The sat phone rang at 23:30 which was 17:30, or 5:30 PM back in the States. Janey was in the cabin at the time preparing for bed and I was getting set for the night watch with Zeus.
She answered it. She talked for a minute or two and then emerged from the cabin, agony written on her face. She ran across the deck and literally threw her little body into me. She flung her arms around my neck and wept piteously.
I was totally mystified. When she finally got some control over her crying she said between sobs, "Daddy has had a heart attack. He is in intensive care."
I knew what her dad meant to her and so I held her for a while, until she had stopped the major shaking and snuffling. Then I went below and got the phone. I called my man Chuck in California, where it was only approaching 3PM and gave explicit orders for a helicopter to meet us at the docks at Tobruk, which we had just passed on our right.
With flight time that would be about an hour and a half from Alexandria, just enough for me to get into that port and get Janey ashore. THEN I wanted first class on the first flight out of Borg El Arab, Alexandria to Philly.
I pay the guy a lot because I know how hellishly efficient he is, so I didn't even bother to check back.
Tobruk has a great harbor, perhaps the best in the entire region so it was easy to make my way to an empty slip in the dark and tie up. Janey had not moved from where she was lying on the Navigator's bench. It was 01:40 and I almost immediately heard the helicopter. I made a mental note to put a little extra in Chuck's sock for Christmas.
I waved a torch flashlight up into the sky and the pilot brought a Bell 407 in to hover and land on the dock. Without switching off I kissed Janey and bundled her, and a little travel bag I had packed for her, on the chopper and the pilot lifted off for the 200 mile flight back to Borg El Arab.
She was in a state of miserable acquiescence. With luck she would be on the 6:30 AM Emirates flight to the States and at the hospital before noon.
It was the middle of the night, pitch black and very quiet. I was tired and we were tied to a dock. I would sort out the landing fees and whatever visa requirements in the morning.
I went into the cabin and closed the door. Zeus took up his guard post at the entrance and I lay in the bed, alone for the first time in my memory. Sleep came very quickly but I was restless without my little Janey sleeping next to me.
~
Janey
Life is what it is. One moment I was totally blissfully pregnant sailing in exotic climes with the love of my life and the next I felt a sense of fear, loss and misery that I thought would crush me.
Next to Paul my daddy was everything to me. He was the one who raised me to be me. He was the godlike figure I modeled myself after and he was the first to love me unconditionally, as Paul does now. In essence he was my life before Paul. And now he lay possibly dying.
My mother was the one who called and she actually broke the news to me kindly, in her own way. But the tone of her voice still dripped with implications that I could probably care less because I was gallivanting around the Mediterranean with that low-bred husband of mine.
You occasionally get into situations in your life where it is not possible to be reasonable and rational. The circumstances itself were just so overwhelming I wanted to curl up into a little ball and die.
I didn't know how to do anything other than throw myself into Paul's arms and weep. He held me for a very long time and then he lay me down on the padded bench next to the tiller and went in to make some calls.
Then, he began doing things with the helm, with me pillowing my head on his leg crying. A long time passed and I was miserably running through all of the things my daddy and I had done together in my mind.
Paul got up, leaving me lying back on the bench. He went forward and aft apparently tying up the boat to something and then I heard a helicopter. It was pitch black but he came back to the bench, gently got me to my feet and helped me step up onto some sort of ancient commercial dock somewhere.
He took a torch he was holding and shone it up in the sky and almost immediately there was a big blast of air and a sleek blue and white helicopter appeared in front of us. He kissed and held me like he was saying good bye to me forever and then walked me to the helicopter, opened the door and put me inside.
The last I saw of him he was standing forlornly on the dock with Zeus by his side and then the landscape became one dark blob. I still had no idea what was happening but I trusted Paul with my life.
After an interval of time we circled a brightly lit city and moved inland where there was an even more brightly lit airport. The helicopter dropped me on the tarmac near a very official looking Arab man.
He said, "Janey Larson?" which is my married name.
