Chapter 2

Surprisingly, considering my age and the last time I'd slept, by the time the sun had risen and there was movement below decks I was feeling awake and alert. Spirit moved through the swell that indicated that something was pushing energy into the sea in the form of wind, probably a storm, but the swell was long and low showing that it was also very far away.

I made a mental note to ask Li about the weather. It would affect us a lot more now that we were on a smaller vessel than the cruise ship we had abandoned just a few hours before.

One by one the team came on deck, some wearing a swim costume, some nothing at all, but all of them with a mug of something hot to drink. Annie came up through the companion way carefully carrying a mug in both her hands and made her way to the wheelhouse.

"Momma Sharon says that your breakfast will be ready soon. Momma Julie is eating her's now and will take over for you while you eat." She handed me my cup of tea, smiled and skipped back to the hatch and down the steps. She was quite obviously feeling a lot better this morning and her spontaneous joyful skipping brought smiles to those of us who saw her.

So far, it was a grand morning.

A while later Julie appeared through the hatch and, carrying her mug, made her way to the wheelhouse.

"Morning, Lover." She gave me a quick kiss.

"Morning, did you sleep well?"

"I did and could have slept longer, but the movement of the boat made me want to get up and watch the sea from the deck."

I hummed my agreement and stood back from the wheel to allow her to 'take over' the helm. Not that I was steering since Jeeves was on duty. I'd christened the auto-pilot Jeeves sometime in the night. It must be a sailor thing since every sailor I ever knew called the auto-pilot something.

"Where are we going?"

I pointed towards the front of the boat "That way."

"Idiot! I meant where are we headed for?"

"I don't rightly know just at the moment since I only have a very vague idea of where we are."

"I don't understand..." She would have continued, but I interrupted her.

"I don't want to say anything now and then have to repeat it for everyone else. Let me have my breakfast then we will all have a meeting where we decide a few things. I'll tell you and everyone else then. Okay?"

She looked impatient. "I guess..."

I left her and went below. I found a hive of activity as the ladies were organising supplies, breakfast, clothes and other things. I knew much better than to interrupt so I sat at the table and waited. Sure enough, one of my wives glanced over to me and made a comment to the others. Ayesha filled a plate with food and brought it over to me.

"Don't say anything," she admonished as I opened my mouth to ask a question, "Eat!"

She gave me a toe-curling kiss and returned to the gaggle of women organising stuff.

Once my heart had slowed a bit from the kiss I dug into the food they had prepared. Bacon, sausages and fried bread. No eggs or tomatoes, those had all gone weeks before. Oh well, you can't have everything and it was delicious even so.

After I had eaten and drunk another mug of tea, I went back on deck. This time everyone below followed and we found ourselves comfortable places to sit, lean or stand depending on our preferences and I found myself being looked at by all pairs of eyes, even Julie as she stood by the wheelhouse still 'on watch'.

Smitty was the first to speak.

"What now?" he paused for a moment as if in thought "We're off the ship and moving towards somewhere, but I'd like to know where and how long it will take us to get there." He looked at me.

"For the moment I can't say exactly where we are, not until I've done some navigation. Once I've a better idea of where we are then I'll be able to tell you how long it will take, very approximately, to get where we are going."

I took a swallow of my tea.

"As for where we are going, well, that's not my decision."

There was a moments silence before everyone tried to talk at the same time.

"Hold on!" I had to raise my voice. "I can sail this boat anywhere in the world, but I cannot and will not decide where you want to go. We will have to discuss it and decide. We know that there are three important things we have to find. Food, water and protection. We have plenty of food and water for now, but we have to find another source before we run out. So where do we go and what do we want to achieve when we get there?"

I pointed to Jenny who wanted to say something.

"We're going to be heading for the States or the Caribbean?" I nodded. "So, does anyone know of somewhere on the East Coast or on one of the islands that is going to give us somewhere to start a community?"

