//------------------------------// // The Storm // Story: Always an Adventure // by Ginger pone //------------------------------// A storm raged on in the middle of the ocean. A combination of wind, rain, ice and waves constantly beat down on the Dragonfly, the peculiar sailing ship of captain Nilcoar Scaggs.  "Haul in! She can take it!" Shouted Nilcoar Nilcoar was at the helm, wrestling the wheel for control of the rudder. Simi and Hiri pulled desperately on the lines that trimmed the mainsail, Vissnir ran over to help them, using his immense size and strength to hold the mainsail fast. Holding the line tightly in his mouth he brought it over to a cleat where Hiri quickly tied it down. The three of them relaxed after the ordeal, breathing heavily. Grif was clambering around the top of the mainsail, checking the lines and connections while keeping an eye out for a place to beach or otherwise get out of the storm. He just watched as the rest of the crew hauled in the mainsail, putting immense stress on the spars and main mast. Grif didn't like the creaking that the mast was now making at all and decided he had better get down before it cracked and threw him into the ocean. Back on deck, Nilcoar was shouting at the crew. "Get up you buffoons, we're still in the middle of the worst storm I've seen in years! Get up, get up! I've never lost to the ocean, and I'm not losing to it now!" Nilcoar thought for a moment, there was one time he had gone crabbing and pulled up an octopus… he counted that as a loss. He shivered, remembering how slimy its tentacles were "Nevermind the part about never losing to the ocean, but still get your flanks to your stations!" Vissnir was the first one up, running up near the mast where the lines to raise and lower the sail were. Simi and Hiri soon followed and stood by the sail trimming lines once again. Grif had made it down the mast and dashed up to where Nilcoar was standing in the stern of the ship, slipping every so often along the way. "What is it Grif?" Nilcoar was still yelling in order to be heard over the storm. Grif took a moment to admire the fact that Nilcoar's hat somehow managed to stay on in the near 50 mile per hour winds. "I just think that we should really lower the sail a bit, it's creaking like crazy" Grif was worried. Unfazed, Nilcoar explained their situation to Grif "We're sailing through 10 to 15 meter waves here, we need all the speed we can get, or we could very well be capsized by one of these waves, and I don't plan on being tumbled around by Neptune today. Now get back up there and find us a way out of this mess!" Nilcoar shouted resolutely. Grif was still worried about the mast breaking and shifted uncomfortably in front of Nilcoar, unwilling to go back up. Nilcoar looked down at him. Morale was low, and he needed his crew at full capacity if they were going to get out of this storm in one piece. He decided to use a chant he hadn't pulled out in a while, something that was sure to give the crew an extra boost of motivation. Nilcoar smiled "Grif, how long have you been a sailor?" He Shouted. Grif looked up and started yelling "All me bloomin' life, sir! Me mother was a mermaid, and me father was King Neptune!" By now the rest of the crew joined in, chanting together, and Grif clambered back up the mast, yelling the whole way up "I was born on the crest of a wave and rocked in the cradle of the deep! Seaweed and barnacles are me clothes! Every tooth in me head's a marlinspike, the hair on me head is hemp! Every bone in my body is a spar! And when I spits, I spits tar! I's hard! I is, I am, I arrrrg!!!" The ship crested a wave, splashing water all over the deck and soaking the crew even more than they already were, but they were full of new resolve, determined to take on the storm and win. Just then, disaster struck. A heavy gust of wind pummeled the ship, and a loud ominous crack could be heard reverberating throughout the entire ship. It was a sound all sailors despised universally. The sound of a mast snapping. Within the blink of an eye, the cleats Hiri had tied the mainsail line to were ripped from their mounting on the deck, and flew across the ship. One of them slammed Simi in the head, knocking him out cold. The mast proceeded to fall forward at an angle. With a deafening crash, it smashed into the deck in a tangle of rope, canvas and wood. Grif was thrown into the freezing ocean. The ship lost almost all its headway, and was listing heavily to port under the lopsided weight of the mast. They were sitting ducks. -- Three long rings on the bell sounded to signify that someone fell overboard. Nilcoar began barking orders at his crew; they had to move fast or be left at the mercy of the building-sized waves. The first thing he had to do was get Grif back on board and clear the main mast off the ship so it didn't weigh them down. A 12 meter wave was closing in on the Dragonfly, threatening to capsize the crippled ship. "Vissnir, start lifting the mast off! Hiri, cut away and lines holding it onto the ship!" the twin drew a knife in his mouth and set about hacking at the ropes tangled in the mast while Vissnir slowly lifted it on his back and pushed it to sea. Nilcoar locked the wheel in the forward position, expertly tied a monkey's fist on the end of a spare line and threw the rope out towards Grif, who valiantly swam towards it. Grif successfully grabbed on. Nilcoar tied the rope down and let Grif climb his way up while he leaped back towards the wheel. The wave continued to get closer, growing in size as it barreled along. The Dragonfly was a Ketch ship, meaning it had two masts, one main mast, and one mizzenmast with a smaller sail. The secondary sail was their only hope now that the mainsail was out of the question.  