Chapter 63: Never Argue with Rachel

Tuesday morning dawned clear and bright. Captain Tony and I were sipping our coffee in the pilothouse onboard the Cécile. We were currently running on just one of the twin MAN diesel engines on the Bering 120, at eleven and a half knots. The plotter showed our position as 300 miles southeast of Galveston, approximately 550 miles from Key West, Florida, our destination.

“Even after all this time on the Cécile, I find myself amazed at how steady she rides. I mean, I can barely hear the engine running and I wouldn’t be able to tell if we were moving if I didn’t look out the windows,” I told Captain Tony.

“Aye, you have a fine ship here, Alex,” he said with a grim smile. “And I’m afraid it’s causing Monique and myself a bit of consternation.”

I looked at him and arched my eyebrow, trying to figure out what he meant.

“We love the Windsong (their eighty foot, twin hulled catamaran) and truthfully, she’s probably more boat than we need. But after sailing with you on the Cécile, we are seriously considering replacing her with a steel explorer yacht,” he told me.

I just kept my eyes on the horizon and my lips closed. They didn’t need my help to make a decision. I was guessing that Captain Tony just wanted to talk it out a little with someone besides his wife. And I happened to be handy.

As was normal between sailors on the bridge, most discussions happened with long pauses in between any dialogue. And this one was no different. Except it was more of a monologue. I would bet that in the next two hours, he brought it up five different times. As for me, I kept my mouth shut except when he called for a reading from one of the many instruments displayed on the computer screens that filled up the bridge.

Rachel and Jana showed up with my lunch around noon with instructions for Captain Tony to join Monique in the salon for his lunch. They also brought their own lunches to eat with me in the pilothouse.

This was the first time that I had seen Rachel’s sister without her clothes. I had worried about how she would handle our naturalist lifestyle, until Rachel reminded me that she and Jana had grown up in a commune where nudity was the norm.

Jana was shorter than her sister, but that may have been because she had just recently turned seventeen. She was smaller, proportionally, all over. Her hair was a lighter brown than her sister’s, and hung to the middle of her back. Her eyes were a different shade of blue, and glistened with a hint of mischievousness that Rachel’s didn’t have. And her breasts, while barely a ‘B’ cup, whispered the promise of a figure that would soon rival her sisters’.

“Are you finding everything you need?” I asked her between bites.

“Are you kidding?” she exclaimed excitedly. “This is the most beautiful and luxurious boat I’ve ever been on!”

“Yeah. It is a little better than Ricky’s jon-boat back in Lubbock,” Rachel said dourly.

“Juan-Raquel, a boy in my class, invited me down to his family’s yacht at the big marina in Málaga. It wasn’t as big ... or as nice as the Cécile, but it was still a yacht!” she claimed defensively.

“Did he take you out on it?” Rachel asked her.

“His father did. I went sailing with his whole family one Saturday,” Jana told us.

“How did you like it?” I asked.

“The ride was only for the afternoon, and it was nice. But Juan-Raquel wasn’t so nice. He kept trying to get me to go down to the stateroom with him. I ended up spending the whole ride with his little sisters.”

“That’s too bad,” Rachel said smugly.

“Where are we going?” Jana asked me.

“We should be arriving in Key West in about forty-eight hours,” I told her. “We’ll probably spend a couple of nights there while we reprovision and figure out what that tropical storm that’s out in the Atlantic is going to do. Once we know that, we’ll decide where to go,” I explained.

“So what do you all do for fun when you’re at sea?” Jana asked as she grinned at me suggestively.

“Jana! Alex and I haven’t had the chance to talk about that yet!” Rachel said warningly.

“I know...” she said bowing her head. “I just thought you might have forgot.”

“Well, he did have a pretty full day yesterday,” Rachel reminded her sister. “So we really didn’t have much opportunity to talk.”

“Okay,” Jana said as she stood and began gathering the lunch dishes. “Why don’t I take this back to the kitchen...”

“Galley,” I corrected her automatically. “On a ship this size, the kitchen is called a galley.”

“Okay. I’ll take this stuff back to the GALLEY, and you all can have your talk!” she retorted. And with that, she left Rachel and I sitting there as she headed down to the galley.

“Sorry about that,” Rachel finally said. “Hormones...”

“Just what are we supposed to talk about?” I asked. As if I didn’t already know.

“Anna, Charlotte, Fleur, Marta, Jana, Samantha, and Sarah,” she rattled off the list. “It seems that you have been negligent in your duties, my love.”

“Huh!”

“Effective immediately, you are moving back to the owner’s suite,” she told me. “It’s got the biggest bed.”

I just stared at her.

“Alex, I love you and I know you love me just as much. Please! For the rest of the week, just go with the flow. I’ll take care of the arrangements,” she instructed. “And remember, I love you!”

When she got to the door she turned and added, “And ... just so you know ... my little sister is a virgin!” Then she scampered out of the pilothouse.

“Any news on that system?” Captain Alfred asked when he entered the pilothouse just before four o’clock that afternoon.

“It’s still building. The noon forecast had it approaching hurricane status sometime this afternoon, but still no predictions of which way it will go. There is an update scheduled for five, eastern. That’s in a few minutes,” I told him.