Once again many voices started to talk and I had to raise my voice again.

"Why don't we all write down our ideas about locations, their advantages and disadvantages and then read all of them before we try to decide anything about that. I think I've a more important subject to discuss before we decide on where we want to start our community."

"You want to decide the way the community is going to live and some basic rules." Sharon said quietly.

"Exactly."

I looked at all of the people that had accompanied me off the cruise ship.

"There are many things I personally do not want in the community where I live. I don't want lawyers, or priests, politicians or any other type of person that wishes to control or regulate the lives of other people. Look at us," I waved at us all, "We are three families engaging in plural marriages. I don't want anyone to tell me that we are wrong to do this, nor do I want many of the restrictions that we had before IT happened. We have a chance to start again and I, for one, don't want to carry forward a lot of baggage from the past, especially irrelevant baggage."

There was silence on deck, only the noise of the sea against the hull and Spirit continued to move onward to an unknown destination.

After a few moments Sharon spoke again. "I'd like to put forward a suggestion for a rule. I've decided I like being naked, so I'd like to suggest that one of our rules is that being unclothed is suitable at any time and never an invitation to intimacy. If he or she says no, it means NO!"

There were murmurs of agreement with this.

The normally silent April & May surprised us by speaking up.

"We would like to say that we think..."

"that any form of bigotry should not be permitted..."

"not racial, or religious, or sexist..."

"or ageist. Nothing that would be grounds for one person..."

"hating another."

They looked at each other for a moment before turning to look at me and continuing.

"We would also like to ask James..."

"if he would take us to be his wives."

For a few moments I was speechless, talk about a non sequitur. I just stared at the twins standing there in their dental floss and fluff bikinis.

Li laughed. "James, you should see your face!"

That broke what was beginning to be an awkward silence and an easy feeling returned to the company.

"Okay, you may think it's funny but you're not the one being asked." I grinned and then turned to April and May. "I can't give you an answer to that right now. I must first ask my wives what they think about it."

Now it was Liz's turn to speak. "I'm happy with it, but I also want to talk with the others about it. Can we get on with some work now and think about what we have discussed?"

I looked around and saw nods of agreement with this.

"Okay, then, we have a ship to get into order. Harry, you're the ship's purser, or organiser. Who do you need to get whatever it was you were doing below sorted out?

"I need Silvia and Joanne, Annie, Smitty and Jenny."

"Okay you lot go with Harry and get below sorted out. Ayesha, your turn at the helm, Julie grab yourself a drink and join the rest of us back here."

It only took a few moments for the crowd to sort itself out.

"Bob, you're our engineer, your responsibility is the mechanical aspect of the ship. You decide what needs to be done, when and how many people you need to help. Talk with Harry about manpower when required." He nodded his head. "Do you need to do anything in the engine room right now?"

"Not at the moment, later on I'll go down and carry out the daily check but for now I'm available to help here."

"Daisy, you're the ship's bosun and you're in charge of carpentry and building and such like. Strictly speaking a bosun is also responsible for the ropes, sails and rigging, but I know more about this than you, so I'll take that responsibility for now. Is that okay?"

"Very much. I was wondering if I was going to be anything but a passenger on this boat, this makes me feel much better. I'm going to be useful!"

"Good, okay people, this here ship is schooner. If you want to be technical about it she's a clipper-bowed, cutter-headed, two-masted gaff rigged schooner."

I smiled at the blank faces in front of me.

"Which, being translated, means that she has a front end, or bow, like one of the old clipper ships such as the Cutty Sark or the Thermopylae. That chunk of wood sticking out of the front of the ship is a bowsprit. Cutter-headed means that she has two triangular sails in front of the foremast," I pointed to the front-most mast, "Two masted means just what it says. Gaff rigged means that the two main sails, the fores'l," I pointed to the sail between the two masts, "And the mains'l," I pointed to the sail behind the rear mast, "Are not triangular but trapezoidal or vaguely rectangular. They both have a piece of wood, or gaff, at the top. You'll be able to see better when we get one of them up."

