by Liz Alden
I turned to Eivind and Marcella. “What about you two?”
The smug smile on Eivind’s face slipped to mock horror. “Ew.”
Marcella gasped as Jonas rolled his eyes. “Ew? You would be lucky to have me, you idiota!” She pinched his side.
“You’re old enough to be my mother, heks!”
Jonas calmly leaned back and drank his coffee. I leaned over to him. “What does heks mean?”
“‘Witch.’”
When the sibling-like banter dissolved to hair pulling—on Eivind’s part—Jonas gently chided his brother.
Eivind straightened and grinned at me. “The most important point is, I am single.”
“Stop flirting with our new crew member, Eivind,” Jonas said.
Four
Eivind grinned and raised an eyebrow. I bit my lip. I opened my mouth to feed the fire, but then Jonas’s words sank in.
“Wait, I’m your new crew member? Really? Even if you don’t know me yet?”
Beside me, Jonas shrugged. “Marcella has been a crew member for two months. We accepted her after hanging out only a few times. You, you will be here for one night. We probably will not need you to do anything.”
“Oh. Well, that’s true.” Four linehandlers were required, but the position of the boat might mean only two of the linehandlers would be needed—or none. I told myself that wasn’t a bad thing. It meant I wouldn’t accidentally screw anything up and would still be able to transit the canal.
“We are lucky to have Marcella. She is overworked and underpaid,” Jonas said.
Marcella smiled at his teasing. “These boys would have starved without me.”
“I can cook!” Eivind protested.
“No.” Marcella slashed her hand in the air and laughed. “When I first came aboard, you had cans of Spam. When I threw them out, Elayna cried from relief.”
I wrinkled my nose. “What did you make with Spam?”
Eivind leaned forward. “I have this great recipe called—”
Marcella cut him off. “Spamaroni. Eivind, darling, it was Spam and cheese and pasta. Where are the vegetables?”
“But it was so tasty!”
“See, Lila, this is why this boat needs me. Without me, they will arrive in Polynesia with scurvy.”
I laughed and Eivind rolled his eyes. “Lila, I will make my Spamaroni for you. It will be the best dish you have ever put in your mouth. You will fall in love with me and declare my cooking much better than—oof!” Marcella jabbed Eivind with her elbow.
“I am sure the Spamaroni is tasty,” I assured Eivind. “But I think I’m with Marcella on the vegetables. It’ll take a little more greens to make me fall in love with you.”
“Noted.” Eivind winked again, and my stomach flipped.
“What did you do before joining Eik, then?” I asked Marcella. “You were a chef?”
“We met in Antigua, where I worked on a private yacht as a chef. I am from Italy, and the owners liked my cooking style, my dishes from Campania, where I grew up.” She shrugged modestly.
“Sounds like a dream job. Why did you leave that boat?”
“It sounds glamorous, yes, but in reality, the owners were rarely there. Most of the time we catered to charter clients. But on that yacht, we didn’t have many bookings, and I was only cooking for the crew. It was frustrating. When I left the restaurant industry, I envisioned quiet evenings making meals for the owners or for their small dinner parties while exploring the islands.” She shook her head sadly. “Toward the end, I didn’t feel like my food was appreciated.”
“We appreciate your food,” Eivind said.
“Yes, but you will eat anything I put in front of you.” She poked his stomach. “Your belly and I get along quite well. Plus,” she continued, turning back to me, “the big benefit was supposed to be traveling around the islands. We never left Antigua!”
“My stomach will like you just fine too,” I said.
“Don’t get your hopes up too much,” Jonas said. “Our budget is not even close to what Marcella worked with before.”
“But even my cheap meals are delicious,” Marcella countered.
“Of course. I have more refined tastes than my brother and even I know your meals are delicious.”
“Lila, are you on another boat?” Marcella asked me.
“Well, technically, yes. One of the boats, Silver Lining, has been letting me stay on board while I look for a boat to transit. I stayed in the hotel for two nights, but I have to save my money. I’m planning to backpack in South America for a few months after this.”
