Chapter 15

Mandy’s turn:

We put the boat into a marina near Pensacola after four days at sea.

I’ve read about the term ‘sea legs’. It’s real. We had a lovely trip, maybe four-foot seas at the worst, but even that, the boat is in constant motion under your feet. You quickly learn to compensate for it in your movement. Stepping onto dry land is somewhat of a surprise because you’ve redefined ‘normal’ to include the ever-moving decks.

We decided that we’d spend a night onshore in Pensacola, so we docked, secured Ada, Ben signed for a rental car, and we were off to a hotel.

Bink and I took care of the search for a restaurant for dinner. And it’s NOT going to be seafood. That single stupid lure got us fish three days running. Being the carnivores we are, I want a warm-blooded animal to bleed for my meal and there are extra points involved if I sit at a table and somebody brings the food to me.

“You’re carrying on like that,” Ben laughed, “after four nights at sea. Think about Columbus – four weeks – and he wasn’t really sure of where he was going.”

“Bet they didn’t eat as good as us,” Bink snickered.

We had a carload of snorkeling gear when we pulled into the parking lot of the first Brazilian steakhouse I ever visited. It’s carnivore nirvana. I am finally one with the universe, borne about in my life by big-eyed cattle, dripping savory grease, my belly distended like an antelope-fed python.

Yes, I overdid it. I admit. Bink and Ben were no slouches either, but neither of them had to be rolled sideways into a rented SUV.

“That’s it!” I said. “Kill me. Tie my carcass to a cotton line and use me for crab bait. I’m done.”

“She’s so poetic,” Bink tittered.

“I had to try everything,” I moaned.

“Some of it twice,” Ben laughed.

“Three times!” my ever-helpful lover inserted.

After a resting period in the hotel’s queen-sized bed, I was once again mobile. Queen-sized? Ben pointed out that our modus operandi was that of uncle and his teen niece and her friend, and just maybe, the employment of a king-sized bed for the three of us might be indication of hanky-panky.

We’ve done queen beds many times. The fact that three of us fit in one is established. Also established is that if any one moves, it’s most likely to wake one of the others and midnight games often ensue.

Which means ‘night at the hotel’ is followed by a trip back to the boat where, if schedule allows, we get real sleep.

Being autumn now, the air’s a lot cooler on the water, so we have the option of just motoring over to an isolated anchorage where we’re out of the way and there’s a good bottom to set an anchor, and we stay there. We have our little tender on davits at the stern and it’s a relatively simple matter to drop it into the water and buzz off under outboard power to find a beach or a scenic waterway or whatever. And this IS the Florida Gulf Coast, so there is a good variety of waterside venues for food and drink.

We found a beach that was nude-friendly, too, and that made an interesting afternoon, but nude or not, it’s a public venue, and for us, half the fun of being naked is the easy access to caresses and kisses and other things you wouldn’t really display in public.

Aside from decorum regarding physical conduct, the nude beach was kind of cool. One thing, though, and that’s do not expect to see a population of supermodels. I know the idea is ‘get the sun on your skin’ but wow! Some of those people had a LOT of skin, and some of it was quite old and saggy. We brought beach towels and an umbrella, and set up our personal space. I laid back with my Kindle, sunglasses on, supposedly reading, but also watching the wildlife, as Ben puts it.

“It’s not appropriate to point and giggle,” he warned us.

So, okay ... I read a couple of chapters. Learned more than I likely needed to know about the sizes and shapes of things like boobs and butts and, yes, dicks. Never saw one erect on the beach, though. I understand that you could wander off in the distance if you wanted an interlude, but Bink’s and my and Ben’s ‘interludes’ were a quarter mile offshore, anchored in the shallows beyond the surf line.

Day at the beach? Naturally, we got to the boat, rinsed the salt off on the swim step, then up top, in the cabin, threw something together for dinner.

Bink started it. “That whole circumcision thing...”

“Thing, indeed,” I replied. “I heard of it. Wondered how it looked.”

“Well,” Ben stated, “you got to see some...”

“If we had Internet, I bet we could find...” Bink posed.

“You could.”

