THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE DARK

From Goulies, Ghosties and Things That Go Bump In The Night…
Good Lord Deliver us!

12/1/91 Lat: N 32 15.8’ Lon: W 65 0.4’ St. Georges, Bermuda


Now that I’m sitting in our cockpit, feeling the bright sunshine and the cooling breeze on my face, none of the voyage to Bermuda seems real. I feel rested enough to attempt to put my thoughts together concerning some strange occurrences that transpired en route.


It all started about the third night out from Beaufort, while the storm was howling around my ears as I kept watch from my cozy corner of the cockpit.


“Ames, dinner is ready,” Judy called from the galley. “Hurry, Ames. Dinner’s ready.”


I was starving. We had been eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the last two day while we banged and walloped into eight to sixteen foot seas. No sun. No moon or stars. Just gray clouds closing in on us, trying to press us into the grey turbulent sea, and screaming wind – a steady thirty-five knots and gusting to fifty. I was hungry and frightened.


If I stopped to think at all, I would have become immobilized with fear.


Again Judy called. As I unwound myself from the corner of the cockpit, which protected me somewhat from the wind and spray, and while untangling my safety line, I thought it was strange for her to make dinner at 0200. I danced across the bucking cockpit and leaped over the wash of water left from a wave that had crashed aboard. Making my way down the ladder, I noticed that the galley was dark and Judy was snuggled in her bunk, sound asleep.


Shaking my head in wonderment, I stumbled across the deck again, trying to miss the splash of wave over the weather cloths and failing. I checked the horizon for ships, noted the compass course was being held by the autopilot, adjusted my life jacket and settled into my comfortable corner again. Had I dreamed she was calling? I settled back down to complete another hour of watch.


“Ames…Ames…Dinner is ready,” called Judy again.


The galley was dark. Was I beginning to hallucinate? Perhaps I had OD’d on peanut butter sandwiches? It must be the wind in the rigging combined with wishful thinking.
I told Judy about these experiences, half hoping that she would indeed cook a big dinner. I was to be disappointed, as it was impossible to cook much of anything, even a can of chili, as the waves tossing the boat also tossed our pans from the stove. Judy once tried to make a stew, but the boat threw the pressure cooker at her.

Judy said had heard our daughters calling to her. We heard whole choirs singing in the rigging the following night and we started looking forward to the company of these ghoulish, disembodied voices which kept us company during our watches.


Our violent motion through the waves caused a cacophony of clashing and banging. Rags, towels, cloths and anything else available were stuffed between dishes, pots and pans, equipment, and foodstuff in order to quell the noise and get some rest. However, there was one sound that drove me crazy. It was a deep, hollow thump…thump, thump. Then there would be no sound for a while.


As soon as my eyes closed, following my aching body’s command to sleep, that darned noise was repeated, “Thump…thump, thump.” It sounded as if something was knocking on the bottom of the boat. I searched the boat over but could not locate the source of the sound. Was King Neptune trying to grab the boat?


I was relieved the day before entering Bermuda when, on lifting the bottom of the starboard bunk to open the fuel tank valve, I found a can of beans that had slipped down from the locker above. It would roll up the side of the hull and then come down, hitting the tank. One “thump” at the top and two “thumps” on the tank.
After we arrived in Bermuda, all the boats that had just crossed gathered to compare notes and tell stories of the rigors of the voyage.


“I was tired and very discouraged,” said one skipper. “I spent most of one watch petting our dog. It relaxed me and I felt much better.” He smiled sheepishly, “Until I remembered we had no dog!”


Another captain told us how he would lay his head on his arms, which were resting on the binnacle. As he rested he would hear his compass talking to him. “It will be O.K. Everything’s going to be just fine,” it said, reassuring him.


One day a little land bird, blown out to sea by the storm, arrived on Butterfly. He stayed with us for five days. We named him “Stormy” and his antics took our minds off the raging tempest outside. He would sit on my stomach as I slept, peck on the chart to show me where he thought we were, and the one time Judy did attempt to cook, he sat on her head.


However, he was a lousy crewman. At night he slept clutching the port bungee cord, unwilling to stand a night watch. At dawn he would come on deck and scold me until I got him fresh water and breadcrumbs. The day before we arrived at Bermuda Stormy left. Both Judy and I were overwhelmed with sadness, and it helped to picture him on a beach with the girl-birds in Bermuda.
“Let me tell you girls,” he would brag, taking a puff on his cigar, “about my cruise out here. The weather was stormy, the cuisine great, but the service could have been better.”



That evening as we hoisted our “dark and stormy” drinks, toasting the setting of the sun, other skippers and crews shared more stories of voices and music heard while on watch. Although all of us experienced these auditory illusions, none of us seemed to have been frightened by them.


Judy had a book she had started to read before we left, but never finished. It was Dr. Cohen’s Healthy Sailor Book, by Michael Martin Cohen, M.D., International Marine Publishing Company, 1983. The one chapter she had not read was “Sailing Psychology.” Although it speaks mainly to single-handed sailors, we found it to be very applicable to small crews. What had happened to us, according to the book, probably stemmed from fatigue and sensory deprivation.



Was the bird, “Stormy,” real? Or was he an hallucination? Judy assures me that he was a reality and not a figment of our imaginations. She proves it by showing me the picture we took of him and the stained cushion over which he perched at night.


One thing is for sure. I’m going to add part of an old English Litany to our prayers: “From ghoulies, ghosties and things that go bump in the night . . . Good lord deliver us.