Chapter 12

Ben’s turn:

No sunset tonight. There’s a big bank of clouds ahead. The sky darkens early because the sun is blocked out now. The clouds are punctuated by lightning. It’s beautiful if you’re not on the water in a smallish boat.

Well, they say this thing’s seaworthy.

The system’s too wide to expect us, bumping eight knots on our best day, to go around it.

One thing in our favor is that in preparing for our ‘ocean voyage’ we properly stowed loose items from the deck and rails. Even the screened curtains from our rear deck ‘verandah’ were carefully rolled up, secured neatly by straps. Short of a hurricane, the decks of Ada Z. were prepared.

“Nothing to worry about,” I replied in response to rather nervous questions. “You know what we rode out in the little sailboat, right, Mandy?”

She nodded, not looking quite as assured as one might wish.

“And in this one, we have more than adequate power. Let’s talk about prep ideas.”

Bink piped up, “Check the life raft.”

“Okay,” I said. “We got it inspected and re-certified when I got the boat. Auto-deploys, right?”

“Yes,” came the answer in unison.

“When?”

“When this boat submerges.”

“And when do we get into the life raft?”

Mandy answered, “When we have to step UP off this boat.” The old story of not leaving a big boat that might be recoverable for a small one. Stories abounded of people abandoning ship only to suffer in a life raft while their ‘sinking’ vessel was recovered later, still afloat.

“Life vest?” I queried.

Both girls pointed under the settee.

“And in rough weather, nobody goes outside.”

We double-checked to make sure that the pilothouse doors were solidly dogged into place; a rather more secure mode than we used under normal circumstances. The house lights were turned off leaving only a soft red glow from an overhead lamp. There was green movement on the radar display and soft lights from the engine instruments.

“And all we can do is keep on going,” I said.

Most of the happiness of the afternoon was gone, much like the waning daylight. I would have preferred facing this challenge in the daytime, but here it was. Before long, heavy raindrops hit the glass in front of me, followed shortly by a burst of wind, a downdraft from the thunderstorms lined up on the stagnant weather front.

The boat heeled under the blast of wind.

“Shouldn’t we turn into the wind?” Mandy asked.

I know the answer to this one. “Wind and waves, baby. We try to keep the nose into the waves.”

Which was a bit difficult because it was dark and the waves, instead of being the normal steady progression of swells, were rapidly being chopped into chaos by wind gusts. Still, we’re a cork on top of the water, basically watertight, and we weren’t taking on green water, just blasts of rain and wind-blown spray and the boat’s motion, instead of the steady rocking chair induced by ocean swells as regular as clockwork, had become an erratic corkscrew as waves pushed one way and wind the other.

“This is where people get seasick,” Bink stated.

I looked at her. She wasn’t looking particularly affected yet. “Yeah, Bink. Just hang on. Thunderstorms aren’t forever.”

Which was a truth. The roll cloud at the beginning was getting further behind us, the wind becoming steady, the seas quieting. I eased away from the course I’d chosen to ride through the storm, returning to something closer to the course we chose for our trip. Now it’s just rain and wind.

“Binkabenjamanda,” Bink said. “I thought it was gonna be really bad.”

“Just a squall line,” I stated. “If we’d’ve been under sail it would’ve been a scramble to get sails dowsed because it would’ve sneaked up on us in the dark if we weren’t paying attention to the lightning.”

“Imagine weathering a REAL storm,” said Mandy. “Hours, maybe days, of fighting the waves and the motion...”

“We really didn’t get waves this time,” I replied. “The wind chopped up the swells and we had conflicting patterns, winds against unorganized waves. Imagine BIG seas – ten feet or higher...”

“Don’t wanna,” Mandy said, Bink’s concurring look supporting her. “But we’d be safe, right?”

“As long as we could keep the bow into them. That’s either by power or with the sea anchor...”

“You explained how the sea anchor worked when we rigged it this afternoon,” Bink reminded. “Now I understand that it’s NOT just a way to park the boat in the middle of the water so we can all pile onto the bed together.”

“But that’s a good use for it,” Mandy tittered.

So okay ... three watches, starting at 10 PM. It’s still raining, so first one’s mine – 10 to 1 AM. Bink gets 1 to 4 and Mandy gets 4 to seven.

