If you order a Jameson-on-the-rocks in the Royal Irish Sailing Club, they tell you it's called a Scudamore, owing to an Admiral's Cup incident in Cowes week involving the King of Norway's yacht, the skipper of the Jameson-sponsored Irish sailing team, Harold Scudamore, and a failed attempt to cut a corner.
Nicola puts Talisman on the rocks, and this has been earlier suggested as a sign of her inexperience . But as the Harold Scudamore story shows, highly experienced people can put boats on rocks as the side-effect of thought-out strategies that don't quite come off.
Furthermore, there are precedents for deliberately putting a boat on rocks as the lesser of two weevils: Herbert Lightoller, Second Mate of the Titanic, was the survivor of a previous shipwreck, on his second voyage, when the sailing barque Holt Hill ran onto the Ile St Paul which, iirc, suddenly appeared out of the fog in front of them.
He reputedly attributed the very low loss of life in the Holt Hill wreck to his then Captain's courage in, seeing that the impact was unavoidable, ensuring that they struck prow first (as Talisman does), not attempting to turn away (which Titanic did, causing four of the watertight bulkheads to be breached when the side scraped along the berg). (I've no evidence Forest read Lightoller's autobiography but on chapter headings alone it's pure Nicola dream-reading )
Given the knowledge available to Nicola at the time, the engine plan isn't merely not bad, but appears the best available option in the circumstances (though I'd be interested in other suggestions for better actions).
Foley is a dead man. He's a traitor at a time when treason carries a death sentence and he's sailing towards a U-boat full of conscienceless thugs who pretty definitely regard Foley as expendable.
Nicola doesn't know where they're going but she must know about the penalty for treason; the most recent person to be executed for treason was hanged at Wandsworth Gaol about 26 months ago on Nicola's timeline. Furthermore, Foley has got a gun and Nicola can certainly work out that "career naval officer with wartime experience" isn't going to be someone she can take out with an egg carton and a roll of sticky-backed plastic.
This makes monkeying about with the engine, which would be stupid on a pleasure trip, not that bad in terms of relative risk. Most times an engine fails on a sailing boat the consequences are not that disastrous; one bobs around until either the wind gets up enough to use the sails or one manages to fix the bloody thing or one (if in shallow enough water) drops anchor.
That sort of distraction, which might give the three children, acting in concert, a chance to hit Foley on the back of the head with a winch handle/the fog to clear/some passing boat to spot them, is practically a health-and-safety verified model of planning compared to the way most action heroes (Hannay, for instance) get out of tight spots.
What causes this to turn into a crash is (completely unbeknownst to Nicola) the rocky island just off to starboard.
Foley puts the boat on a NNE course. Nicola, initially, tries to sail the reciprocal (SSW) which she realises is only a short-term strategy. That turns disastrous because she hasn't allowed for the tides. She also doesn't know the hazards; before the fog closed in they were sailing through flat marshland and she's never sailed the coast; she's seen the light from land but presumably not the rocks at its base.
I think Foley puts off doing the navigating until he knows he's past Foley's Folly Light on dead reckoning/local knowledge. Given the estimated speed of Talisman they can't have achieved an offing of more than about a mile and a half, max, when he turns the tiller over to a seasick 12 year old who's never steered a boat at sea before, in the midst of a fog.
So, all things considered, Nicola makes a pretty competent fist of saving their lives and the top secret information on board Talisman, while managing a good landing* on the island.
*Per Douglas Richardson: "A good landing is one you can walk away from. A great landing is one where you can reuse the [vessel]."
Putting Talisman on the rocks
If you order a Jameson-on-the-rocks in the Royal Irish Sailing Club, they tell you it's called a Scudamore, owing to an Admiral's Cup incident in Cowes week involving the King of Norway's yacht, the skipper of the Jameson-sponsored Irish sailing team, Harold Scudamore, and a failed attempt to cut a corner.
Nicola puts Talisman on the rocks, and this has been earlier suggested as a sign of her inexperience . But as the Harold Scudamore story shows, highly experienced people can put boats on rocks as the side-effect of thought-out strategies that don't quite come off.
Furthermore, there are precedents for deliberately putting a boat on rocks as the lesser of two weevils: Herbert Lightoller, Second Mate of the Titanic, was the survivor of a previous shipwreck, on his second voyage, when the sailing barque Holt Hill ran onto the Ile St Paul which, iirc, suddenly appeared out of the fog in front of them.
He reputedly attributed the very low loss of life in the Holt Hill wreck to his then Captain's courage in, seeing that the impact was unavoidable, ensuring that they struck prow first (as Talisman does), not attempting to turn away (which Titanic did, causing four of the watertight bulkheads to be breached when the side scraped along the berg). (I've no evidence Forest read Lightoller's autobiography but on chapter headings alone it's pure Nicola dream-reading )
Given the knowledge available to Nicola at the time, the engine plan isn't merely not bad, but appears the best available option in the circumstances (though I'd be interested in other suggestions for better actions).
Foley is a dead man. He's a traitor at a time when treason carries a death sentence and he's sailing towards a U-boat full of conscienceless thugs who pretty definitely regard Foley as expendable.
Nicola doesn't know where they're going but she must know about the penalty for treason; the most recent person to be executed for treason was hanged at Wandsworth Gaol about 26 months ago on Nicola's timeline. Furthermore, Foley has got a gun and Nicola can certainly work out that "career naval officer with wartime experience" isn't going to be someone she can take out with an egg carton and a roll of sticky-backed plastic.
This makes monkeying about with the engine, which would be stupid on a pleasure trip, not that bad in terms of relative risk. Most times an engine fails on a sailing boat the consequences are not that disastrous; one bobs around until either the wind gets up enough to use the sails or one manages to fix the bloody thing or one (if in shallow enough water) drops anchor.
That sort of distraction, which might give the three children, acting in concert, a chance to hit Foley on the back of the head with a winch handle/the fog to clear/some passing boat to spot them, is practically a health-and-safety verified model of planning compared to the way most action heroes (Hannay, for instance) get out of tight spots.
What causes this to turn into a crash is (completely unbeknownst to Nicola) the rocky island just off to starboard.
Foley puts the boat on a NNE course. Nicola, initially, tries to sail the reciprocal (SSW) which she realises is only a short-term strategy. That turns disastrous because she hasn't allowed for the tides. She also doesn't know the hazards; before the fog closed in they were sailing through flat marshland and she's never sailed the coast; she's seen the light from land but presumably not the rocks at its base.
I think Foley puts off doing the navigating until he knows he's past Foley's Folly Light on dead reckoning/local knowledge. Given the estimated speed of Talisman they can't have achieved an offing of more than about a mile and a half, max, when he turns the tiller over to a seasick 12 year old who's never steered a boat at sea before, in the midst of a fog.
So, all things considered, Nicola makes a pretty competent fist of saving their lives and the top secret information on board Talisman, while managing a good landing* on the island.
*Per Douglas Richardson: "A good landing is one you can walk away from. A great landing is one where you can reuse the [vessel]."