I said, "Yes", over the noise of the helicopter's departure.
He said that he was the local Charge d'Affairs for the U.S. State Department and that if I would come with him he would make my arrangements.
Mystified, I followed him into the terminal. He walked directly to an Emirates Desk in the terminal. Handed them some credentials and they sent a person over to help escort me through security to a departure gate.
There was some more flashing of credentials and I found myself in an airport seat next to the gate.
The two left me there with the bag Paul had handed me two hours earlier. I could see that I was waiting for a flight to Philadelphia that left in three hours.
I was so overcome with exhaustion and grief that those three hours passed in a haze. Then I found myself in a luxurious first class sleeping pod on a westbound 747. I slept soundly for the next nine hours.
~
Paul
The sun rose hot and bright. I had ended up in Tobruk because it was the nearest port. But the place has serious World War Two historical associations. The British and Germans fought over it almost constantly until Rommel bagged it and a bunch of its British defenders. That was a big strategic blow to the allies in WWII.
I came out on deck to discover that I was tied to some ancient structure that was actually a little north and west of the City itself, which was in a huge bay around the point from where I was at.
I was several miles from the actual port and I was surprised the guy in the helicopter found me so fast, until I realized that where I was actually stuck out more prominently into the Mediterranean than the City itself, which was tucked quite a ways back behind me in the bay.
Since I still hadn't attracted any attention I decided to just make my way back to the twelve mile limit and think about what to do next.
Zeus was concerned that he couldn't man his post guarding Janey but I told him that he could stand down the Bouv for the duration because she had more important things to do.
I was equally at a loss as we motored out to sea. I had absolutely NO desire to sail on to Alexandria without her. And particularly given the reception we had gotten the day before there was no place in Libya that I wanted to stop.
What I wanted to do was to get to some place where I could drop the boat and join Janey.
The nearest and by far the most logical place to do that was Malta. That was about 500 nautical miles and two days of hard sailing away. We had used the sails most of the time so the tanks were still full of diesel fuel.
Thus, I set a course North of West on the motor on an approximate bearing of 280 degrees. If I had not been distracted by other things I would have realized that Zeus and I were making our way into totally open water, in the worst sailing weather of the entire year.
The day was spent battening down the boat in case of a storm. I got all of the lockers and hatches secured, and made sure that everything that moved was tied down. The sky was an odd blue white with high altitude wispy clouds.
The Bordeaux is a very powerful boat and we were making closer to twelve knots, which meant that with luck we would be pulling into Valetta harbor in the afternoon tomorrow. There have been far too many times in my life that I have looked back at thoughts like that with total grim irony. This was one of them.
~
Janey
I slept like the dead and awoke almost refreshed as the plane touched down at PHL. Because of the time difference the nine hour flight from Alexandria had only taken a virtual three hours and so I stepped off the plane and into customs at 10:00 AM in the morning.
When I considered that I had gotten on a helicopter at 1:30 AM that same day in a strange Libyan city the time shift was totally disorienting. There was a representative of the State Department waiting at the gate holding a "Jane Larson" sign. I walked up to him and identified myself.
Then I had to suddenly leave him for my regular morning vomiting session. I walked out of the ladies room totally embarrassed and said shamefaced, "First trimester."
He grinned and said, "My wife used to do that. I sure am glad I'm a guy."
There were some more exchanges of credentials and I was walked out into the terminal where another gentleman was waiting with a similar sign. He was the car service. I marveled at Paul's reach and the abilities of his team.
The car service took me to The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, which is the best vascular care center in that part of the country.
I made my way up to the ICU floor expecting to see somebody from my family but I was there by myself.
I walked to the nurse's station with a puzzled look on my face and said, "I'm inquiring after Robert Alden. He is supposed to be a patient here?"
The nurse said, "Oh yes, Mr. Alden. Are you family?"
I said, "I'm his daughter. Where is my mother?"
The nurse said, "She was here earlier but she said that she couldn't take the stress and so she went home. She said that she would send somebody later on."
