I
recall vividly my first serious encounter with mist at sea in the place where I
would least have expected it, in the Windward Islands of the sunny Caribbean.
In
1987, my wife June and I had come angling up the South Atlantic on a 31-foot
sloop called Freelance, with our
then-17-year-old son Kevin as crew. We were 16 days out from the tiny island of
Fernando de Noronha, 200 miles off Brazil, aiming for our carefully chosen landfall
on the island of St. Vincent, whose Richmond Peak, with an elevation of 3,524
feet, is allegedly visible for 30 miles.
A noon
sextant sight put us within 12 miles of St. Vincent, but my eyes told me that
we patently weren’t. It was a fine, clear day, and there was nothing on the
horizon in any direction. We held our course and sailed on, greatly puzzled.
An hour
later, with six miles to go, there was still nothing to see. We had a nervous
lunch while we decided what to do. Plainly, we were lost at sea. With my
stomach in a knot, I checked my calculations. Nothing seemed amiss.
Our
minds began to race. We searched for explanations. Could the chart be wrong?
Had the volcanic island blown up and disappeared?
We
sailed on half-heartedly, worried and perplexed, until just after 2 p.m., when
I noticed a bright flash in the sky up on my right. It was a window shining in
the sun, a window on a house high up on a mountainside.
The
island of St. Vincent suddenly appeared all around us. It enveloped us, and
loomed over us, and seemed so frighteningly close, after weeks of open sea with
unlimited horizons, that I instinctively jibed the boat all standing to avoid
running aground, although we were still three-and-a-half miles away.
It was
a heavy salt sea haze that deceived us. It’s the kind of mist that cuts
visibility to less than five miles but gives no indication of its presence.
When you’re in fog you know it; you can see it and feel it on you. But the salt
haze is deceitful. The sky, the sea, and the edges of the earth look perfectly
normal, except, perhaps for the faintest suggestion of a missing line where the
horizon should be. But that invisible haze can completely hide large mountains
and even whole islands.
It’s a
subject you don’t read much about in the boating press, but you need experience
it only once for it to make a big impression on you.
Today’s Thought
Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than
danger itself, when apparent to the eyes; and we find the burden of anxiety
greater, by much, than the evil which we are anxious about.
—
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
Tailpiece
“How’d the racing go?”“My dirty bottom is really slowing me down.”
“Yeah, just imagine what it would do to your boat.”
(Drop
by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)