Nilcoar slid past the wheel and hauled in on the lines of the secondary sail to get as much speed out of it as possible. It creaked wildly. All he could do was hope it wouldn't crack. Vissnir and Hiri worked together to push what was left of the mainmast into the water, and the ship began to pick up speed, heading straight up the huge wave. Grif pulled himself up onto the deck, and the whole crew held on for dear life as they slowly went up the wave. It seemed almost as if the ship was pointing straight up. The crew was sure they were going to pitch backwards down the wall of water, but by some miracle, they barely managed to crest the wave and slide down the back, gaining speed again. The crew celebrated, Grif whooped, Vissnir stomped, Hiri cheered, and Nilcoar… Nilcoar wolfed down a banana. While he was still chewing, he yelled, his words muffled by the banana. "We're naw oud uh de woods yed!" The crew understood him. Mostly. Nilcoar swallowed, "All that did was buy us time, don't worry I have a plan!" The crew shuffled uneasily at the prospect of one of Nilcoar's far fetched plans. Or rather, they would have shuffled uneasily if it didn’t mean they would lose their footing on the wildly bucking ship. Nilcoar pointed towards the bow where there was still some wreckage left and commanded Grif “Fetch me a sturdy looking plank!" Grif nodded and dashed down to the wreckage. Meanwhile, Nilcoar kicked a false plank in the deck where they had a hidden Strongbox of valuables, causing it to flip up. He caught it midair and pulled a hammer with a few nails out of his hat just as Grif made it back to him with the other plank. Nilcoar nailed the planks in place to support the secondary mast. It needed to take a lot more stress than it was designed to withstand. If it broke, they’d have no other option and would likely all be… Nilcoar didn’t want to think about what would happen if the secondary mast broke too. While he nailed down the planks he called out to the crew “Grab something to paddle with, we’re going to need all the speed we can get!” Vissnir splashed a bucket of the freezing seawater into Simi’s face, waking him up with a jolt. “Wh- what the hell happened!” Vissnir silently pointed to Simis station. Simi obliged and rushed to his station, knowing full well now was not the time for questions. He shivered wildy. Nilcoar ordered Simi to haul in the secondary sail; they continued speeding towards the next mountain of ocean. As the wave bore down on them Nilcoar stared it down with determination. Just as they were about to make first contact with the wave, Judging speeds and distances with the experienced eye of a master navigator, he realized that they wouldn't have enough speed, even with everyone paddling like mad. A rapid succession of thoughts fired through his head in an attempt to find a solution. He couldn’t make it over the wave, leading to them capsizing, he couldn’t ride the wave because that would mean he needed to go faster than the wave, a feat impossible in a storm like this, also leading to a capsize. But what if he could? He briefly thought back to the surfer ponies he had seen at the beach many years ago. He couldn’t ride it with the wave directly at their stern… he remembered a surfer riding a particularly large wave at an angle as it crested along behind them. Maybe, if he got the right angle, he could get enough combined speed from the sail, their paddling and the wave itself, in order to outrun the crest by going alongside the wave rather than straight away from it. He didn’t have time to come up with any other ideas. The crew was observing their impending doom rush towards them in the form of a monster slab of amorphous water, when at the last second Nilcoar issued a command none of them expected: “Starboard tack!” Despite their surprise, the crew was well seasoned and jumped to their tasks, operating like a well oiled machine (at least as well as a well oiled machine drenched in freezing seawater can operate.) Nilcoar wrestled the wheel all the way to the right, making a sharp turn so that the ship was now sailing at an angle away from the wave rather than straight towards it. The crew readjusted the sail and lines as necessary to accommodate the new angle. The twins Simi and Hiri expertly trimmed the sail to get as much speed out of it as possible. The wave was gaining on them. The entire crew thought they were doomed for certain as the wave began to pick up the ship like it was a toy.  The deck lurched wildly as the wall of water threatened to smash the port side of the ship. Nilcoar stood steadfast at the wheel with his eyes silted, partly from concentration, and partly from the rain slamming into his face. Grif took another moment to admire the fact that Nilcoar's hat was still on in the high speed wind… The crew paddled as if their lives depended on it, and  chances were, they did. It felt like the ship would capsize at any second from the force of the wave, but as if by magic, the ship began sliding down the side of the wave at the same speed it was being lifted up. Nilcoar was right, and he had found the ideal angle for surfing. Unfortunately the crew was in too frantic of a situation to appreciate this incredible feat and instead continued rowing furiously. Simi and Hiri with oars, and Vissnir and grif with pieces of wrecked decking.  