Marcella asked me a few questions about my backpacking plans. It was hard to concentrate on her—Eivind was watching me. When our eyes met, his lips gave the cutest little quirk, the corners flicking up in pleasure.
Another person came out of the boat, interrupting a story about Brazil. This woman had dishwater-blond hair and a petite build. She loosely put a hand on Jonas’s head and pulled him in to kiss his hair. Eivind’s eyebrows shot up.
“Darling, please make room.”
Jonas motioned to me. I slid down the seat further and he followed, while the new woman sat in the corner by the door.
Jonas leaned back a bit. “Lila, this is Elayna.”
Elayna gave me a limp handshake. “Enchanté. Americans know this word, no?”
“Oh, I’m not American. I’m Australian.”
“Oi! No worries, mate!” Eivind teased me with another wink.
I laid it on hard. “Blimey, that right there’s quite the accent. You sound like you’re about to pop open a stubby and wrestle a kangaroo.”
Eivind laughed. “What is a stubby?”
“Why, a stubby is something you pick up from the bottle-o along with your grog so you can get smashed.”
Eivind laughed harder while Jonas looked slightly horrified. “Is that English?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, but I’ll take it easy on you.”
Jonas eyed me. “You do sound fairly American.”
“Yeah, nah, I’m Aussie, but I don’t have a very strong accent.”
Jonas looked more confused. “Yes, no?”
“What?”
“You said ‘yeah, nah,’ you are from Australia,” Jonas explained.
I blushed. “Oops. Yeah, that’s complicated to explain. It’s, like, yeah, I know I don’t have much of an Aussie accent, but no, in fact, I am not from America.”
Jonas stared at me.
“Yeah, not many non-Aussies understand it either,” I added.
Awkward silence.
“So, Elayna,” I said, changing the topic, “how long have you been on the boat?”
“I have been on the boat since early November.” Her thick French accent made her h’s disappear.
“Elayna found us by walking the docks in the Canaries,” Jonas said, “like you are doing here.”
“Oh?” I said. “You went to the Canaries to find a boat to join?”
“Well, I had a boat lined up,” Elayna started. “I found its owner on a website to match boats and crew. When I arrived, it was a mess. The boat was dirty and the captain drank too much. I started to look for a different boat, and then Eik came in.” Elayna beamed at Jonas.
Eivind rolled his eyes and he and Marcella shared a look.
Elayna turned to me. “Will you be sailing across the Pacific with us?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m just crewing across the canal. Speaking of which, do you have a date for the transit yet?”
Jonas shook his head. “When Robert comes by this afternoon, he’ll bring a guy he calls an admeasurer.” He pronounced the word slowly.
“What is an admeasurer?” Marcella asked, and I was grateful not to be the only one learning something new, at least until I realized Marcella was looking at me. I guess as the only native English speaker, I was expected to know.
I shrugged. “I have no idea. I’ve never heard the word before.”
Jonas spoke up. “Robert says he measures the boa
ts and we have to complete some paperwork. He is the person who will give us the transit date.”
Eivind swallowed his last bite of toast and dusted off his hands. “It is fun to talk to you, Lila, but I have projects to get started on.”
Our little group broke up. The crew all had their own projects to tackle: Marcella left to inventory the galley, Elayna packed up a laptop and went to the lounge to download and research some of their future ports, Eivind had to pickle the watermaker—whatever the hell that meant—and Jonas, who worked remotely on a contract basis, had assignments to catch up on.
I excused myself and promised to be back in the afternoon to meet the agent.
Five
I knocked on the hull of Eik and a face popped into the nearby window. Elayna waved me on board. I climbed into the cockpit and Eivind met me on the stairs.
“Our agent is not here yet, but come in.”
He turned and I followed him down the steep stairs into the main salon of the boat.
