For the better part of 1974 I worked as a deck hand aboard Fantome. Windjammer’s blue-and-white 282-foot four-masted schooner was, even then, a familiar icon among the islands. Together we made lots of memories. The most intense of these were often private, not a part of the passenger world. The following was written from my journal not long after I left Fantome

A FANTOME MEMORY FROM 1974. Carl Duncan

The decks of the four-masted schooner were empty of all but a few passengers asleep under the stars in the warm Bahamian night. Dark low islands slid past as we made our way towards Bimini. Captain Laurie returned from the chart room with a course change and I gave the wheel a few turns to the right. On the new course the courtesy flag at the top of the mast began to chatter and he told me to take it down.

The tangled lines disappeared up into the darkness and as I impatiently tried to shake them loose the downhaul snapped. The Captain cursed from the wheel and loops of rope rained down across the bridge. The flag was now stranded at the top, one hundred eighty feet above the deck.

"Now I have to send a man up the bloody mast," the tall Scotsman said, handing me back the helm. My words tumbled out before I had a chance to think about them "I'll go up in the morning," I said, "and fix it" Captain Laurie took these brash words with a stern nod, and then walked away.

Those words haunted me for the rest of my watch, and by the time Steve took over the wheel at four, I was too restless for my stuffy bunk down in the lower lower fo'c's'le. I grabbed a deck pad and blanket from the sail loft and headed out along the bowsprit beyond the glow of the running lights. Beneath the outer jib I tossed my bedding down onto the safety netting and settled in.

The massive sprit rose and fell rhythmically as the ship sliced her way through the black swells. Twenty feet below, blue-green phytoplankton strobed away like heat lightning from the bows. And overhead, the four gigantic masts, moon grey against brilliant star fields, raked and rolled. Dominating, intimidating, impossibly tall. Climbing up there after that flag frightened me more than anything I could think of.

I had been up there before, months earlier, during a week of shipboard maintenance in Freeport. Fantome’s four masts needed to be chipped and painted, top to bottom, and Bud and I volunteered, as much to get out of the endless scraping, sanding, and varnishing on deck as anything else. We shackled bo's'n's chairs to the topsail halyards and, as Fantome did not have the luxury of winches, Sombrero and Lightning and Yogi Bear (we all had nicknames aboard) hauled us up by hand, one at a time. "Two-six!...two-six!" they chanted, and we bounded up three feet at a time, as they pulled to the count.

Past the familiar ratlines, past the latticed topsail platforms, past the top of the thick lower mast and on up to where the decks of the 282-foot schooner looked small. Eighteen stories up we could see half way from Freeport to West End.

On the third day, Bud was chipping the rust with his hammer at the top of the jigger mast, and I was at the top of the mizzen, the next mast over. Suddenly he cupped his hands together and shouted down for Woodie, the bo's'n, who stood on the waist deck.

"I can see daylight through this damn mast!" Woodie shielded his eyes and looked up for a moment, then walked aft toward the poop deck. He climbed up the ratlines to the topsail platform and then took the iron rungs another dozen feet to the top of the lower mast. On the curved cap of this,without any handholds available, he slowly stood up. Bud glanced back at me in disbelief. Woodie was still too far below to

see anything. What was he up to?

We watched as Woodie spit on his hands, rubbed them briskly together, and then leaped outwards. I closed my eyes. "Hell!" Bud said, "Woodie's f------ crazy. There's no way I'd do that."

"Me neither."

Woodie had caught hold of the steel cable that formed the starboard shroud and we watched as he slowly shinnied up. My palms sweat just watching him climb. He climbed all the way up until he was eye to eye with Bud. "I don't appreciate the extra weight up here," was all Bud said, rotating his glance from Woodie's bearded, sweating face to the rusted mast and back again. "This thing's eaten all the way through."

Woodie ignored his sarcasm, looked the thick metal mast over, and declared it fit for a few more years. Then he climbed back down.

"Woodie's crazy!" Bud repeated, shaking his head. But a few days later, when the courtesy flag had jammed in its pulley, someone said Woodie climbed back up again.

After that, whenever I worked aloft handling the main topsail, my assigned sail, I would remember Woodie's climb, and it always took something out of me to remember. Because I knew, or thought I knew, that I didn't have the courage to do the same...

A steep swell smacked against the bow and the mist drifted red and green through the running lights. We were in shallow water already. I could see a hint of blue among the stars. We were almost at our anchorage off Bimini. I wrapped the deck blanket tighter against a clammy chill.

