Chapter 21

Bink’s turn:

The next morning, we brought Ada to the fuel dock and topped off the tanks. No, we weren’t near empty. We could do ‘trans-Atlantic’ if we wanted to do it. Ben, though, is all about being safe.

“And fuel will be MORE expensive at Key West,” he said.

So, off we go again, heading southwest, getting cleared of the shallows, also getting a bit offshore to cut down on random traffic. This IS South Florida, you know. Boating’s a big attractor (I mean, WE’RE here, for example) and if we desire a bit of privacy, getting ten miles away from the coast thins the crowds out. Like right now, there’s not another boat on the horizon and I’m taking advantage of balmy temperatures and a few clouds.

I know it raises Ben’s blood pressure when Mandy and I scale the mast in the nude. Of course nudity adds NOTHING to enhancing vision, unless you count Ben looking up at us.

For me, it’s a little exercise in freedom.

It also gives me pause to think – looking down past my feet, I see my whole world as chubby Ada pushes her way through the water. I can gaze astern at the track we’re cutting through the water, straight back as far as the eye can see. Aside from the workmanlike throb of the little John Deere diesel that’s pushing us, this is serene.

“If you’re gonna zone out, we can rig you the bosun’s chair,” Mandy said, breaking my reverie.

“Nah, but you gotta admit...”

“I do. And I like the idea that the bottom’s shallow enough here to anchor for the night.”

That’s our plan – motor along until near dusk, drop the anchor, turn on the anchor light, and the three of us do what the three of us do so well – live, laugh, love...

And read. One cannot engage in sex continuously, you know, although we have had some memorable attempts. Eventually, though, there comes the most delicious of naps, and then, barring necessary activities, time to read.

We all read, and we read a lot of different things – fiction, non-fiction, history, how-to, sci-fi, fantasy. Time at the helm when we’re making a passage, that’s alone time, the workload is low, you know, basically scan the horizon, check the radar, make sure the autopilot hasn’t lost its mind, all the engine gauges are in the green, and READ.

It’s a good way to pass three or four uneventful hours of my watch, especially knowing that at the end, I go back into the cabin, take off a few clothes, slip into bed beside somebody who loves me, and by careful manipulation of certain anatomical features, determine if that person wishes to engage in a little ‘tickle, wiggle, and sigh” or just cuddle me to sleep, where ‘cuddle’ is bi-directional and low energy.

And sometimes reading is what we do when bellies have been filled, urges have been satisfied, and there’s that delicious languor before slumber.

But right now the sun’s getting low in the west and we’re looking at the bottom twenty feet below us. The anchor goes down with a splash, followed by thirty feet of chain, then some three-quarter inch nylon rope. We let out a hundred and twenty feet of line to go with the chain. We expect nothing from the weather nor the seas that makes us decide on a more secure anchorage.

The anchor line gets cleated off, there’s a short bit of reverse on the engine to pull on the whole setup to make sure the anchor’s set in the sandy bottom, and we’re in for the night. Ada’s rocking on a gentle swell. Gonna be a good night’s sleep. Warm enough for the back deck to be an option. All it takes is a few minutes of rigging the air mattress and stowing the bimini and we’ll have a billion stars for a night light.

“Back deck?” I posed.

Mandy grinned. “Oh, yeah...”

It’s quite idyllic. Mom’s got a playlist of what she calls her ‘Sail Away’ songs. I’ve got them on my iPad. I asked her many times why she never acted on the sentiment.

“By the time I was old enough,” she told me one time, “I was married and mother to YOU. Kinda puts a damper on unrealistic dreams.”

And now I’m living Mom’s ‘unrealistic dream’. Okay, WE are living the dream.

We’re also making ninety miles of progress each day towards Key West. And on the second day...

We have a marine band radio. Several of them, actually, one permanently installed in the pilothouse with an antenna stuck on top of the mast, and three handhelds. Lots of people call those ‘walkie-talkies’. They work on the VHF marine band, which is basically line-of-sight, so that antenna on the mast, way up over the water, gives it good range.

It’s on all the time, too. We always monitor Channel 16, the marine emergency channel, and our primary constantly scans the other channels for traffic. Channel 13 gets a workout when we get closer to shore, but out here? Nothing.