This was completely different from Silver Lining. The forward-facing windows let in a huge amount of light, showing me a big round table off to the left and a small couch to the right. The fabric was a deep blue and made of soft material, unlike the couches on Silver Lining, which were just as hard as my mattress.
“Wow. This is amazing. What kind of a boat is this?”
“Eik is an Oyster 56.”
Not that it meant anything to me.
Jonas sat working on his laptop at a desk to my far right. Both women were in the galley around the corner to my left.
Eivind led me forward on the boat to a small hallway. An open door on the left side showed me a small cabin with two bunk beds. The bottom bunk was neatly made and free of clutter. The messier top bunk contained some books and headphones.
The mattresses were tapered, with the narrow end toward the front of the boat. There was room for a small set of cabinets for clothes and whatnot. I couldn’t help myself; I pressed on the mattress and sighed in relief when the memory foam squished underneath the sheet.
“You’ll share this room with Marcella. She has the top bunk and you’ll take the bottom.”
“Is it weird that I’m kicking Elayna out of her room?”
Eivind chuckled. He leaned in and whispered, “I do not think either of them will suffer too much.” His eyebrows waggled and my cheeks heated.
He turned around and put his hand on the door across the hall. “This is the head. You have been using the restrooms at the marina, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Same here. But when we leave the dock to do the transit, we will start using our heads again. Let me show you, and if you need a refresher when you move in, ask, ja?”
The head was very small, so I had to lean in from the hallway while Eivind very matter-of-factly showed me how to use the toilet. Only bodily fluids and toilet paper went into the bowl. He pressed and held a button to fill the bowl with water, then pressed and held another button to flush. The flush was loud, sucking the water down with violence.
“Nothing else goes in the toilet. We have a little bin for female products here.” He opened a cabinet under the sink where there was a small bin with a liner. Extra toilet paper and some cleaning supplies were stacked up on one side. “If you need to clean up, it is all in there. If you take a shit, you will want to flush two or three times, to get it out of the pipes and make sure the toilet is clean for the next person, okay?”
“No worries.”
“Good. Any questions, let me know. One of the joys of cruising is that occasionally we all have to deal with our literal shit together.” Eivind grinned.
“Oh God, I bet there are great stories.”
Eivind knocked on the wall behind the toilet. “Here there is a holding tank. For all the waste. Before that, it goes through a . . . pump.” Eivind mimed a tumbling motion with his fingers. “To, err . . . blend it. Like a frozen drink.”
I groaned. “Thanks, you’ve put me off daiquiris.”
“Once, the tank clogged, so it was full of shit. And Jonas had to shove a wire up from the outside to unclog it and he could not push himself away fast enough and . . .” Eivind blew a raspberry.
“Wow. Poor Jonas.”
Eivind grinned again and shrugged. Stepping out of the head, he closed the door. “Welcome to cruising life.”
A knock sounded from up on the deck and Jonas went to check it out. Soon he climbed back in with two men in tow: a beefy guy, dark skinned and older; the other a short Asian man. Introductions were made between us and Robert, the agent, and Hiro, the admeasurer, and we all crammed around the table. Eivind pressed in next to me, our thighs touching.
Jonas started filling out paperwork while Robert collected the passports of the other crew and asked Jonas questions. Jonas wrote in neat block handwriting and still managed to keep up with the conversation. I tried to follow as best I could while they discussed the specifications of the boat, but details like horsepower and fenders and moorings went over my head.
At one point we all moved outside and Hiro measured the boat. He had an actual tape measure. Marcella stood at the bow and held one end of the tape measure while he walked down the dock. He marked the distance to one of the metal rails, and we all got back on board and he did the same thing, handing Jonas the tape measure to hold while he walked down the back of the boat.
Eik’s stern extended past the dock, so Hiro finished measuring the boat by leaning over the rail and using his arm span to hold the measuring tape all the way to the end—the far edge of Eik’s dinghy.
“Fifty-seven feet, three inches,” he pronounced.