I took a deep breath.

"Finally, a schooner has a smaller mast at the front than the masts at the back. Don't worry about remembering all this, you'll pick up the correct terms as we go along. However there is one thing that I must mention. The word 'now' is a reserved word, that is you don't use it when asking someone to do something unless it means that they drop everything and do the job immediately. I can't stress enough how important this is. If you hear anyone tell you to do something 'now', do it right away and ask questions afterwards. Most of the time sailing is a laid back, relaxing task but occasionally things go wrong or need doing promptly and I won't be able to spare the time to explain why until after the task has been done. Are you all clear on that?"

They all nodded.

"Good, so let's get on with tidying up the ship and getting her ready to sail."

For the next few hours we did just that. I gave the 'now' speech to the crew below decks and taught everyone how to handle ropes safely and basic boat and personal safety.

One surprise was Chang. He came up to me when I had a breather from school.

"I used to be in the Korean Navy." I raised my eyebrows and waited for him to continue. "Nothing special, just a conscripted body like most of my fellow sailors, but I do know something about small ships and boats."

"Would you, by any chance know anything about the care and use of ships tenders?" I pointed to the two large inflatable dinghies and the large wooden dinghy that were the tenders for Spirit.

He smiled at me and bowed slightly.

"I do and what I do not know I will find out."

"Good. You are the ship's coxswain and those tenders are your responsibility. Talk to Bob or Daisy if you need their services and Harry if you need anyone else to help you with things like painting and washing."

He bowed to me again, this time I returned his bow, and off he went to inspect his charges.

"Harry!" I stuck my head inside the companion way hatch and called to her.

"Yes!"

"Do you have a moment?"

"Coming."

I went down into the mail saloon and Harry joined me at the table.

"We need to organise watches and rotas so that everyone gets a good amount of sleep but all the works gets done as well. I'd like to arrange 3 watches using the traditional British watch system, Midnight to 4am, 4am to 8am, 8am to noon, noon to 4pm, 4pm to 6pm, 6pm to 8pm and 8pm to midnight."

"Why the two hour watches from 4pm to 8pm?"

"The main reason is that it results in an odd number of watches, so if you are on the midnight to 4am watch today, you won't be tomorrow."

"And why at that time of the day?"

"The main meal was the evening meal and the two short dog watches, as they were called, also meant that the food was served in a shorter time which helped the galley crew."

At that moment one of the aforementioned galley crew, Li, came over with two mugs of tea. She put these on the table and slipped onto my lap.

"Sorry to interrupt you but this is important." She gave me an instant boner kiss and she knew it as she wriggled around on my boner until she was panting. Breaking the kiss she looked at me for a moment. "It's my turn later." She got off my lap and went back to the galley.

I looked at Harry somewhat dazed.

"They've organised their own rota system. I'd get plenty of rest if I were you. Bob, Pete and Smitty are all going to need their rest as well." She smiled. "We all have our rotas."

"Oh man! Where's the doctor? I need some vitamins!"

Harry laughed.

"Going back to what I was saying before I was interrupted, I'd also like to arrange the watches so that everyone gets to spend time on watch with everyone else over a period of time."

I though for a moment or two.

"Joanne, Silvia as cooks, Bob as the engineer and myself as the only person that knows how to sail, are not in the watch system, we have our own jobs to do. So that leaves 17 others to form the watches from. Can you arrange that?"

"Should I include Annie in the watches?"

"Good point, let's ask her. Annie?"

She came to the table. Her eyes were bright and joyful. "What?"

I explained what Harry and I were talking about and asked her the question.

"Um... I think I'd like to be included. Mom & Dad didn't let me do that, they thought I was too young, but I'm not and it isn't as though I was going to be on watch all by myself."

She grabbed my hand. "Please Daddy James, please can I be in a watch too?"

