Chapter 9: Windshift - Exploring

Harbors aren't the cleanest of waters. In this day, in this age and on this planet, the jakes were on little platforms out over the water.

A planet with no moon has no tides.

The toilet doesn't flush. The only time the harbor flushed was during a storm and the weather had been decent

Neither one of them smelled good after the plunge.

In the future, the near future, islanders were going to die because of the water.

She had no intention, the thought of helping him out of the water never crossed her mind. The wharf had steps cut in every so often, he made his way to a set and slopped up the steps. He untied the boat, fired up the diesel and putted out of the harbor and up the coast.

Finding clean water, he anchored a little way off the beach, dropped the stern swim ladder and dove in.

'Interesting, ' he thought. 'That's a hull down there.

'Hold on a second.' Yes. 'It was moving slightly.'

Rocking back and forth with the slight beach wave action ... wash and return.

'How long has it been down?' he wondered.

The bottom had the normal growth that all wood hulls had, but the sides that he could see were clean. There was a very slight trickle of bubbles coming up as the hull rocked.

He thought, 'if that's only down about 30 feet, I could tie a cable to the bow cleat and use the diesel to pull it closer to shore.'

Fetching a mask, he rummaged around in the forward anchor locker, found the spare rode and tied it off to a large stern crank capstan. He tossed the rode over the side. It actually landed on the hull.

'Well, that'll make it easy to find.'

"Hey cousin!" he hollered. "What is your name anyway?"

"Wendy," she replied.

It figures.

"Wendy, there's a boat hull down there. I'm going to try and pull it closer to the beach."

He hyperventilated while he was tying a couple of weights to his ankles. The weights had a long thin line attached. After he tied off the spare rode, he planned on dropping the weights, using the thin line to pull them up after he was back on board. He spit in the mask, washed it out with water and slipped a pair of big scuba type fins on his feet.

Just a minuscule moment before he jumped, Wendy started to say something, but it was too late. He was already in the water and headed for the bottom.

"I can do it," she was trying to tell him. 'Well, fuckit!' she thought, and dove in after him. Her tail deployed, her back gills opened and the water witch was in her second element.

They both reached bottom at the same time. While she at the stern, he at the bow, he never noticed she was there.

The problem was, she could stay down forever, he was good for 4 minutes.

He tied the rode to the bow cleat with a bowline. The boat hull moved easily.