Nilcoar didn’t dare glance behind him, but he could hear the thunderous noise of the wave cresting and curling over on itself behind the dragonfly. Thousands and thousands of litres of water with the ability to pulverise the ship into all of its individual component pieces and then some. If it wasn’t for the wide brim of his hat, Nilcoar would’ve noticed that part of the dragonfly was actually beneath the crest of the wave. Grif looked back in awe of the ceiling of water threatening to close around the back end of the ship and mercilessly destroy it. “Sweet Mother of Celestia…” His jaw dropped and he briefly stopped paddling until Vissnir nudged him. Grif shivered and began paddling with renewed vigor. The crest slowly closed in around the ship, shrinking in size by the second continuing to threaten to swallow the ship whole. Blessed with yet another miracle, they began inching away from the tube of destructive water. Nilcoar shouted at his crew “We’ve almost made it, this is the final push and I’ll be damned if we lose now! Row! Row! Row!” The crew redoubled their efforts to propel themselves away from certain death. The crest continued to wrap its deadly maw around the ship, but equally, the ship slipped away at an agonizingly slow pace. Just as the jaws of water were going to engulf the back of the ship, the secondary mast began creaking wildy as a gust of wind hit it. The planks Nilcoar had added held fast, and the gust gave them the extra bit of speed they needed to escape the wave. The crest pounded down on the sea behind them in a deafening display of nature's unbridled power. The wave was gone. The crew didn’t celebrate this time, instead opting to collapse on the deck in exhaustion. Grif had remained standing and called out to the crew “Land Ho!” Salvation. Grif used his hoof to point to an island a few hundred meters to their port side, which had previously been covered by the wave. The crew jumped to their feet with the last miniscule reserves of energy they had remaining. Nilcoar pulled four bananas out of his hat and rapidly threw them at the crew members who promptly wolfed them down. “I’m sorry, I lied last time, this is the final push, we’ll live to sail another day, we aren’t going down on my watch!”  They dropped the paddles and returned to their usual stations, except now centered around the secondary mast rather than the main mast. They would have to sail straight into the wind in order to get to the island, but Nilcoar, an experienced sailor, knew a simple way around this. He continued on their starboard tack, with the wind coming from their port side, until the island was slightly behind them. Nilcoar shouted an order “Port Tack!” The crew was expecting it this time and smoothly, albeit tiredly, executed the tack. Now they were sailing directly toward the island and instead of the wind coming directly at them, it was now slightly to their starboard side. With the tack completed, the crew could be utilized elsewhere. “Now back to rowing! Double time! I’ll not get caught by another wave before we get to that there island!” The crew quickly reacquired their rowing implements and despite their exhausted state, began rapidly rowing towards the island.  Their luck took a turn for the better, no more monster waves barred their path to the island. They had to crest several smaller ones, but nothing they couldn't handle. When they approached the island, Nilcoar didn’t order them to stop rowing, intending to fully beach the ship to keep it safe from the stormy waters. And then at once, their luck ran out. An agonizing grinding sound reverberated throughout the ship. They had just rammed a rock and torn a hole in the hull. Nilcaor had completely forgotten to look for the stony meat grinders that often hid beneath the surface before he sped full tilt towards the island. The ship immediately felt more sluggish and the crew cringed internally. Fortunately they weren't too far from the beach.  The battered ship softly ran aground on the sand of the island. The crew had done this before and knew what to do without Nilcoar’s orders. Everyone jumped out of the ship and into the shallows. Grif ran forward with a beach anchor tied to the ship while the rest of the crew, including Nilcoar, pushed the ship onto the beach up above the waterline, which fortunately was not very far. Water rushed out from the gaping hole where they had struck the rock. The utterly spent ponies all collapsed where they stood, with their legs splayed out awkwardly. The rain pounded down on their exposed bodies. They didn’t care, they were too tired to seek shelter and they were already soaked anyway. Almost immediately, they all fell asleep including Nilcoar, who's supposed energy rich exterior had faded as soon as the ship had been safely hauled onto the shore. Vissnir woke a few minutes later and dutifully dragged his crewmates beneath a tree. He started a fire and pitched them a small tent from a spare sail. He lay down next to the fire, watching over his crewmates- nay, his family. They were safe.