Once again I saw that female pleading look that men can't ignore. I looked at Harry who nodded.

"Okay, squirt, you're in."

"Thank you"

She flung her arms around my neck and hugged me.

"I'm going to tell Mommy Sharon and Mommy Li." And she dashed off.

Around noon I gathered up all the things I needed to take a noon sight and went up on deck. It didn't take long before I was surrounded by most of the crew wanting to know what I was doing and why.

"Pipe down! I can't do this and answer your questions and the noon sight takes about 30 minutes to complete. I'll explain after that."

"Can I be your recorder?" Annie was bouncing excitedly up and down on her toes. "I did it for Dad a few times so I know what to do."

"Okay." I handed here the notepad, pencil and ship's chronometer which I'd found down below. It seemed to telling the correct time, I had decided that it was going to be close enough for what I needed. Annie clipped the clock to the notepad and started drawing columns on the paper.

"How many sights are you going to take?"

"Seven, at 5 minute intervals starting around fifteen minutes before noon."

Annie looked at me. "Seven? That's more than usual."

"Yes, I'm out of practice so more is better than less."

"Okay."

I spend a few moments checking out the sextant alignment and comparing the values with those printed on a slip of paper in the sextant box. Not surprisingly they matched so I knew that the sextant was in good order. At around a quarter to noon I took the first sight.

"Mark!"

Annie noted the time and wrote down the figures I read out from the sextant. Six more times I repeated the process until the series of sights was completed.

"Now what?" asked Pete.

"Okay, here's some theory about what I've just done and what I am going to do." I sat down.

"I have seven angles and times and I am going to plot them on a piece of graph paper and then draw a curve through the seven points." I demonstrated with a freehand sketch on a piece of paper."

That is going to tell me two things. Firstly the angle that the sun was at it highest." I pointed to the top of the curve and then drew a horizontal line to the angle-axis of the graph. "Secondly, the time at which this angle occurred. Here I drew a vertical line from the top of the curve down to the time axis. Then I am going to look a few things up in the nautical tables and from these two figures I'll get a latitude and longitude which I can plot on the chart. That will give us our approximate position."

"Only approximate?"

"Yes. I'm out of practise with the sextant, I don't know how accurate the clock is and the graph I draw may only be approximate as well. But it doesn't matter since I only need an approximate position for now. Later on this afternoon, around 4 or 5 o'clock I'll take another sight."

I stood up and stretched.

"That sight will give me another angle of the sun at a given time. I'll compare that to what the angle of the sun should be if we are in the estimated position I think we will be by then, and the difference will give me a circle around my estimated position." I paused. "Well, it will be a semi-circle since I will also know if the observed angle is greater or less than the expected angle so I'll know which side of the estimated position we are on. Over the period of a few days successive sights will become more accurate. Still, the noon sight I've just taken will probably be within 50 nautical miles of our actual position and that's good enough for now."

I smiled at the amazement on the faces around me.

"Fifty miles?" This came from Julie.

"Probably much less, but no more than that. We're quite some way from land and 50 miles is not really significant."

I left then and went below to the chart table followed by Annie.

"Will you show me how to do the plotting and stuff?"

"I'll do better than that, you can do it as well and we can compare results." She beamed at me. "Take a piece of graph paper and plot the sights like this."

For the next 45 minutes I explained how to convert the sights into a position on the chart, showing her how to use the tables to get the results. She worked carefully and made notes about what she was doing and why. Finally, we plotted our positions on the chart, they were no more than 2 miles apart, an insignificant difference compared to the expanse of ocean around our position.

I looked around when we had finished to see most of the crew nearby watching us.

"So, where are we?" Pete, once again, was the first person to ask.

"Just about here." I pointed to our pencil marks on the chart.

"That's a long way from anywhere."

"Yes, but at least we know now which direction to go in once we decide where we want to go."

"Speaking of which I want to write down a few ideas."

