Tortle Mon

My column in the local magazine, Islands Chronicle, stirred controversy and by some was thought to be demeaning to those who had lost their lives in deep blue seas to bring home the bread in the many ways the oceans provided. It was one of those columns that quoted locals and generally went- they went out to do a little fishing but my cousin, brother, father lost his life out in devastating storms or from weapons in hostile hands. Strangely, that kind of talk died out quickly and I became a sort of hero, backed by mothers and wives, to a promotion of the hidden mariner women folk of the San Sebastian Islands.

A short time after my celebrity status died down I found myself looking for something else to equal it and came upon the concept of a series of stories about rites of passages for some of the most dangerous of their occupations, turtling.

Harrold, a good buddy of mine had referred me to what he called a really good rite of passage story. He even arranged a meeting and I marched the wrong route to the little mystery village of Redfoot Town.

After hiking through a swampy mosquito infested mangrove forest I arrived at Redfoot Town. Dixie stood in front of me, a bushy-headed, freaky sort of person. A powerful tall frame with a cafe au lait complexion and hazel eyes. He looked me up and down for a bit before he picked up a a thick splif of Jamaican ganja from the rail of a blue dinghy, lit it, inhaled deeply and smiled. Dixie smiled a lot. We sat on the rail of the eighteen-foot long dinghy and looked at each other for a while. I produced my tape recorder and nodded a question of acceptance toward being recorded to which Dixie smiled a yes. In typical Sebastian Island fashion the story started and I had to catch up.

Dixie just got going, ‘The wind started to go all wrong and Cop’n had to order a reef in the main soon after the cutting. Then he had to order the jib topsail down, then another reef. The seas were kicking up with the wind against the current and the confusion from the reefs way behind us they said. We pulled down the foresail and the outer jib and charged through with just the main, foresail and inner jib. It was wet sailing on a dry boat as they say. But it didn’t stop there, no. Soon, under it was wet from above and decks awash, and a howling that pushed the schooner steadily sideways. We found it tiring just to sit on that bumping, slanting deck. We had to pull all sail down, and off, and stowed, as best we could, below decks. We were now just hove-to with the handkerchief of a heavy staysail stropped to the main mast and pulled tight amidships to keep our head on and slanted to some monstrous waves. 

‘The bowsprit stuck into the seas and put our decks completely awash with us hanging on to anything we could. Cop’n and Uncle Tubby were at the helm struggling to keep her at the right angles to the seas as we would go up and up into bright turquoise, then race down into a valley of dark green. We could see fish and even sharks and tortle in the waves turning over and over. The deck was cleaned awashed. A Nor’wester was what it was or a hurricane was what I was later told since it was the wrong time of year for a Nor’wester.

‘Cop’n changed course as we went down a wave and put us on a beam reach with the waves surfing us but the bowsprit was out of the water and we almost stayed still but we were pointing away from our destination and toward the reefs again.

‘I have to say though… that I liked it. No, I loved it. The wind and seas flying, the taste of salt something close to being really free, you know. With the wind on the beam you could stand up again and I remember standing there in the waist by the lee rail. That storm jib was strained and wet and shiny. The seas were foaming by us, aside us, under us. They had to be at least twenty foot and we just went up and up, then down, then up. The sky cleared and the rain stopped and the wind lessened a bit but Cop’n did not turn back the course at all.

‘I volunteered to take the helm, some of the boys were below and I think scared but I was almost in heaven in that storm and wanted the feel of control the wheel gives. There were always two of us throughout that day and we were not going forward much just enough to keep the vessel controlled, you know. The teeth of those reefs were still where they were and we did not want to be near them, so no more sail went up until evening fell. Cop’n made the boys come up on deck and set the forestaysail, but kept the storm staysail up, as he turned us back toward Key West since the waves were lesser now. I was sure we were out of it now and was even joking about being in a real storm at sea. Uncle Tubby heard me and said we were not in the storm yet. That there was a hurricane coming up and Cop’n wanted to get us as far away from the reefs as is possible before it hits.