Too soon I heard Dock Diver sing out the fathoms as he tossed the lead line from the bow. "Deep eight!... By the mark seven!... And a half six!" From the bridge Laurie bellowed out, "Let her go!"

The anchor brake squealed and the massive chain erupted out of its locker, rumbled down the hawsepipe, and followed the huge black anchor to the bottom. The bowsprit shivered and there was the smell of rust in the air. Then all was quiet.

Bimini.

We scrubbed and bleached the wooden decks and rinsed them clean with sea water from the fire hoses. As we finished up, the sun snapped free of the horizon and turned instantly hot. When the others headed to the fo'c's'le for breakfast, I stayed on deck. My stomach was a knot. Breakfast was out of the question.

Erik walked up just as I began to climb the starboard ratlines. He had signed on as bo's'n a couple months earlier when Woodie had been transferred south.

"Laurie just told me what happened with the flag last night," Erik said, standing there lean and fit as a gymnast. "He wanted me to tell you that you don't have to do this. That it's the bo's'n's responsibility. I’ve done this sort of thing before. I’ll be happy to go up."

The immense relief I felt lasted only a moment. Laurie had never said I had to go up. Only that someone did. I was not following orders here. I was the one who had stupidly broken the halyard. I should be the one to fix it. I was a green deck hand when Woodie had made his climb. Hadn't I learned anything since?

"Are you saying that I can't go up?" "No," he shook his head. "Only that you don't have to."

I reach up for the next ratline. "Thanks anyway, Erik. Wish me luck."

At the top of the ratlines a woman's laughter floated up as clear as if she were there with me, and not a hundred feet below. I pushed open the trapdoor and climbed onto the wooden lattice of the platform. I watched Alex back the first passengerlaunch away from the ladder and head for Alice Town. I stepped out onto the wooden spreader. And reached for the shroud.

The climb was more difficult than I had imagined, and after only a few feet I felt tired. The white lead coating on the cable was turning into a chalky paste in my sweating hands. I stopped for a moment to rest my arms and discovered, with a shock, that holding onto a cable was nearly as hard as climbing up.

I looked up to where the shroud and mast converged against the blue sky, and felt a queasy sickness in my stomach. Then I made the mistake of looking down. The hours aloft, handling the topsails from the platforms, even the days painting the masts top to bottom, meant nothing. Barely into the climb, but already a dozen stories above the decks, and all that kept me alive was my sweaty grip on that steel cable. No bo's'n's chair this time. No safety belt.

Panic gripped me, leaving my arms weak and my breathing quick and shallow. Only the cramping pain of remaining in place moved me on, woodenly now, unwilling to distance myself from the safety of the platform below.

Reach and pull, reach and pull. You're only going up to fix the flag, I told myself. It's been done before. But the words brought back Woodie's climb, and as I thought of that, sweat immediately prickled my skin and slicked my forearms and back, and all the cheap courage evaporated.

Woodie had not started from the platform! He had started from the top of the lower mast. Barely below where I was resting now. That extra distance could be the difference between what was possible, and what was not.

O God —

My ears roared and I couldn't catch my breath. In a sweaty funk of panic and indecision, I gripped the cable as tightly as I could, wasting my strength, and shook.

Breathe deep and slow — the quiet words rose up from inside — and don't think about it. Just keep going. No matter what.

With great reluctance, I loosened my lower hand, slid it above the upper one, and squeezed back down. I could hear the joints of my fingers crackle. There was no cable showing now between my grips. I was no longer climbing, I was inching up past the deadly panic.

I did not look down again. I looked up, after what felt like a long time, and tried to measure the distance from where I was to where the cable joined the mast just below the top. I was only halfway — and halfway was only a quarter of the distance I had to go. True fear now, not just unreasonable panic, began to sap what little strength and will remained.

Don't think about it! And don't worry about being afraid — you can be afraid all you want. Just keep going.

Sweat burned my eyes. Tiny barbs of rusted steel tugged at my shins and the tops of my bare feet. But I felt no pain. All I could think of was how tired I was and how dangerous it was to be tired. I couldn't think about the flag. I couldn't think about the climb down. And then I couldn't help but think about all of that. And the panic won again.

