Chapter 19: Pirates

It was mid-afternoon when we spotted the old trawler making its way at an angle directly towards us. Seeing other boats in the Caribbean was not unusual, there were lots of yachts and rental yachts out and about. But this one looked more like a fishing trawler, except there were no nets or other fishing paraphernalia scattered about. And we knew that it wasn’t unheard of for fishing boats to be out begging when fishing was poor.

When they were about a mile away, it began to dawn on Captain Alfred that they might not be friendly. And as they came closer we could see that the crew was armed with a motley collection of old rifles and pistols. Captain Alfred didn’t think that we could outrun the trawler.

“Can you stop them son?” Captain Alfred asked, “I fear for the womenfolk if they pull alongside.”

I focused on their engine for a moment and it began to smoke. Seconds later there was a large puff of smoke and the pirates, for that’s what they were, began rushing around the deck. No life rafts came out and I wondered if they even had them. They began calling out for help, but we didn’t offer to stop and help them as we sailed on past.

As I watched the pirate trawler disappear on the horizon behind us, I began to wonder if I could disrupt a human’s EMF’s enough to stop them or kill them. I had never thought of doing something like that, but it suddenly became clear that I needed to be able to defend those that I loved.

It was maybe an hour later that we came upon another smoking yacht. This one was sitting dead in the water and had two people on it that were waving a piece of cloth to signal us.

“Trim the sails, Alex,” Captain Alfred said. “I think we should take a closer look.

As we drew closer, everybody soon lined the rails to take a look. It was a rental catamaran, about 15 meters (50 feet) long and had the name of the rental company on the side of the boom bag (the place where the mainsail is stored when not in use). The two passengers were obviously females, wearing skimpy bikinis. They appeared to be late teens or early twenties. “Everyone should probably go get dressed,” Roland suggested.

“Help us please, our father is having a heart attack!” they cried when we were closer.

Captain Alfred called for Henri and Phillipe and instructed them to put out the fenders on our starboard side. The fenders were large plastic ball-shaped devices about a meter in diameter and tied to the rail to hang down the side of the hull to act as buffers when tied to a pier.

“Be on your guard and watch out for any tricks. They may not be as they seem,” he said.

I think it was their pitiful pleas that finally made the decision for him.

“Alex, when I come around, attach a line to the aft cleat and throw it to them and have them tie it off to their aft cleat. Then do the same to the fore cleat,” he instructed as he came around and approached the other catamaran on its port side to our starboard side.

With shouts and gestures, the girls finally understood what to do and soon the two catamarans were lashed together. I did add a third line to the center cleats for good measure.

Carina and Roland jumped across the narrow space between the yachts as Captain Alfred had pulled back on the throttles, just barely keeping enough speed for steerage.

The next thirty minutes were chaotic as Carina attended to the man. She said it didn’t appear to be a heart attack, but a stroke. She allowed me to do what I could for him, and I was able to stabilize him, but he couldn’t speak clearly. Part of his face had been paralyzed. He was going to need lots of rehab to get back to some semblance of normal. We were going to have to get him to a hospital. In the islands, that usually meant an airport to fly him to a big island with a real hospital.

Carina had us move the conscious man and the two teens to our yacht because we had food, water, and medical supplies on board. We also had air conditioning.

“Check the map and find us an airport,” Captain Alfred instructed. He had his hands full with steering the two yachts.

“The Exuma International Airport at George Town is less than twelve miles ahead,” I told him, as I showed him the map. The challenge became finding a marina nearby. But all the marinas were on the other side of the island and would add hours to our trip. Finally, I noticed a beachside restaurant that appeared to have a small pier that we might tie up to. And it was less than two miles from the airport.

I entered the coordinates into the chart plotter as we pushed the Serendipity to do nine knots.

It was a tense hour as Captain Alfred brought the Serendipity with the rental catamaran still lashed to her starboard side into the small pier at the Beachcomber Restaurant. Roland went ashore and had them call for an ambulance and then called the airport about flights. There were only two flights per week and the next one was scheduled for Friday, three days away.