"Do that, and anyone else that has some ideas should do the same. In about half an hour or so I'm going to need help to hoist some sail and we'll start sailing this ship as she was meant to be sailed."

"Great!" and with that he took a pencil and paper and sat at the saloon table and started writing.

Inspired by his example most of the others did the same. I went back up on deck and walked to the wheelhouse. Li was watching the helm. I told her about our position and let her go below for a few moments to look at the chart. On her return I remembered to ask her about the weather.

"As our resident weather expert I've a question for you. I noticed a long, low swell this morning and that made me think about what was causing it. Have you any ideas about the weather situation?"

"It's probably too far away to affect us and the current situation looks to be stable for a few days. The barometer is high and steady and the cloud formations don't indicate anything troubling. I'll keep an eye on things anyway."

"Why don't you use the ship's log to note the observations and readings and then we can see any trends that occur?"

"Great idea, or it would be if I knew what the ship's log is!"

I reached behind her and lifted an A4 note book from a shelf at the back of the wheelhouse. In it the previous owners had recorded their positions and observations as they traveled. I opened the log to the last entry and turned over to a new page. I entered the date and the time and then added the latitude and longitude of our noon positions so recently calculated.

"Okay, whenever you take a reading note it down in here against the date and time. Anyone on watch will do the same every hour even if it is just to note that nothing special had happened."

Li took the log and pulled a small notepad out of her pocket. Turning to a page she copied the figures from it into the correct place in the log. With a smile at me she returned the log to it's former position on the shelf.

I gave her a quick kiss and then went over to the companion way hatch. I stuck my head inside.

"All hands on deck, let's get some sail up!"

There was a scramble of people from every exit and in less than 30 seconds everyone was waiting for instructions of what to do next.

It took quite some time to get the sails up as I needed to explain every step of the process. There was a good wind but not too much that I contemplated only raising part of the sails. No, the wind was a nice one and from the starboard (right) side. I suppose that it took us the better part of two hours to get the sails up, in time we would be able to do the same thing in less than 15 minutes, but for now, 2 hours was a good time. Finally, when the sails were set correctly, I turned to Bob.

"Finished with engines."

He grinned and went to the wheelhouse and turned off the engines. The low rumble died away and we were left with the noise of the sea swishing along the side of the boat. Despite our becoming used to the noise of the engine over the hours, it seemed to be very quiet without them.

I went back to the wheelhouse and looked at the speed. We were travelling along and a respectable 13 knots, probably about as fast as this ship would go without pushing her hard and more than enough for what we needed. I showed Li and Sarah, who was about to take her turn at the helm, how to fill in the ship's log and then I went below for a sleep. I was joined by Sharon and Liz and we cuddled up together in the master cabin.

I was content.

Later on that afternoon with Annie again helping, I took another sun sight and reduced it to a position on the chart. The second sight differed from the first sight by about 10 miles, but I wasn't bothered about that, as I had told everyone earlier, I was out of practise. Still, it was nice to know that I was still able to take the sight and do the calculations, it gave me a feeling of satisfaction. I felt like I was in control of my life again, something that had been missing since IT happened. I realised that it was still only partial control, but it felt infinitely better than before.

Having plotted the sight I took some time to read what the others had written about possible places to head for. Needless to say, I could not contribute to that since my area of geographical expertise lay on the other side of the Atlantic. I was pleased to note that most of the crew had given more than one place and one had even put down seven. There were a number of possibilities that looked as though they might be suitable and I made notes on the advantages and disadvantages of all the suggestions.

"James?" A naked Harry sat down beside me.

"What can I do for you?"

"I've made a roster for the watches as you asked for. Take, a look at it and tell me what you think." She handed me a sheet of paper on which she had drawn up the watches.

I read through them carefully. Devising watches is not difficult but what I had asked Harry to do was not simple watches. I wanted everyone to take watches in such a way so that everyone eventually spend a watch with everyone else. With seventeen people this was not straightforward, at least I didn't think it was, but Harry had come up with an ingenious scheme for the watch system where the crew rotated though the watches. Clever, very clever. Interestingly it only worked because there were an odd number of people in the watch system. I also wondered if a non-prime number of crew would be as effective.

