She had been well supplied with plastic tarps, but they learned soon enough that these could not stand up to the stresses imposed on them by the wind. Fishnets were much stronger but would not hold air. And so they had improvised sails by combining the two: laying fishnets out over tarps and then sewing them together with zip ties, piano wire, needle and thread, tape. The resulting composites were strong enough to stand up to the wind, but their edges and corners—where the wind’s power had to be transmitted into lines attached to the ship—ripped out whenever the breeze was appreciable. So there had been a lot more learning and improvising connected with those edges. The results were very far from being pretty, but nothing had torn out in a long time. It was only after they had solved that problem and hoisted their first little sail up on the yards and the rigging intended for manipulating fishnets that their Engineer had fetched a bottle of beer from the ship’s stores and, to the consternation of his fellow officers, smashed it against the boat’s prow while christening her Szélanya, the "Mother of the Wind." "If such a being exists," he explained, "she might be flattered, and decide not to completely fuck us."