The wave flipped the forty-six-foot boat end over end, snapped Smeeton's harness, and threw her overboard.
Tommy Barrie had a similar experience off Georges Bank. He was laying-to in a storm when a wave clobbered him out of nowhere, imploding his windows. "There was this 'boom' and the Lexan window was blown right off," he says. "The window hit the clutch and so the clutch was pinned and we couldn't get her into gear. The boat's over a bit, layin' in a beam sea and shit flyin' everywhere—things that have never moved on that boat before goin' all over the place. The wave ripped the life raft off its mount and blew the front hatch open. It was dogged down, but there was so much water it blew it open anyway. I came up quick and radioed the Miss Millie: 'Larry we took a hell of a wave, stand by, I'm here.' I took the boat downsea and about ten minutes later the same wave hit him. His bird came out of the water and the hull took a big dent."
If a wave takes Billy's windows out, it would be similar to the one experienced by Smeeton or Barrie—big, steep, and unexpected. It's an awful scene to imagine: water knee-deep in the wheelhouse, men scrambling up the companionway, wind screaming through the blown-out window. If enough water gets in, it can make its way down to the engine room, soak the wiring, and take on an electric charge. The entire boat gets electrified; anyone standing in water gets electrocuted. A boat that loses her windows can start filling up with water in minutes, so two men tie safety lines to their waists and crawl out onto the whaleback deck with sheets of marine plywood. "The plywood acts like a kite, you have to manhandle the sonofabitch," says Charlie Reed. "It's a horrible thought, someone out there in that weather. As captain, it's your worst fear, someone goin' over the side."
It's hard to find a more dangerous job than venturing onto the whaleback during a storm to do a little carpentry. On land a loo-knot wind reduces people to a crawl; at sea it knocks you flat. The decks are awash, the boat is rolling, the spray is raking you like grapeshot. You work in the calm of the wave troughs and flatten yourself at the crests to keep from being blown off the boat. One man holds the plywood against the window while the other lines up a power drill with the holes in the wheelhouse and starts drilling. He drills one hole, hammers a bolt through, and then someone in the wheelhouse threads on the nut while the men on the outside keep drilling and bolting, drilling and bolting until the plywood is screwed down tight. Some captains put a piece of inner tube between the wood and steel to make it waterproof.
Although it's a suicidal job, crews that lose their windows almost always manage to get some plywood up, even if it means turning downsea to do it. After the plywood is bolted down, the crew starts bucket-bailing the wheelhouse and putting the cabin back in order. Maybe someone tries to wire the loran or radio up to a battery to see if he can get a signal. Billy starts shifting fuel from one tank to another, trying to trim the boat. Someone probably checks the engine room and work deck—are the scuppers clearing their water? Are the birds down? Is the fish hatch secure?
There's not much they can do at this point but head into the storm and hope they don't take any more big waves. If waves keep taking out their windows they could turn around and go downsea, but that generates a whole new set of problems. Several large waves could simply bury them, or the lazarette could flood, or sediment could get stirred up in the tanks and clog the fuel filters. If the ship motion is violent enough, the crew has to change the filters nonstop—pull them out, flush the sediment, put them back in again, over and over, as fast as they can. Or the engine stops and the boat goes over.