The little lady in my head grimaced and said, "Leopards never change their spots!"
I went back to the ICU and daddy was lying there totally unconscious, looking shrunken, with tubes and wires coming out of him. I wept. After a very short time a nurse steered me back to a seat in the waiting room.
I was wearing a pair of jeans and a sweater that I hadn't changed in several days. And I wanted to spend the duration waiting there. So I told the nurse I would be back as soon as I had showered and gotten some things to weak. I found a cab outside and went to my apartment.
I actually own the entire building. And the Tavern underneath my apartment has been an excellent source of revenue for my trust. I bought it as soon as I turned 21 as a "silent partner", since I didn't want any of my friends finding out that I was actually the proprietor of my own favorite watering hole.
That fact might affect a girl's chances with the men that the Tavern attracted.
My apartment, which I had built and furnished over the bar also comes in handy occasionally. I keep some clothes there and so after a long hot shower and a change into new things I packed a bag, grabbed my Kindle and reappeared back at the hospital.
My mother must have been too overcome by her grief because she still had not made an appearance.
I spent the rest of the day sitting quietly in the waiting room reading the Odyssey. I had never read it and since it more-or-less mirrored our journey for the past several months, minus the Cyclops and without any of us being turned into pigs, I was eager to read it.
The day passed into night and still no mother, or change in my daddy's condition. I got a little sleep curled up on a couch and the next morning was bright and sunny.
Finally, one of my cousins showed up. She said that she had been in touch with my mother who was still so "prostrate with grief and exhaustion" that she couldn't possibly make it down to the hospital.
She said that she was coming on behalf of my mother's family. She then looked at her watch and said that she had an important business appointment, but she was sure that my mother would be there as soon as she got control of her grief. Then she hurried off leaving me alone.
I tried very hard not to let my contempt show.
I was idly watching CNN International as day began to merge into night. It had been two days now since I had last held Paul and my body was crying out for him. The news people were covering a powerful storm that had swept the Western Mediterranean that day.
I thought to myself, "It is lucky that Paul is in Alexandria."
Apparently it was severe enough that several of the big boats that plied those waters were actually reported to be in trouble in the area south of Sicily. I breathed a sigh of relief.
~
Paul
We had motored to a point about 100 nautical miles south and east of Valetta when the wind started out of the northwest at about 40 knots. We had been making 12 knots at that point but I had to turn and run to the southwest to keep headway.
The sun had set an hour earlier and the waves were in the range of 10-12 feet breaking directly over the bow. I told Zeus that I wanted him in the cabin but he insisted that the La Legion never retreats. I put a life jacket on him as best as I could, belting it tightly to the top of his body.
Then I battened the cabin shut, effectively making the boat watertight no matter what hit it.
The boat was doing the roller coaster thing on the swells but still riding relatively sound when the first of the really big waves hit us square on the nose.
These kinds of killer rollers are an artifact of the depths we were in and apparently it was shallower here than in other places because the waves were exceptionally high.
I was so busy steering I didn't have time to consult the depth gauge so I couldn't say for sure. But I seemed to recall that the APOSTLE Paul was shipwrecked in this vicinity at around the same time of the year for the same general reason
We went up perhaps 25 feet and crashed down bow first burying the boat up to the front of the cabin. We popped back up just as we ran into the second roller. It was probably 30 feet high. We went up and down and this time the boat dove down to the mainmast.
We must have been taking water because I could hear the bilge pumps start up. I had lashed Zeus to the stantion using lines to his life jacket as the point of attachment. That was a good thing because he sailed right past me and would have gone over the side otherwise.
He shook himself and said, "Mon Dieu!!" I was holding onto the wheel and so I said to him, "You've got that right buddy!"
We continued that way for several hours. Finally the entire main mast came down. I could see that that would eventually happen since I had been watching it teeter every time we hit a major roller.
