Page 193 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
That night, when I crawled out of the cabin to take over my
midnight steering watch, I found Tigris surrounded on all sides by
lights, as if in port. On one side was a lighthouse flashing on and
off, and behind it in three different places the night sky was
coloured deep red from the reflection of some very large invisible
flares. On our other side, and very close, was an oil flare brightly
burning, illuminating our sail and the starboard walls of our cabins.
A fully-lit ship closely crossed our wake, and far ahead we could
still see the mast-light of our dhow. It was suddenly much warmer.
Few stars, but the moon, still almost full, danced madly about
above the sail on either side of the mast head. We had reached Halul
island and were now manoeuvring through a network of oilfields.
Detlef estimated that we had been sailing at well over three knots.
We barely escaped severe collision with the dhow next morning
when two hissing seas threw both boats down into the same
trough. The dhow had come back to inform us that they now had
trouble with the pump and wanted to alter course slightly more
northerly to put in at Sirri island for repair. We located this island on
our map and found to our delight that, in spite of leeway, we ought
to be able to make it. But at our present speed we could never get to
Sirri by sunset as Captain Said had estimated. The earliest possible
arrival would be in the late afternoon of the following day. There
was complete disagreement between Captain Said and our own
navigators on this point, but we kept on more or less in company,
the dhow sometimes disappearing far ahead ofus and sometimes far
behind.
Soon Said was once more dancing dangerously close at our side
to let Rashad shout that we on Tigris were steering much too far
north into the wind. We had a wrong course for Sirri island, and we
could fall off comfortably since the island was much more to the
east than we were steering. This offended the professional pride of
both Norman and Detlef, who agreed on our hard course. They
said that Said had obviously lost all sense of direction since he had
now been turning around and away from his usual course too often.
We had reached no island by sunset, nor when the sun rose next
morning, and Said gave up squabbling and ran peacefully in our
company, now mostly far behind. This night we had again sailed

21. Prehistoric quarries on the prison-island ofjedda, from where
the ancient masons of Bahrain had rafted their big blocks.
22. Oil platforms and supertankers added to our problems of reed-
ship navigation in the gulf.
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