When the rickety old ambulance arrived, Roland talked to the nurse on board and quickly found out that we could hire a private plane to make the trip and gave him the number. After much conversation and the nurse agreeing to go along, for a fee, Roland arranged for them to fly the man 150 miles north to the hospital in Nassau.

He also called Dr. Griswold’s office to explain what he had arranged and that they had no papers.

When he returned, Roland explained the situation to the man and the two girls. Because it was a small plane, there was only room for the pilot, the nurse, and the patient. The girls would not be able to stay with their father. Besides, someone had to return the yacht. The man smiled and told them he would be alright.

It was a heartbreaking moment as they told the man goodbye. It was obvious that the girls were frightened both by their experience and at being left alone on a small island in the Caribbean.

Once the ambulance had departed for the two mile trip to the airport, the restaurant manager said we could leave the yacht there and contact the rental company to come get it. “My cousin, he work for that man. He knows where we are and I take good care of his property. If he is happy, I get reward for helping him,” he told us in broken English.

Because of the damage to the yacht, and the girls not knowing anything about handling it, they decided to stay with us. I think it may have been all the other teenaged girls we had on board, but it could have been the air conditioning.

So the two girls, with help from several of our crew, went back aboard to see what they could salvage. When the pirates had approached, the man had made the two girls hide in the storage area under the floor of one of the staterooms, then faced the men by himself. The pirates had pulled out all their luggage and gear and after taking anything of value, had tossed the rest overboard. That included their identification and their passports, as well as most of their clothes. They also took most of their drinks and food stores.

It was decided we would all eat at the Beachcomber for supper since the manager had been kind enough to let us dock there for only a small fee. And that is when I finally met Maryann and Victoria from Syracuse, New York.

The girls were cousins and the man who had the stroke was Victoria’s father. Victoria’s parents were divorced and she lived with her mother, but she was spending the Christmas holidays with her dad who had agreed to bring her and her cousin to the Caribbean for a week to escape the cold weather. Victoria called her mom, but she was in Niagara Falls on her honeymoon and did not answer. Maryann’s parents were out and did not answer, but she thought they might be back soon.

Roland did some more checking and found them a flight in the same private plane for tomorrow, and even offered to pay for the flight. But since the girls did not have passports, they would not be allowed to leave the airport once they arrived. He called Dr. Griswold again and Dr. Griswold said that we could bring them back to Nassau and he could help them, but it might be dangerous. He said the people looking for me were furious that we escaped. Or we could continue south and stop in Martinique and get help at the consulate there. Roland didn’t tell him that we were headed there anyway.

The girls finally decided to stick with us rather than risk being on their own in Nassau, and so it was now seventeen passengers that returned to the Serendipity that night.

While Captain Alfred and I moved the Serendipity out into the bay for the night (there were no hook-ups for power or water on the pier), the rest all played musical staterooms. Charlotte and Vivienne gave up their stateroom to Victoria and Maryann and slept on the bridge couches that night, while I slept on the fantail. Right before I settled down for the night, Roland came and suggested an experiment based on our earlier discussions. I agreed and then settled in to sleep.

I woke up before sunrise. Probably a holdover from the early morning watches we did on the crossing. Grabbing a cup of coffee in the galley, I made my way to the bridge. I wanted to brush my teeth, but my bag was in Carina’s stateroom where someone had moved it after we left the pier. I wasn’t going to wake them this early. We had also removed our clothes again once we left the pier, but I think that Victoria and Maryann had already gone to their cabin by then.

I wondered if anyone had explained the situation to them. At Roland’s suggestion last night, I had purposefully kept any contact with them to a minimum. Some contact was unavoidable, such as at meals, but for the most part, I tried to avoid them completely, so I didn’t get to know them immediately.

We were under way again before dawn. This time, after getting the sails set, Captain Alfred left me on the bridge and went down for breakfast. He did send some breakfast up for me, but I didn’t see hide nor hair of either him or Archara until lunch time.

Meanwhile, I had command of the ship, so to speak for five hours. And as I sat there in the captain’s chair, first Jenna, and then Anna joined me. At first the girls compared going to school in France versus America and that soon led to comparing French boys to American boys and of course, French dates to American dates. Finally the conversation dwindled to one topic, me. And they continued to talk about me as if I wasn’t there.