In desperation I looked out across the water to the top of the ridge above Alice Town. Green coconut palms waved there in the peaceful island breeze. I'm just climbing one of those, I told myself. I held that image, blocking out all thoughts about the flag, about having to get back down. There was only one goal now, reaching the top. I was already more than halfway there. I can do what I have just done. I can do that much again. O, let me be able to do that much...

Hand by hand, and foot by foot, an entire lifetime was measured out. By the time my fingers finally touched the shackle at the top of the shroud, every last bit of energy and will had been rationed away. Now that the flag hung within reach, there was nothing left to reach out with. The strain of simply holding on now was unbearable. The only hope, I knew, of getting back down, was to go. Immediately!

But my body refused to descend. My left hand, then, as if it were not a part of me at all, loosed itself from the cable and darted out for the flag. It jabbed at the bunting, missed, and jabbed again. It snagged the fabric and pulled, but the fabric only slide out of its cramped fingers. Totally spent, it rejoined its partner on the cable.

We had failed.

It was horribly clear now what I had just done Death was a distinct presence there at the top of that mast. Like being plunged into an icy stream, the first intolerable shock of that realization gave way to a blessed numbness. Mast and flag lost all importance. My vision blurred. I was retreating within, where there was so much to say goodbye to. Only vaguely, and with disinterest, did I feel my grip slipping there on the outside.

You can't fall if you don't quit. The words were calm, detached. Coldly logical. Do you want to quit? Do you want QUITTING to be the last thing you ever do?

No... NO... "NO!" The answer, full of anger and shame, welled up and the sound of my own voice brought me to. Then animal instinct took control. My body did what was unimaginable only moments before: It pulled itself up and over the top of the shroud and straddled the mast itself. A half-inch-thick band of steel, joining the shrouds to the mast, provided just enough of a ledge to sit upon.

I rested there at the very top of the mast for long unbelieving moments as my senses slowly returned. The huge schooner, life itself, had dwindled to nothing more than a shiny radio antenna and a masthead beacon mottled with bird droppings. It was a beautiful place.

The throbbing of an inboard diesel drifted into my ears. I looked down to see the turquoise bubbles of a wake drifting over pink coral heads and patches of rippled white sand. Astonishingly enough, Alex's launch hadn't yet gone two hundred yards. I watched as it curved around the sand bar and into the quiet harbor. Just below me, the ragged little flag began to flutter.

I reached down and tied off the halyard so it wouldn’t fall. Then I cut the flag away with my sheath knife. My impatient pulling of the night before had jammed the brass eye of the flag's upper corner into the block. I pried at this with the tip of the blade. The blade chattered against the pulley with the shaking of my hand, but at last the piece fell away.

I threaded the halyard through the pulley, tied it at my waist, and, with a last deep breath, started down.

Immediately it began to feel almost as bad as the going up, but now I had the job done behind me and a safe platform waiting for me at the end. And now this was something I had done before, and so could do again. The panic never returned.

When I reached the topsail platform I paused only long enough to secure the halyard, and then lowered myself through the trapdoor to the ratlines and so down to the solid deck again.

As I sat in front of the chart room, doctoring the lacerations on my feet and legs, I noticed a blue in the sky and the sea that I had never seen before. Shadows sliding across the deck, the salt tang in the air — everything looked and felt different. Crisper. Brighter. More full of life.

On the freshly washed planking, a bit of color caught my eye. Reverently, I picked the thing up and put it in my pocket. When I finally said goodbye to Fantome, about all I packed with me were memories, and that ragged eye cut from an old Bahamian flag.

I would love hearing from any crew or passengers from 1974. Some of our crew back then were: Laurie Macleod, captain, Scotland; Woodie, bo's'n and later First Mate; Erik Smolarek, East Germany by way of Australia, bo's'n; Dock Diver, Texas; Steve (Stash) fromWisconsin;Sombrero our carpenter, just out of the Navy; Bud, you had been a hard hat diver somewhere; Pete (Limey) from England; Mike, from New Orleans; Yogi Bear from Guyana; Alex; Lightning; Lion from Jamaica; Maurice; Rhaun, bartender from Nassau (you used to sneak us swizzlesin coke cans); Charlie; Butch from California; Captain Chlorox who worked in the laundry; Corrie; Pam (a passenger Dock liked so Laurie hired her as cabin crew); Wickam from Grenada; John from England, engineer; Blue from England, Chief Engineer)....

Thank you,

Carl Duncan, duncan@saltspring.com