Until yesterday. Channel 16 popped up with a Mayday call. Somebody in trouble. This is serious stuff. Faking an emergency call is a big deal, especially when the Coast Guard gets involved. Faking? They’ll track you down, prosecute and fine the daylights out of you.

But the speaker blats “Mayday, mayday, mayday! Fisherman Tight Line. We lost our motors and we have a fire!” And repeated.

Ben grabbed the mike. “Tight Line this is Ada Z. We see the smoke. Headed your way. Uh, keep calling. Might get the Coast Guard, too.”

Ben spun the wheel, pointing Ada’s bow at the column of smoke on the horizon while pushing the throttle for more horsepower.

More horsepower doesn’t get us much in the way of speed. Displacement hulled vessels have a real physical limit. Ours is eight and a half knots – just a hair under ten miles an hour. From where we’re looking out of our pilothouse, the horizon’s three and a half miles off.

“First aid kit and fire extinguisher,” Ben said.

As we watched, the plume of smoke disappeared. I’m thinking either the fire’s out or they sank. Morbid thought.

Coast Guard showed up on the channel, too. We went back and forth with them about our location and intentions, steadily plodding onward. Ben determined we’d get there before the much faster conveyances they had, including helicopters, but not by much. Wasn’t long before we could see the boat. Looked like one of those popular offshore fishing boats we see so many of – twenty-something feet long, a couple of big outboard motors, a center console with a shade. And two guys looking back at us as we charged forth.

As we got closer, the problem became evident. Both of their outboards were toast – cowlings burnt off. The aft part of the boat had some obvious burnt parts. The two occupants were in the bow, one of them shirtless, victim of fairly obvious flash burns over his face and chest. Like a really BAD sunburn.

Ben was handling the helm as we neared. I imagine the guys in the little boat were surprised to see two teen girls handling lines, but we have plenty of practice and we know what we’re doing. We already had the fenders over the side, tossed the lines to tie them loosely to our boat.

Ben put Ada into neutral, so we’re just adrift out there. He came down, we had a round of introductions during which time a Coast Guard helicopter showed up. They dropped two pararescue guys into the water. Those guys climbed onto our stern, since we have a swim step that fishing boats don’t generally have, then they made their way onto the little boat.

The little boat’s dead. Listening to conversation between the boaters and the Coasties, it seems they had trouble with one of the two engines, decided to try to fix it, leaked some fuel – gasoline – and had a fire. Their fire extinguisher killed the flames and buckets of water cooled the mess so it wouldn’t re-ignite. But no more power.

And now we see a Coast Guard boat coming up, and he’s a LOT faster than us.

The other boat got here. More Coasties checked out the fisherman, satisfied themselves that it wasn’t about to erupt in flames again, then talked about towing it back to port.

Ben offered, a Coastie turned him aside gently. “We got it.”

Sort of ended our big rescue event. We untied from the little boat and eased off towards a mooring for the night.

We talked about the incident, how it could’ve been a lot worse. Ben reminded us about our emergency arrangements. We’ve got fire extinguishers all over the boat, including a big one that can flood the engine room with extinguishing agent. I think it’s carbon dioxide. And we’ve got an official, certified life raft in a capsule on the deck in case Ada’s sinking, you know, and we’ve got all the required floatation devices, so we’re as safe as we can be for voluntarily divorcing ourselves from land. And we have radio, both the regular VHF we use all the time, and an emergency thing, an EPIRB, that will transmit our location if we’re in real trouble on the water.

Boat stuff. It’s one aspect of my life that I really like – a bit of hard technical, like caring for the engine and the radios, and just good old-fashioned know-how – knots and line-handling and boat handling and navigation. Ada’s a neat home, really, but unlike most peoples’ homes, mine is capable of moving, like today, forty miles closer to Key West, then anchored, rocking gently.

A scan of the horizon shows us basically alone, well, there’s one boat about two miles off to our south but he’s apparently heading away from us, so we can get into our ‘anchored for the night’ routine.

That’s everybody naked and over the side, a wonderful substitute for a dedicated bath routine. Call me a perv if you want, but I like seeing us naked. Seeing Mandy and Ben swimming, floating, sometimes getting together in playful or sexual ways, that makes me happy. The fact that we have so many pictures of US together, that should tell you something. I get almost as excited seeing Ben and Mandy together as I do for me and Ben or me and Mandy or all three of us, and then that makes me start thinking about the BIG pile where we add Mom and Sara.