“Don’t think I’d like it,” I told my partners. “Ben’s is the only one I ever experienced.”

“Me too,” Bink said. Her eyes flashed. “Bed. Time to explore!”

So Ben’s our anatomy lesson.

“That’s what this is, then,” I said, tracing a ring around his dick. “Circumcision scar.”

He shook. “Yes.”

“Don’t get hard yet. We’re learnin’,” Bink giggled, knowing she was just about asking the impossible of him. Might’ve been easier if we had some clothes on, though.

He showed us how he could stretch the skin over the head of his dick. We’ve done that. Just never looked at it in the form of something that was permanent.

“Nope,” Bink grinned. “My purple plum. I like it like this.”

“You have to share.”

He really gets hard when we share him.

“And tits,” Bink said. “That’s quite a range...”

“Bigger spread than dicks,” I laughed. “I don’t feel bad. I mean, there were a couple of ‘em that I thought were pretty, even though they were bigger, but some sagged...”

“And that bleach blonde lady...”

“Fake,” Ben said. “Couple of fake ones.”

“Sara’s are gonna sag,” Bink said, “more than they do.”

“I hope mine don’t, right, Ben?” I looked at my mate. “Or maybe you want a pair of those big ol’ balloon ones...”

Bink picked up the tease, “ ... with big ol’ nipples and areolas the size of pancakes...”

He tossed her over and latched on to one of hers. “Strawberries,” he hissed, nipping one, then rolled me beside her. “All the strawberries I’ll ever need.”

Sometimes we really do keep each other on a simmer all day. Nudity on the beach was a simmer. Here, clean, fresh, naked in bed together, the pot boils over.

We spent three days in Pensacola, then eased eastward. Ben says ‘armpit of Florida’. Water’s clear, but the shallows extend way off from shore in most places. Looking at the charts, calling Ada’s draft five feet, there’s a lot of the coast where holding the three-mile limit is also a good way to keep your keel out of the mud. And in some places, three miles isn’t enough.

Oh, well, that’s why we have charts, both paper and electronic. And a depth-finder, and in the locker on the forepeak, there’s a lead line – big lead weight on the end of a string with knots and ribbons. High tech, that thing is. You basically drop it over the side, let it hit the bottom, and see how much string is out.

The knots mark fathoms – that’s six feet, and if you read American literature, there’s ol’ Mark Twain, one of my favorites. If you drop the line and you’re at the second knot, on the Mississippi river in the 1800s, that call was “By the mark, twain!” or translated “Hey, you with the captain hat. The water’s twelve feet deep here!” Well done, Mister Clemens.

As long as the seas stay under three or four feet and there’s no crazy wind, we can just find us a spot with a good ten feet and drop anchor. Total solitude, depending on where we stop. If we aren’t careful, we get into one of those lanes everybody uses to get offshore to fish.

Otherwise ... I have a picture of Bink at the top of the mast, nude.

And like I said, drop the tender in the water, load us and a few things, and off we go. Snorkeling. Spearfishing. Lobstering. This isn’t the ideal place for lobsters, but here we are, a net, the spear, and look for things on the bottom that a bashful lobster might hide under. Poke the stick, the lobster comes out. Put the net behind him, wave the stick, he scoots back and he’s in the net. Three of ‘em? Mealtime.

Of course, a week of this and that Brazilian steakhouse is going to start showing up on my horizon as a mirage.

And besides me and Bink and Ben in the water, there are other things.

Sharks. We went into the water to do a little swimming and a little spearfishing. Poked a nice-looking fish, stuck him in the mesh sack we used for such things, and in a very short time Bink tapped me and pointed. Shark of indeterminate species. Maybe four or five feet long.

I did NOT panic, despite Bink saying that unlike an excited octopus, I left a BROWN cloud in the water, but I headed for the boat. She followed me. Ben brought up the rear, climbing up behind us, trying to explain curiosity and sharks and I’m countering with blood in the water.

Yeah, I know ... thirty times more people die every year from insect stings than from marine life, but I’m imagining that a few hundred times more people run into stinging insects than find themselves in the Gulf of Mexico in the vicinity of a shark that thinks you are carrying his lunch in a pouch on your belt.