Aleph Tav’s motor went silent.  

  By the way, if you didn’t already know; when you see a beautiful sailboat with its majestic sails raised proud, a white wake on its bow, there is a brass prop connected to a motor beneath all that glamour. Sure, most sailboat captains will say: “I love to sail…”, but very few would dare leave port without that trusty motor.   In fact, if you see water spit out of the back of a sailboat in intervals, just grin and say: “wow… Look at that sailboat go…”

  Faced with the most discouraging decision ever, we now had to bleed the fuel lines, as Yod Hey distanced herself from us.   Breathing diesel fumes in the middle of swell leads to one thing alone: lots and lots of vomiting…

“I SWEAR I’M GONNA PUNCH SOMEONE IN THE  #%&@ing MOUTH so #%&@ing HAAAARD!!!!” ranted Andre over the radio.

“Andre!” I attempted to calm him in between vomits, “For the sake of their life, we have no other choice, we have to escort them back.”

“I’LL #%&@ing KILL THEM ALL MYSELF, THEN WE WON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THEIR #%&@ing SAFETY ANYMORE, WILL WE?!!!!!!!” Raged Andre

After some time, we finally got our engine running, turned Aleph Tav around, and Hazak followed perfectly behind.   Yes, at times we all come to face with situations where there are no other options, and even Andre came to realize that… I’m sure the fact that his boat was being towed by Aleph Tav helped his decision.

For a couple days we sailed without saying a word.   All we could hear behind us, from time to time was a faint:

“I’M GONNA PUNCH SOMEONE IN THE  #%&@ing MOUTH so, so, so #%&@ing HAAAARD!!!!”

It was dreaded…   Like being in a never ending funeral procession in slow motion, not knowing where the cemetery was.  Except in this case, it was all somehow to preserve life; the life of people who now left us far behind.

It was silent, miserable, hopeless… Indescribable.   Four days… Four long, long days and nights staring at a compass bobbing back and forth.  

Then it came… Right from behind with little warning; a severe tropical depression.   By this time, we had caught up with La Victoria, and were sailing side by side.  Like a freight train we got hit with a severe storm, the worst we had ever experienced at sea.   Unable to reef the sails, both La Victoria and Aleph Tav went from 3 knots to 7 knots in seconds, and we were both heeled to starboard with our sails near the water.  Neither Captain or I could control our vessel other then to just hold on to what ever the course set by the storm.   The rain struck like bullets, and we had zero visibility.

“STARBOARD!!! STARBOARD!!! STARBOARD!!!”  Shouted Captain over the radio, unaware that the storm had whipped Aleph Tav hard to starboard.  

“We’re good! We’re good Captain.  We’re good!!!” I assured him, having seen a brief glimpse of La Victoria through the darkness, and realizing the storm had affected both our vessels with perfect synchronicity.

Yod Hey who was now some 20 miles ahead of us, only saw the dark storm far behind them…

“This was waiting for them…”  I heard in my spirit.

To be continued