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storm.
    Squall line after squall line thundered over us, spitting out bolts of lightning. Varuna was lifted to the top of every boiling crest and then was sent careening down to the trough. I hunched in the cockpit, transfixed and petrified. As every dark cloud approached, the wind picked up and Varuna flew down the backs of the waves, heeling 35 degrees over on her port side. “We must have entered the Gulf Stream,” I thought, with its warm water surging upward like a river in the sea from the Gulf of Mexico.
    I checked my life harness, whose line attached me to a U-bolt mounting in the cockpit, and watched with awe the wrath of the ocean. White water roiled over the foredeck and back into the cockpit from both sides and my stomach leapt with every jolt to Varuna . Violently seasick, I just clung on and fervently prayed that my fate wasn’t to go up in smoke from a bolt of lightning. I had grounding cables, but no idea how to use them.
    After retching my guts up over the side, I crawled across the cockpit and headed below to find something to drink. I couldn’t believe my eyes! There was six inches of water above the floorboards! Grabbing the bilge pump handle from the cockpit locker behind me, I shoved it into the pump sprocket near my feet and began pumping like crazy. After ten pumps, it seized up. God damn it! What happened? The emergency electric bilge pump came to mind. I jumped down into the sloshing cabin, pulled the switch, heard the pump churn to life, then flew up the two steps out to the cockpit to disengage the Monitor, grabbed the tiller and headed Varuna into the wind. She rounded up and her sails began to slap back and forth in the howling winds.
    Stumbling up to the foredeck, I frantically began to pull downthe storm jib. I had to right the boat to determine where the water was coming in. It was already higher than the sea cocks, so I couldn’t tell whether or not it was coming in through a through-hull fitting. As Varuna straightened up, the washing-machine cycle began to calm belowdecks; above was the same blustery, squalling mess. “Dear God, help me!” I cried. Buckling my harness to a jack line running almost the entire length of the deck, I hurriedly began to search for the leak by scrutinizing the deck in minutest detail. What on earth could be responsible for this calamity?
    Checking the anchor windlass at the bow, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Beneath the windlass was a gaping hole for the anchor chain to pass through the deck and down a pipeline into the bilge. With every wave, water funneled down the hole, slowly drowning Varuna! I had been so damned ignorant that I had never even thought of blocking up this artery now pumping the sea into the bowels of my boat.
    The wind continued to howl as the waves buried the bow where I crouched. Cold water streamed down my neck, drenching my clothes with salt water as I struggled to stuff the hole with the first thing I could get my hands on—Grand Union shopping bags covered with duct tape. I crammed in as many as possible, taped over the opening and pulled the jib back up. Running down below again, I stuck my head into the opening in the bilge where the chain was stored. The water influx had slowed to a trickle. I stopped to breathe. “Two emergencies down,” I said, feeling the adrenaline still surging through my body. “How many more to go?” and turned around to survey my soaking-wet little home.
    â€œMaybe Daddy was right,” I thought. In two days, I had solved two major problems, and it really wasn’t that hard. Maybe sailing doesn’t require tons of deep dark secret knowledge. It was beginning to seem that everything could be handled with common sense.
    â€œHey,” I realized with a sudden burst of euphoria, “I’m not seasick anymore!” My days of living under the influence of this horrible malaise were over. Through some miracle, I never got seasick again.
    The storm