‘I saw him tying two axes and a couple of machets to the main mast and an axe to the foremast. Tote told me we might have to cut the masts out. I had heard of that but when you are there it doesn’t make much sense and it too unreal, you know? When Uncle Tubby passed I called to him and asked if we would be cutting out the masts. He said if we have to but this hurricane was coming and Cop’n wanted to keep trudging toward Isla Pinos so we might have to cut them out. Uncle Tubby was of the opinion that we should reach over to Rio Largatos and hide in the mangos over West in the Yucatan, in Mexico. But he knew it was not to be. Cop’n was a hard man to change his thoughts and was going to try for Isla Pinos and the reefs off there. Cop’n thought the reefs would protect us since they would give us a windward shore. Thing was, Uncle Tubby said, hurricanes travel in a circle which could also make the reefs a leeward shore. It was too much of a gamble, he thought.

‘Part of Cop’n’s reasoning was that we had already lost all the tortle on the deck and would have to try and get some at Isla Mujeres after the storm but Uncle Tubby felt that we might lose some time at Lagartos but still be alive. This was all exciting to me. The seas grew again. Their power was truly grand, no, not just grand, more than that. It was threatening, menacing like it was alive and completely focussing on us. The seas pulled the sky down until you could not tell the difference. The seas were in command and made everything loud and black. The hissing and howling made me scream. I was scared. I was scared. I had to pee but couldn’t move. I couldn’t see anybody though some were right next to me pulling on me to get down. Life was a screaming blur, man.’

Dixie stopped and looked around. He drained some rum from a plastic cup and looked around again, then down to his hands that were shaking. He looked at me and shook his head with his mouth open, then smiled.

‘Whoa, that was something, man. That was a true memory there, Rod. Man, I was there again. They say you can’t really remember a hurt or a fear but that is definitely not true because I just went through both. I was there and a tortle log flew at me and hit me in the arm. Uncle Tubby was yelling at me. I looked around at blackness and felt the cabin top, trying to raise myself up but being pushed down by wind. Wind. Wind pushing me like I was a piece of paper. I just felt it all, man.

‘I don’t know how long I was laying on the deck holding on to the foremast. This hand of wind just pushing me straight along the deck with my legs streaming aft. I don’t remember us going up and down waves, maybe because I couldn’t see through the water and wind in my eyes. But the morning came in as the wind increased, then dropped to nothing. The seas ran this way and that and Celia just jumped around like a football being kicked. Big old vessel she was, she was still just a football being kicked around. I had to hold on to even get to a sitting position. I only saw a couple of the crew’s heads just above the cabin top forward. The Cop’n and Jamie were aft at the helm. Their waists were lashed to the wheel box and their heads were hatless and tilted forward studying in the compass, steering by the compass. Jamie looked up. I think he had just noticed the lack of wind. He spoke to Cop’n, who looked up and around and slowly shook his head. It was so hot that my eyes were sweating in the stillness with wavelets jumping all around and Celia bouncing up and down. Then, she settled and the seas lay flat. Uncle Tubby yelled to get the tortle from out of the hold. He was yelling and yelling and saying we didn’t have much time. Get that weight out of the vessel was what he was yelling to us. I ran to the hold and jumped in. We were lifting two and three hundred pound snapping and scared tortle up to hands above us.

‘Then the breeze started up and relieved the heat a bit as we hauled and hefted up by their flippers those shelled reptiles. I was glad that they were going back to the sea. Strange at that time to be remembering that I was glad that all of our work and time and pains of mosquitos, no-seeums, loneliness, homesickness was for nothing. I was really glad, man, deeply glad they were going overboard. Maybe I just had to think of something else other then this crap that I found myself in.

‘The seas started rolling with a rhythm again, they started growing tall as the breeze became a wind, became a gale. We got all the tortle out and could barely gain the deck again my arms were useless and my weight was much more then I remembered. Some hands pulled me out and I looked up at seas as high as the masts charging toward us. Celia rose and rose and rose with us tilted backward. I was holding onto the foremast again and feeling like I was laying against a wall with no bottom for my feet. We started going down the other side and I wrapped my legs around the mast. Things and people rolled, bounced, flew by me. The wind hit hard like a fist against my back and Celia was climbing again.

