The tide rose and fell some forty feet, and there were often countervailing winds and eight-knot currents. It was nighttime when the castaways began sailing through the nine-mile-long chute, and they strained to see in the dark. For hours, they maneuvered between the shrouded banks, trying to avoid the shoals and curtail the boat’s constant leeward drift, until, at dawn, they emerged from the chute.