Finally, the mother of all waves dropped us so far on the other side of the crest that the boat literally stood on its nose up to the cockpit where Zeus and I were lashed. I knew for sure we weren't going to make it
I pulled out the sat phone. I called Janey's number. She answered brightly, "Hello my love."
I said, "You are the love of my life and my greatest joy. I just need you to know that."
She sounded concerned, "Where are you?"
I said, "That doesn't matter. What matters is that I want you and our daughter to know that I love you with all of my heart."
Then we hit the next fifty foot wave and the boat never came back up.
I cut the lines that were lashing us to the wheel as the boat dove. I had deployed a 15 foot inflatable rescue raft behind the boat when things started to get rough. Providentially, it was floating about three feet from me as I bobbed up from the sinking.
Zeus was floundering around in his improvised life jacket swearing fluently in colloquial Greek and French. I dragged the raft over by its line and pulled myself into it hauling Zeus along as I went. Then I pulled up the clam shell and sealed the cover.
That made the raft a bubble on the raging sea. Zeus was licking my face like he couldn't stop thanking me and I was recalling the time Janey had fucked me so thoroughly in that Mykonos alley for the same approximate reason. On the whole I favored the Mykonos experience.
We were going up and down 50 feet at a time but because of the raft's construction that was all that was happening. There were no leaks and we were relatively dry. There was even one of those chemical lights and I took stock of our situation in its green glow.
We were covered and out of the rain. Short of an end of the world event we were going to ride this out drifting on top of the waves, although fifty foot changes in altitude were making me want to heave.
Zeus shook himself and said, "Je jure par Dieu", which I translated as "I swear to God, this is very inconvenient and unpleasant." I laughed and hugged the big lug.
~
Janey
I was drowsing in my chair at around 10:00 PM when my phone rang. I saw with delight that it was Paul. I was wondering what Alexandrian boulevard café he was calling me to gloat from. I was dying to hear his voice.
He sounded like he was in extreme distress. He told me how much he loved me and then the transmission ended abruptly. I was concerned but I couldn't actually understand why I should be. He was safe in Alexandria.
At midnight my phone rang again. It was Chuck, his major domo calling from California. He said, "Have you heard from Paul?"
I said that he had just called me but the transmission had been cut off, "Probably a problem with the satellite."
Chuck said that he was getting concerned because the last time he had heard from Paul he was asking him to make arrangements to mothball the boat in Valetta Malta and there was a force four Mediterranean storm in that area. He said, "Do you think he is in that area?"
My anxiety level spiked, "You mean he isn't in Alexandria?"
He said, "No he turned toward Malta after dropping you in Tobruk." At least that answered the question about where he had landed me.
I said that I had no idea where he was and I was praying he would call back. In the meantime I told Chuck that he should alert the authorities.
I was panic stricken but I didn't have enough information. I dialed the sat phone number but it went immediately to voice mail.
I had to be strong for him and so no matter how frightened I was I had to use my rational side. I was thinking to myself, "It is 6:30 AM there the sun will be up within an hour."
Knowing Paul he would head directly toward Valetta from where he had dropped me, even though it was dangerous to take a course so far away from land. I knew he would do that because he would want to get to me as soon as he could.
So I called Chuck back. I told him that I wanted him to order an air and sea search using whatever assets he could organize. I told him that I wanted it on a line running from Valetta to Tobruk. I told him that I wanted the search radius to be 50 miles to either side of that line.
He said that the authorities would probably send out a search plane on that vector but if we wanted a search of that magnitude we would have to pay for it.
I told him that I would wire a million dollars from my personal account within the hour.
He told me that Paul had plenty of money and not to bother. He said he would give me hourly updates.
I have not been religious since my teens but I went down to the hospital chapel and I prayed there with the all of the force of our unborn child.
The first call from Chuck came three hours after that. It was full daylight in the Mediterranean even though it was 4 AM here. A search helicopter out of Valetta had discovered the floating wreckage of a yacht, just a sail and the usual debris ten miles off of the search vector and 50 nautical miles from Malta. There were no survivors in the vicinity.
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