craft. Most of all in a small yacht.'
It may have been the whisky, or perhaps the way Thomsen seemed to relate to Albatros's achievements, but I continued to talk, describing how I'd cut through the Jasons and the prevailing conditions which I admitted were fairly rough. The man was showing so much interest in my account, often interrupting me to put a very knowledgeable question to me, that he began to intrigue me – as did the reason for his presence. I was particularly intrigued as to why he should know so much about the Falklands and about a short cut through a group of remote, gale-lashed islands at the other side of the earth, of interest only to penguin fanciers and environmentalists.
Thomsen brought his right fist into his left palm with a smack.
'Hell's teeth! You were as close to Port Stanley in the Falklands as the Jasons! And I didn't know it!'
He strode across to one of the big windows overlooking the anchorage. The lagoon, in the last light of the midsummer's day, was incomparably soft and lovely, pearl-grey and other-world against a back-drop of blue peaks and green forested slopes of the soaring Outeniqua mountains.
Catching the mood, Don said, 'At this time of day a flock of wild ostriches comes down from the Belvedere side and feeds on the prawns in the shallows. They stay until the tide rises up to their bellies.'
Thomsen, however, had eyes only for Albatros at anchor. 'She looks very small.'
'Big enough, when you're only one. Bigger than a house when she pitchpoled and fell on top of me.'
He took another drink from Don. 'Arse over tip! What happened?'
'Listen, I'm tired…' I began, when a thought struck me. 'I appreciate your enthusiasm and interest in Albatros. I don't know anything about you beyond your -name. What's it all about?'
Don looked uncomfortable. 'Mr Thomsen is from the Aaland Isles.' As if that explained everything.
Thomsen laughed. 'You can't expect him to know anything as civilized as the Aalands.' He grinned at me. 'The Aalands are a group in the Baltic between Finland and Sweden. I am a Finn. I was born in Mariehamn, the Aalands capital. So was Gustav Erickson, the last great windjammer ship-owner before World War II. He had some magnificent ships – like the Herzogin Cecile, for one. Even today people remember her.'
Thomsen's amused glance at me was the sort that professionals swap in the company of amateurs. 'Finished up on the rocks in Cornwall.
'Erickson was a relation of mine, on my mother's side. Seamanship goes back centuries in the Aalanders' blood. Erickson drew his splendid crews mainly from the Aaland Isles. Even the advent of steam hasn't quite killed their love for sail. There are still crews to be had there who would rather man a windjammer than a steamer.'
Thomsen did not look like a dreamer to me. Yet today windjammers are the stuff that dreams are made of.
Don interrupted. 'Aaland is the home of the International Association of Cape Horners – men and women who have rounded the Horn in sail.'
'Don't forget to join the fraternity. Rainier’ Thomsen added, a little ironically. He resumed in a different tone. 'It is true, the Aaland Isles are the last resort of what few windjammers remain in the nuclear age. We Aalanders still hanker after sail for sail's sake, although our reason and our pockets tell us it is dead.' 'There are still people who love dinosaurs,' I remarked.
He downed his drink – he drank it on the rocks – in a gulp. 'It is a good comparison, that. The dinosaur was a complex creature. Complex and cumbersome. He lacked mobility, which means speed. Nowadays, speed is equated with evolution. The windjammer died because it was complex and cumbersome.'
'Sail has a place, even if a limited place, today still…' I began.
'Albatros has proved what I am trying to say,' he broke in. 'The Venetian Rig is simple; it has speed. Corbellini had a touch of genius.'
4No,' I said. 'You are trying to equate two things which cannot be compared – the yacht and the commercial sailing vessel. Let's face it, the cargo-carrying windjammer is dead. Dead as the dinosaur. What works for a small yacht doesn't necessarily work in a scaled-up version in a big ship.’
Thomsen paused a long while before replying. Then he said decisively, as if he had made up his mind about something – or someone, 'The Venetian Rig is not the only modern development in sail. There is another, which technically functions in exactly the opposite way in almost every respect. Nor is the windjammer dead. I have taken a twenty million dollar gamble to prove it is not.'
Chapter 3
All the circuits in my brain meshed, like a switch-board in which suddenly the right connections have been made. I knew now who Thomsen was. I knew why he was interested in sail. If I had not been so punch-drunk with fatigue I should have been wise to his identity earlier. 'Jetwind’ I said. 'You're the man who built Jetwind.’ 'Right. That's me.'
Now that the wraps were off his mystery guest, Don became vocal. 'Mr Thomsen was visiting Cape Town. He was dead keen to meet you. A mutual yachting friend put us in touch.'
Thomsen brushed aside Don's courtesies. Sail was what mattered in his scheme of things, not social niceties. The latent power I had noticed about the man was more in evidence now.
He said, almost declaiming the facts, 'Jetwind is a seventeen thousand tonnes, six-masted sailing ship of the most revolutionary design that has ever appeared on the high seas. She bears no resemblance to the old-time clipper or windjammer. The only thing she has in common with them is being powered by sail. Even her sails are not sails in the accepted sense. They are aerodynamically perfect aerofoils. There is no rigging, no old-time spider's web of ropes. The masts are special alloy, unstayed and stream-lined, actuated by hydraulic servo- mechanisms or locked in trim by a push-button on her bridge. A single operator only is needed. There is roller- type automatic sail furling and reefing. It works by means of stainless steel runners along the yards. Every operation aboard Jetwind is automated. Computers determine her optimum sailing angle and yard trim. The design has been evolved over years and tested by the Institut fur Schiffbau in Hamburg. Thousands of wind-tunnel tests went into the final design.' 'They call her the nuclear-age marvel’ interjected Don.
'She is that’ Thomsen agreed. 'Everything – and more. On passage she is weather routed to utilize the most favourable winds on her ongoing course. Data is fed by satellite twice a day into her computers. Conventional navigation went overboard with all the rest of the old-fashioned junk surrounding windjammers. Push-button prints from computers do it all. At any moment of the day or night she can establish her position – to within half a mile – on any ocean. All the captain has to do is to press a button and read a dial.'
'The sea isn't licked by push-buttons and computers’ I observed. 'The same goes for Jetwind's unsupported masts and yards. Fifty-two metres high! I'll withhold judgement until I've seen how Jetwind performs in a Southern Ocean blow.'
Thomsen met my scepticism with obvious self-control. 'Jetwind is as radical in construction as in conception. We brought in aircraft manufacturers for the long, lightweight masts. Their experience in assembling wing structures and understanding the stresses involved was what we needed, not old-fashioned ship-building methods. We reduced overhead costs by using off-the-shelf aircraft mountings for the masts and yards as well’
'It sounds like science fiction to me. But seeing is believing!'
Thomsen did not raise his voice, but the power which had brought Jetwind to reality in the face of the sceptics and scoffers and put sail back on the high seas pulsed through his reply,
'I am not a dreamer, get that clear. I am a business-man, a ship-owner. Nor is Jetwind my brain child. First and foremost, my stake in Jetwind is money. The dream part belonged to a German engineer named Wilhelm Prolss. That dream began a long time ago, before World War II. Prolss was attending a dry-as-dust business conference in Hamburg. The board room overlooked the harbour. Prolss was trying to keep awake through a dull discussion. Then, under the window, a tug went by towing an old four-masted barque to the scrap yard. It was a sight to make a sailor sad, but Prolss wasn't a sailor. Yet it triggered something deep inside his brain. Ten thousand years of man's skill and endeavour to conquer the sea lay behind that pathetic old ship going to the knackers, he told himself. Was the sailing ship really so inefficient? Did man's use of the wind have to end tragically like that?'