‘The wind had a soft whistling tune that I remember thinking of some song but could not remember what song. Maybe it wasn’t a song but a train whistle like in the movies. It was a train whistle but with deeper notes, then high pitched notes. It was a wind train charging at us pushing us up and pulling us down. When I looked I could see three men at the helm but did not recognise them because of the water spread across my vision. Then, trying to clear my eyes, I saw it coming from the stern with a clear blue sky above and perfectly outlined by that blue was a white mass of wave top, curling teeth-like, moving much faster then we were and we were not rising. I lashed the loose end of a water barrel line that was tied to an eye on the cabin side around my waist and waited. The wall of water sucked up the stern, lifting it and I could see Cop’n, Uncle Tubby and Jamie at the wheel all three of them with turned heads looking up at the sea.

‘That was the picture that remains to this day in my head. That was the last I saw of them. I can still see the Cop’n’s white shirt with blood stains on them, Jamie’s chequered shirt buttoned to his chin and Uncle Tubby shaking his head with a corner of a smile showing on half of his face. I think he was just accepting the fact that he was going the way of his father and his father’s father. I want to go that way too, you know.’

Dixie paused after saying that to turn his head and wipe a few tears away that wouldn’t stop flowing. He got up and walked over to the bush and cried up his sorrow at that loss and memory. His back was shaking as he let it out with a moan of deep hurt. After a while Dixie went over to the little shack and came out with two more drinks, this time in cups with ice tinkling.

‘Yeah. Well, after that wave the seas got up bad and poor Celia was suffering. Somebody, on their sides so I could only hear them, were chopping at the main mast. Another big wave came and washed over us. When it finished there was no main mast and the rigging had crashed across the cabin caving in a long streak of torn and splintered wood. Celia had turned to have the waves on her beam because of the mast dragging still connected to her by the rigging on her port side.

‘The next big wave came and we turned sideways and leaned and she was going down. I pulled my knife out and cut the barrel loose from the cabin side. The barrel was basically empty and we bobbed up to the top of the seas. There was wreckage and the foremast top sticking up with a few men clambering on to pieces of board and anything floating. Another wave came and another and another until the big ones all stopped and I was alone, drifting with the barrel.

‘I saw a half of the cabin top and kicked my way over to it, hauling myself up onto the top. There was still wind and a lot of sea but the big waves were only forming at one spot and Celia’s foremast with her wind pennant blowing sweetly was still sticking up there.There was nobody around that I could see but there was a dinghy upended floating a little way off. I tore off a part of the cabin top and used it as a paddle to get over to it. I got it upright and baled most of the water out with the scupper that was tied to the after thwart. Fishing lines were in a tangle but hooks and line were still aboard. A water cask held a little water in the bottom so I felt I could make due for a while. I broke up more of the cabin top to make paddles and the whole thing fell apart and mostly sank. The wind moderated and I went to sleep in the water in the bilge.

‘When I woke up it was night again but the wind was gentle and the seas were calm. The half moon stood out like the world was a nice place and I kept trying to piece it all together but couldn’t. When I moved my arms and legs were a source of sharp pain so I just lay there and fell asleep again. The day woke me with heat. I saw that I had cuts on my body and my left shoulder was really hurting. I could barely move my arm. I saw where the sun moved and knew that West would be Mexico. I baled water out of the dinghy as best as I could and got up into the bow and paddled. Later I tied pieces of wood from the wood I had saved for paddles and made a short mast then tied my shirt and trousers like a sail and the dinghy responded and moved forward. I used another piece of my cabin top wood and rigged a rudder and very slowly started reaching toward Mexico. 

‘I would stop every so often to check the fishing line I was trolling with some of my blood soaked onto a strip of shirt. I caught a bonito and ate it too quickly. I vomited in the bilge while I was eating. I used part of that fish as bait and caught a small dorado. I ate a few chunks out of that and cut the rest into strips and laid them on the middle thwart to dry cook like we did at home.

‘I could see land or a haze that meant land and was encouraged. I made it to a reef and found a small cut to get the dinghy through. On the shore were people sun bathing and some of the women were topless.

‘So,’ Dixie had concluded, ‘that’s the story. And, as you can see I am here to tell it.’

‘You went back turtling for years though, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah, man. I am a Tortle Mon.’