Which gets me two goodnight kisses before they slip below to sleep.

I’m now alone in the pilothouse, the thrum of the little diesel engine comfortingly constant. The house lights are down, the radar a dull green glow, the panel instruments dimly lit, and there’s nothing visible in front of me now in the rain. I revert to an old standby for solitude – reading. A book on my Kindle keeps me occupied for what is normally a very boring thing – watching the helm when the course is miles and miles on the same heading.

The radar shows me nothing to worry over, a few ships so far off that they only show as streaks when their radar beams cross my scan. No lights at all out there, and the overcast keeps any view of stars, so it’s down to words on a page. I alternate sitting in the helmsman’s chair with standing, a few deep knee bends, stretches, all the while letting the autopilot mindlessly maintain the course for me.

It’s amazing how the clock slows under those conditions, but watch change came. I scanned the darkness before opening the hatch to the main cabin and gently waking Bink. Watch change took place smoothly, enhanced by a kiss. I stripped out of my shorts and T-shirt and donned a nightshirt to slide into bed beside Mandy.

Her hand reached behind her to find me, then she backed up into me for a perfect spoon.

Another kiss, then sleep. Well, except for the part where my little partner grabbed my hand and put it over a tender young breast.

“I love you, Mandy.”

Wiggle. “You should.”

Having hit no icebergs in her three hours, Bink woke Mandy by pulling an exposed toe, then she stripped and dove under the covers. I felt moist heat and suction, caressed her head. She popped up, kissed me. “If you eat me I’ll go to sleep faster.”

The horrible conditions I must endure.

I wish I could relate to you a story of being tenderly awakened by Mandy at the end of her watch. I’d be lying. A single blast from the Freon-powered horn we use for back-up signaling, well, I almost wet myself. Little darlin’ in the pilothouse was beside herself, giggling.

When Bink got up there, Mandy snickered, “Well, did you sleep better?”

I took over the pilothouse duties as the two of them did a breakfast in the galley, bringing me coffee and a very nice egg and sausage sandwich. The morning’s geography lesson included locating us on the chart of the Gulf of Mexico by longitude and latitude, comparison of actual location with our proposed course, commentary of how badly last night’s little bout with weather had affected plans.

“We’re gonna be getting near the ship channel into Corpus Christi kinda late in the day...”

Both nodded. Time, speed, distance is simple math.

“I think our best bet is to slide off to one side of the channel where we can anchor, spend the night offshore, then get up the next morning and make our run into the marina when we can see everything.”

“Prudent,” Mandy nodded.

“I like that ‘spend the night offshore’ idea,” Bink said. “I love sleeping with the boat rocking in the waves.”

“It looks like, if we have enough light, we can slip into the bay and stay, too,” Mandy said. “Look at this chart.”

She pointed out a route. “I mean, they do have these things marked for night navigation. And we have radar and depth finders, so we could slip in, head out into the bay and anchor in the middle.”

“What’s your thinking?” I asked.

Mandy has the ability to store a lot of data and bring it back up. “You said we had three hundred feet of rode for our main anchor. If we’re a mile offshore, we’ll be in forty feet of water, maybe more. You said you like to have seven to ten to one scope out. We’d be marginal.”

Bink eyed me. “You’re the one who taught us that.”

“Good point,” I said. “In calm circumstances, we can get by with less scope, but...”

“We’ll be offshore at night, probably asleep,” Mandy said. “We need to be conservative.”

Not a question. A statement. As in “I’ve decided...”

“So we’ll make the run into the bay?”

“That’s what I’d do,” Mandy stated. “Then we get out in the middle and drop the hook and we’re good...”

“Darn, Mandy,” Bink murmured. “You’re, like, Magellan or something.”

Mandy huffed. “Ben takes the time to tell us and show us all this stuff. There’s a reason.”

So we called the geography lesson a success. We motored on, the little boat eating away at the miles at a stately pace. Late afternoon we saw the first hint of land as a hazy line on the horizon. Our position on the nav display was astonishingly close to the dead reckoning plot I made the girls keep – heading, speed, all referenced to a last known position.