there, rocking on the balls of his feet as if inviting me to hit him verbally. His eyes were searching mine, assessing me. Then he pulled out a gold and black pack of Perilly's Private Blend and offered me one, lighting it and his own with a tiny gold lighter in the shape of a dolphin.

I answered him, repeating it by rote -1 was too tired to be original — 'The Venetian Rig is the first major advance in sail design for centuries. It was invented by Dr Glauco Corbellini, an Italian engineer…*

Thomsen made an impatient sweep with his cigarette. 'I know all that. What I want to know is, how does it work?5

'The answer is on the board — twenty-six days, four thousand, two hundred miles.' 'That doesn't say how.’

'It handles easily. It's ideal for one man sailing alone. It is simple. It is fast. It is highly efficient — in strong winds.' 'How fast?'

Thomsen had a curious empathy which made me continue. Now I explained. 'I'll tell you. Right at the beginning of my run I struck a lucky slant just east of the Horn

He seemed to draw the story out of me. 'What do you call a lucky slant?’

Sheila, who had been present for the introductions, slipped away when the conversation became technical, Don stood by, drinking it in.

'A gale sprang up out of nowhere, as it does near the Horn. It hit fifty knots before I realized what was happening. It was the first big test for the Venetian Rig. It turned out to be a winner. Albatros was going like a bomb, surfing up to twenty-five knots on the bigger rollers. I shortened sail, which was easy, even in those conditions, because each sail is a separate strip and there are quick-release expansion buttons to facilitate things — no reefing like ordinary sails. The anenometer touched sixty knots shortly after. That's its maximum calibration. It was, in fact, gusting higher — seventy-five knots, perhaps. So, in order to make the best time, I took Albatros through the Strait of Le Maire. With the wind and tide-rips in her favour, I managed another four knots over the ground. Albatros was really moving. However, I had to get clear of the Strait before the tide changed or else I'd have been in trouble. As it was, I made it by a whisker. I managed with half an hour to spare.'

Thomsen was still eyeing me. 'The Strait of Le Maire is the most bloody dangerous place in the world. In any craft. Most of all in a small yacht.'

It may have been the whisky, or perhaps the way Thomsen seemed to relate to Albatros's achievements, but I continued to talk, describing how I'd cut through the Jasons and the prevailing conditions which I admitted were fairly rough. The man was showing so much interest in my account, often interrupting me to put a very knowledgeable question to me, that he began to intrigue me — as did the reason for his presence. I was particularly intrigued as to why he should know so much about the Falklands and about a short cut through a group of remote, gale-lashed islands at the other side of the earth, of interest only to penguin fanciers and environmentalists.

Thomsen brought his right fist into his left palm with a smack.

'Hell's teeth! You were as close to Port Stanley in the Falklands as the Jasons! And I didn't know it!'

He strode across to one of the big windows overlooking the anchorage. The lagoon, in the last light of the midsummer's day, was incomparably soft and lovely, pearl-grey and other-world against a back-drop of blue peaks and green forested slopes of the soaring Outeniqua mountains.

Catching the mood, Don said, 'At this time of day a flock of wild ostriches comes down from the Belvedere side and feeds on the prawns in the shallows. They stay until the tide rises up to their bellies.'

Thomsen, however, had eyes only for Albatros at anchor. 'She looks very small.'

'Big enough, when you're only one. Bigger than a house when she pitchpoled and fell on top of me.'

He took another drink from Don. 'Arse over tip! What happened?'

'Listen, I'm tired…' I began, when a thought struck me. 'I appreciate your enthusiasm and interest in Albatros. I don't know anything about you beyond your — name. What's it all about?'

Don looked uncomfortable. 'Mr Thomsen is from the Aaland Isles.' As if that explained everything.

Thomsen laughed. 'You can't expect him to know anything as civilized as the Aalands.' He grinned at me. 'The Aalands are a group in the Baltic between Finland and Sweden. I am a Finn. I was born in Mariehamn, the Aalands capital. So was Gustav Erickson, the last great windjammer ship-owner before World War II. He had some magnificent ships — like the Herzogin Cecile, for one. Even today people remember her.'

Thomsen's amused glance at me was the sort that professionals swap in the company of amateurs. 'Finished up on the rocks in Cornwall.

'Erickson was a relation of mine, on my mother's side. Seamanship goes back centuries in the Aalanders' blood. Erickson drew his splendid crews mainly from the Aaland Isles. Even the advent of steam hasn't quite killed their love for sail. There are still crews to be had there who would rather man a windjammer than a steamer.'

Thomsen did not look like a dreamer to me. Yet today windjammers are the stuff that dreams are made of.

Don interrupted. 'Aaland is the home of the International Association of Cape Horners — men and women who have rounded the Horn in sail.'

'Don't forget to join the fraternity. Rainier’ Thomsen added, a little ironically. He resumed in a different tone. 'It is true, the Aaland Isles are the last resort of what few windjammers remain in the nuclear age. We Aalanders still hanker after sail for sail's sake, although our reason and our pockets tell us it is dead.' 'There are still people who love dinosaurs,' I remarked.

He downed his drink — he drank it on the rocks — in a gulp. 'It is a good comparison, that. The dinosaur was a complex creature. Complex and cumbersome. He lacked mobility, which means speed. Nowadays, speed is equated with evolution. The windjammer died because it was complex and cumbersome.'

'Sail has a place, even if a limited place, today still…' I began.

'Albatros has proved what I am trying to say,' he broke in. 'The Venetian Rig is simple; it has speed. Corbellini had a touch of genius.'

4No,' I said. 'You are trying to equate two things which cannot be compared — the yacht and the commercial sailing vessel. Let's face it, the cargo-carrying windjammer is dead. Dead as the dinosaur. What works for a small yacht doesn't necessarily work in a scaled-up version in a big ship.’

Thomsen paused a long while before replying. Then he said decisively, as if he had made up his mind about something — or someone, 'The Venetian Rig is not the only modern development in sail. There is another, which technically functions in exactly the opposite way in almost every respect. Nor is the windjammer dead. I have taken a twenty million dollar gamble to prove it is not.'