Because most blue-water cruisers spend the vast majority of their time in port or at anchor, it is common to go with local time until you arrive at your next port where you adopt the local time there. So the Cécile would stay on Central Time (Galveston) until we got near Key West.

The Bering has a clock on the bridge that was set to Coordinated Universal time (UTC) when the boat was built and it cannot be altered. It used to be called the GMT (or Greenwich Mean Time) clock, but GMT is now considered just a time zone officially used in some European and African countries. But UTC is not a time zone, but rather the new time standard that is the basis for clock time and time zones worldwide.

Does that mean we have to go through and reset every single clock on the Cécile every time we change time zones?

Well, it seems that Bering thought of that. On the Bering’s console, there is a switch where you can set or alter all the shipboard clocks at one time, simply by entering a ‘Minus Six’ which is UTC – 6 for the Central Time Zone in America. When we get close to Key West, we will simply enter the ‘reprogram clocks command’ and tell it: UTC minus five, (UTC -5). The computer will then alter all the ship’s clocks from Central Time to Eastern Time. The computer also incorporates a calendar which is programed to take care of Daylight Savings Time, where appropriate, as well as the international date line.

However, if you have a personal clock or are wearing a watch, you’ll have to reprogram or reset those devices yourself.

And if you are depending on Apple or any of the other smartphone manufacturers to do it for you automatically, you might be in for a surprise. Especially in areas where time zones do not strictly follow longitudinal (north and south) lines or in areas where cell towers do not reach out to sea.

While Captain Alfred adjusted the weather radio, I began entering the change of watch data in the ship’s log. While Captain Alfred had one chart out on top of the chart locker, studying it, Captain Tony was seated at the table with his iPad going over all the reports and historical data he could find.

The five o’clock hurricane report confirmed that the storm, now officially Hurricane Nolan, was a category one storm, located some 750 miles due east of the Virgin Islands, headed towards the northwest at fifteen miles an hour. At its current speed and direction, it could hit the east coast of Florida in five days.

Of course, there were still way too many variables to accurately forecast where it would ultimately head, but it was predicted to gain strength over the next five days, possibly reaching a category four in strength.

The Bermuda High was still too far north to be a major steering factor, and the computer string models were all over the place. Some had it hitting south Florida, while others had it brushing south Florida and entering the Gulf of Mexico with Key West directly in its path.

“It’s looking like our safest bet is to alter course now to the south-southeast and head for the Yucatán Channel. Then southeast to George Town in the Cayman Islands,” Captain Alfred mused. The Yucatán Channel or Straits of Yucatán, as it is sometimes referred to, is the 120 mile wide passage between the western tip of Cuba and the Mexican city of Cancun.

“That would put us in George Town early on Saturday morning. It’s a British possession so we should probably go ahead and send in our paperwork,” Captain Tony stated. “Alex, why don’t you plot our new course while I phone ahead for a berth at the Barcadere Marina,” Captain Tony suggested.

At dinner, Captain Alfred explained our course change to everyone. I thought there would be some disappointment over not going to Key West, but Anna went for her iPad and the girls immediately began researching the Cayman Islands for things to do and places to visit. There were plenty of ‘oooh’s’ and ‘aaah’s’ as they started cataloging all their options.

“You do know that our schedule is still subject to change depending on which direction Hurricane Nolan ultimately goes, don’t you?” I asked the girls.

“Yeah. But now, we have an extra night of sailing before we get there so maybe we’ll all get a turn!” Marta replied.

“Get a turn?” I asked Rachel.

“I told you. Just go with the flow and leave everything to me!” she said as she went over and whispered in Fleur’s ear.

Soon, the girls brought out the Ticket to Ride board game and everyone settled in to play.

Near the end of the first game, Rachel came to me and softly whispered, “It’s time. Why don’t you head up to our suite. Fleur will be there in a few minutes.”

I knew better than to argue with her. I looked around, but Fleur was nowhere to be seen. However, the looks I got from the adults ranged from envy to pity. Archara even smirked.

When I got to the Owner’s Suite, Fleur was already in the large shower. I kicked off my deck shoes and slipped in behind her. She was just starting to wash her hair, so I took over for her and finished washing her hair and then applied a liberal amount of conditioner. While that was setting, I began washing her nubile body. Since she had to keep her eyes closed, I began to play a game about where I would touch her next. She became even more aroused and a little flustered as she kept trying to anticipate where I would touch her next.

Finally, I gave in and stroked her clitty as I pinched her nipple. She let out a long groan and doubled over in ecstasy. Fortunately, I caught her before she sank to the floor.

Then rinsing off the suds and conditioner, I helped her out of the shower and began drying her off.

“How can you make me cum like that without even putting it in me?” she asked. “It was so good!”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “Why don’t we try putting my cock in your pussy and seeing the difference?”

So we did. Several times and in several different positions. But no matter how we did it, she still found herself cumming. Over and over. Oh well...

It was after midnight when I felt Rachel slide under the sheet behind me.

“How’s our girl?” she whispered.

“You know I don’t discuss things like that,” I told her. “You’ll just have to get it from the source in the morning.

“Well, I guess I could just get you to show me...” she giggled.

“Not unless you have a magic potion that will revive the dead,” I said tiredly.

“Oh ... I have magic,” she purred.