"Very nice! Pin it up on the board over the chart table and get everyone to look at it. I looked at the time. It's 15 minutes to the next watch change so it goes live then. Thanks."

She leant over and gave me a kiss. "You're welcome." She got up to put the watch list on the board.

I went to the galley where Joanna and Sylvia, dressed only in aprons, were preparing something.

"Are you both well?" I asked the galley at large.

"I am." This from Sylvia. "This is so much more fun than being on the cruise ship."

"Oh yes," continued Joanna, "it definitely makes me feel like I'm a useful member of the crew."

"That's good to know. What's the situation with the stores like?"

Sylvia went to a shelf, took down a notebook and opened it. "Based on what we were eating back on the cruise ship we have enough food to last over six months. Our concern is fruit and vegetables. We have plenty of meat, flour, sugar and other staples, but no fruit except for preserves and no vegetables except what we found in cans. Sharon has some multi-vitamin pills for us to take but we really should find fresh stuff as quickly as possible." She tapped her finger on the page of the notebook. "We're keeping track of the stores and what we use in here and also the projection for how long the food will last."

"That's great..."

I would have said more but there was a whoop from up on deck and several of the crew started shouting. I was out of the galley and up on deck like a shot. A cluster of people stood around the starboard quarter (back section of the boat on the right hand side). I pushed my way through until I could see what the fuss was about.

Pete and Moe were struggling with fishing rods. They had obviously found some fishing gear from somewhere and had decided to try it out. They both had catches and were trying to reel them in while desperately trying to avoid getting their lines tangled.

"Moe," I called "Move down the deck and get around the stern a bit. Pete, you stay where you are." Moe moved to comply and with her farther away from Pete their lines were less likely to get tangled.

It took several minutes for them to get their fish landed and it wasn't helped by the pace we were making through the water. But land them they did and we had two quite large fish floundering around on the deck. Don't ask me what they were, I'm not a fisherman. I pushed my way back through the crew and took one of the belaying pins from the pin rail around the main mast. Returning to the flopping fish I hit them, one at a time, just behind the head as hard as I could, killing them. The deck was a mess. Fish scales and slime everywhere.

"Someone dip a bucket over the side and clean the deck. On second thoughts, get me a bucket and let me do it, there's a trick to it." Someone fetched one of the heavy plastic buckets on a rope and passed it to me.

"Never drop the bucket in the water where you are standing when the boat is moving. It will fill with water and then the movement of the boat will pull the rope out of your hands and you lose the bucket. Do this instead."

I coiled the rope into my left hand making sure that I held the end of the rope tightly in my left hand. I took the rope about 3 feet from the bucket in my right hand and leant over the side over the boat. I whirled the bucket around and threw it as far forward as I could. The bucket flew through the air, the rope uncoiling from my left hand. The bucket sank into the water and started to fill. As soon as it was level with me as the boat sailed past I hauled it out of the water. The bucket was only half full so I emptied it and tried again. It took several attempts to get a bucket full which I then threw onto the deck to wash the mess into the sea. I repeated the procedure until the deck was clean.

"The trick," I told the crew watching, "is to get the bucket full and lift it out of the water before it starts to drag behind. When we are travelling a little bit slower you can all have a try, but right now Spirit is travelling too fast for experimentation. If you miss-timed it, at best we could lose a bucket and at worst you could lose your fingers." I looked at Pete and Moe.

"You like fishing, then?"

Moe looked a little sheepish. "Not really, but we found this stuff under our bunk and decided to try it out."

"Good idea, now we have some fresh fish to eat. Two things, don't fish when the engine is running in case the lines get tangled in the propellers and the cooks don't get to clean the fish, the person that catches the fish does that."