When Anna started telling her about asking me if I was gay, I thought I might be in trouble. But when Anna described her paddling and my subsequent healing her, I knew I was in trouble. When she started telling Jenna in great detail about how I fucked her ass, I about died of embarrassment. I called for someone else to man the bridge and quickly excused myself to go to the head.

When I came back, Anna was saying, “ ... and it felt so good, I just passed out and there sat poor Daniel, with his cock up my ass and me all passed out and everybody looking in the door. I thought my mom would have a fit but she just laughed and talked about life lessons!” she said with a laugh.

“I’m amazed at your all’s attitudes about sex and nudity,” Jenna said. “I think that if my mom found me and Alex like that, she would have killed us.”

“Yeah, different cultures and all that I suppose. My mom is pretty open. She’s the one who introduced us to going without clothes on the boat,” Anna said.

“But she didn’t get mad at you for having sex with Alex?” Jenna asked. “And I noticed you call Alex, Daniel sometimes.”

“Old habit. Remember, he was Daniel to us until we got to the Bahamas. So I still think of him as Daniel sometimes, especially when I think of him fucking my ass!” Anna said. “And my dad still calls him Daniel most of the time.”

Jenna stood up and turned her ass towards me, and with a twinkle in her eye she caressed her dainty cheeks slowly with her fingers for a moment, then asked Anna if she wanted to go get something to drink. I didn’t want to even think about what those two might be plotting.

It was a lazy day of sailing with everyone taking it easy. Captain Alfred spelled me for an hour for me to get some lunch. When I returned, he had shut off the air conditioner and opened the front windscreen along with the side and rear panels to allow the tropical breeze to come through.

I continued to steer a southerly course as throughout the afternoon various girls came up to chat with me. I had an earnest discussion with Isabella about using my skills to hurt someone. Not how to do it, per se, but what it was like to harm another human being.

“One of my instructors once pointed out that people can often be hurt more by your words than by your actions, it’s just that physical injuries and even death seem much more graphic to our minds,” she said. “Remember when we first met? And how hurt you were with my words?”

I certainly did as she proved her point.

Vivienne stopped by and wanted to talk about fucking again. After the last time, I wasn’t too excited but I told her we would if we did it alone, this time. I was afraid that she just didn’t understand the difference between fucking and making love. Of course, she was not and probably never had been in love, so it was hard to talk about something that she could not relate to. It was while I was thinking about Vivienne that it hit me. It was another of those strong hunches that I knew must be because of my EMF’s. I’d need to talk to Roland about it before I said anything to Vivienne.

Charlotte came by to ask if we could stop somewhere to swim. The further south we went, the warmer it got. Swimming would certainly cool everyone off. I studied the charts with an eye on the time and a glance at the weather which continued to be partly cloudy and hot. Finally, I saw what looked like a good anchorage. It was a sheltered bay between Long Cay and Crooked Island. The map didn’t show any settlements nearby, so it should be perfect for us. I made the proper notes in the log and told Charlotte to tell everyone we were stopping early so everyone could swim.

Charlotte also told me that Victoria and Maryann had come out of their cabin for lunch wearing their bikinis and then went right back in. No one had gotten the chance to get to know them any better.

I had us through the breakwaters between the islands and dropped the front anchor before Captain Alfred showed up. He looked over everything while I was taking care of the stern anchor. By the time I got back, he was gone.

“Can we use the jet skis?” Mischa asked.

“Sure. Give me a minute and I’ll get them out for you.”

First I had to lower the fantail deck and launched the tender. Then I raised the fantail as high as it would go and lowered the garage ramp. Mischa and Kelly Ann launched the jet skis and took off. Archara had covered the rules for using the toys early in the cruise.

Finally, I had everything shut down for the evening. I decided to leave the bridge panels open and the air conditioning off. I was just getting ready to dive into the clear waters when Archara came to find me. She said the ice maker was not working. I wasn’t sure what I could do about it, I didn’t think my healing gifts applied to ice makers, but I’d go and see.