We went back inside for more discussion. Hiro showed us how the boats could go through the canal.
“You have three choices,” he said, flipping a piece of paper over to the blank side and slashing his pen across to divide it into three sections. “A row by yourself, a raft-up in the middle of the row, or tied to a bigger ship.”
Sailboats were the bottom of the barrel. The canal authorities would put a big ship—a cruise ship or cargo ship—in the canal, and then, if there was room, a row or two of sailboats could go in in front or behind the big ship.
“Option one,” Hiro said, “you go by yourself.” He sketched a little oval in the middle of the top section and drew lines from the four “corners” of the oval outward. “This is more work. You have all four linehandlers working here.” He tapped his pen on the page, marking Eik’s four corners.
“If you do this,” Robert interrupted, “you should hire professional linehandlers from me. It is a lot harder to control the boats, and my men are experienced.”
“Option two,” Hiro continued, “you raft up with other sailboats.” In the second section, Hiro drew four ovals across the center and made the lines to the corners again, except this time the lines only extended from the two outside boats. “We tie the boats together and only two crew on the outside boats have to manage the lines.
“Option three. We have the wall on this side.” Hiro pointed. “A small ship—a cruise ship, tugboat, etcetera—ties up to the wall, and we tie sailboats up to it.” He drew a big box against the wall, with little ovals next to it. “This is the best one. The small ship goes through a lot, their crew are professionals, they manage the lines. It’s very easy for you. What do you want to do?”
“You can also opt to take the first available,” Robert said. “If you are in a hurry.”
Jonas and Eivind looked at each other.
“First available,” Jonas said.
“Ja,” Eivind agreed.
With that decision made, Hiro packed up the paperwork. “I’ll give Robert your transit times as soon as I have them,” he said, before shaking our hands and departing.
Robert stayed behind to talk about some more formalities with Jonas, and Eivind kept a close ear on the conversation and chimed in. Marcella and Elayna wandered off to their room, but I stayed on the couch, pressed into Eivind. Neither of us moved.
Th
at was how I saw the bill for hiring an agent and transiting the canal. Jonas had paid several thousand dollars to sail through. I could only imagine how much money the big ships spent. But what choice did they have? The alternative, Jonas told me, would be to sail around Cape Horn, which was notorious for wild seas and cold weather.
Finally Robert said his goodbyes and left. Marcella and Elayna came out of their cabins dressed in bathers and left for the pool. Jonas settled into the kitchen, putting away dishes. Eivind shifted over and hiked his leg up onto the couch, his knee touching my hip.
“Lila, do you know how to be a linehandler?”
Six
Eivind led me out to the deck of the boat. He grabbed a spare rope that hung off the rail and we walked to the bow.
He pointed down to a metal fixture on the deck. “This is a cleat. We have them all over the boat”—he pointed out various others—“and this is how we attach the boat to the dock or a wall or another boat. Whatever we need.”
The cleat was a piece of metal in a T shape, with a short, stubby base and longer arms. The edges were all rounded and curved. Most of the cleats on the right side of the boat had ropes wrapped around them, which were tied to cleats on the dock.
“Wait here.” Eivind crossed the deck and climbed down onto the dock. He went to a cleat on the dock ahead of me and to the left. Quickly, he fastened the rope to the cleat, his hand a blur of movement.
“Now I will throw you the line, yes?”
“Okay.” I held my hands out like a footy player ready to catch.
“Ah, not like that. Hold your arm out like this.” Eivind demonstrated, holding his arm straight out to the side of his body. “I will aim for just over your arm, and all you have to do is—” He mimed a curl, catching an invisible rope between his bicep and forearm.
“Okay.” I held out my arm.
Like William Tell’s son getting an apple shot off his head, I had to trust Eivind not to brain me with the line. Eivind kept the rope coiled in one hand and held some slack in the other. He swung the rope once, twice, and on the third time he let go and it flew toward me. I closed my eyes and winced, but the rope hit my arm and I quickly grabbed at it.