I was already on the move, spreading out the chart and ticking off a mental checklist. Off the top of my head I knew we had plenty of fuel, enough food for an army, and Jenks had checked out the engines, generator, and all the other systems before he left.
“See,” I tapped the chart, “here. Punta Chivato. It’s only sixty-eight miles away, and no tricky entrance to navigate. If we leave by ten, run at ten knots, we’re there before dark.”
“Is it a safe anchorage?”
I pulled out a Pat Rain's and then Gerry Cunningham's cruising guides. “Yep, according to both of them. In fact, they say it’s good in a norther, just in case we get caught by the wind and have to hole up for a few days. And there’s even a hotel and a couple of restaurants. What do you think?”
“What the hell, let’s go, but what will you do for crew on your return trip?”
I waved my hand. “I’ll deal with that later. Prepare to make for sea, matey.”
Before we left, I called the Port Captain in Guaymas and told him I’d be gone for a week or so. Captain Reyes said he would alert Santa Rosalia that I was on the way, and would check back, make sure we made it into port the next day.
See, nada to worry about.
Chapter 12
Trouble flew our first hour out, until some pesky seagulls dive-bombed him. For a few exciting minutes we witnessed a Red Baron-like aerial battle, feathers aflyin’.
Afraid we were witnessing Trouble’s imminent demise, we called out, begging him to return, but he held his own in combat until enemy reinforcements arrived. Out birded, he beat a hasty retreat to the safety of my shoulder, where he boldly screamed taunts at the formation of frustrated gulls.
Sea conditions were ideal. Glassy, in fact. From the bridge, Jan, Trouble and I had a, well, bird’s eye view of marine life. The sea teemed with schools of bait fish, hundreds of dolphins, all manner of birds, and even a whale or two. For one heart-stopping instant, when I saw the first whale blow, I was concerned that Lonesome, the blue whale who dogged us down the Pacific coast, had honed in on Raymond Johnson once again, but thanks to Chino’s tutelage on the whale world, Jan ID’d the critter as a gray. Our most exciting sighting was a twenty-foot giant manta ray, that kept up with us for a few minutes before veering off. If we hadn’t been outrunning a weather front, I would have slowed, watched him a while longer, but we were on a mission.
Indoctrinated by Jenks’s constant vigilance underway, I descended into the engine room once an hour, checking for water leaks and oil leaks, smoke and other worrisome whatsis. Not that I knew what to do if we had any of those things, other than shutting down the offending engine, but I inspected nonetheless. We also kept a keen eye on gauges.
After an idyllic, uneventful crossing, we dropped anchor at Punta Chivato at dusk. I was feeling mighty full of myself as we retired to the verandah for cocktails, and a weather report. Everyone in the Sea was already holed up, hunkering down for the blow to come. No one reported wind. Reassured, Jan and I made plans to leave at first light, pull into Santa Rosalia three hours later. Piece of cake.
Jan scanned the hotel with the binoculars. “Not much going on up there. I can see the bar, but no one in it. What a beautiful setting.”
“I looked up the hotel on the Internet. Two-fifty big ones a night. No wonder it’s empty.”
“Think we can go to the hotel for dinner?”
I shook my head. “Tempting, but I think we’d better leave the dinghy in her chocks and eat on board. Sorry, but our luck has been fantastic so far, and I don’t want to tempt Fate.”
She grinned. “Hetta Coffey doesn’t want to tempt Fate? You usually slap her in the chops. I never thought I’d ever hear that from you. Getting old?”
“Hey, I resemble that remark. Maybe I am. Thing is, I would really, really like for this jaunt to go off without a single hitch so I can rub Jenks’s nose in it.”
“How romantic. No wonder he’s crazy about you. Speaking of, should we call our guys?”
“You go ahead, I think I’ll let Jenks stew a little. He can call me.”
Jan tried the Mexican cell phone, but got no signal. I fired up the Satfone system. “Make it short, Jan, this damned thing costs me a fortune. Are you going to tell Chino we’re trekking over to Agua Fria by car, dropping in to visit old Grandmaw Yee?”
“I think I’ll surprise him.”
“Are you even going to tell him we’re at Punta Chivato?”
“Actually, I think I’ll just leave the impression we’re still on the other side. I don’t suppose he’d be too pleased at the idea of us running loose all over the Baja.”
“Spoken like a true little Mexican fiancé.”
“I just don’t want him to worry, that’s all.”
“What’s with these men of ours? It isn’t as if we’re helpless idiots.”
“Well, at least not helpless. We do, however, tend toward testing the waters. I guess they want to protect us from ourselves.”
“Charming. Okay, go ahead and call Doctor Macho.” I left her to her phoning and checked the galley lockers for dinner material. Some of Jan’s conversation drifted my way, but for once I didn’t snoop. Maybe I am getting old.
I fixed another drink and went back out on deck. Fifteen minutes and big bucks worth of phone time later, Jan joined me.
“So, how’s the wonderful world of Doctor Chino Yee?” I never tired of the irony of Chino, a Mexican, having the last name, Yee. Turns out he is descended from two shipwreck survivors from the Philippines, one named Comacho and the other, Yee. Any Asian facial features had long ago disappeared, but he was still a Yee, and bore the nickname, Chino.
“He’s so excited about starting the dive, maybe even finding the galleon his ancestors arrived on. All those years of hearing the stories passed down through the generations, and he just might find something that belonged to one of them. It is pretty exciting, if you think about it.”
I nodded. I thought being a ninth-generation Texan was a big deal, but Chino was searching for artifacts that actually belonged to his family in 1600. “I still deserve a reward for finding the astrolabe.”
“Forget it.”
“So, what else did our marine archeologist extraordinaire have to say?”
“Oh, nothing much.”
One thing about being friends with someone for umpteen years is that you know evasive when you hear it. “Fifteen minutes worth of ‘nothing much’?”
The other thing about having a friend who knows you know them is that they cave in easily because they know their lives will be crappy until they do. “Uh, well, you are not going to believe this, but that jerk, Dickless Richard, the one who tried to kill us? He’s out of jail and all charges have been dropped against him.”
“What? How can that be?”
“This is Mexico. Chino says there were no witnesses, just our word against his, and we weren’t there to accuse him in court. Something in their court system.”
“What about his plot to can whales for the Japanese?”
“Evidently the Japanese pleaded guilty, said Ricardo had nothing to do with their operation, which they also claim was hatched by a rogue employee of theirs who is being properly punished in Japan. They paid a big fine, gave their ship to Chino for the duration of the hunt for the galleon, and that’s that.”
“And?” I knew she was still holding back.
She sighed. “The turd tracked down Chino and apologized for the so-called unfortunate misunderstanding.”
“Unfortunate misunderstanding? Ye gads, woman, he not only tried to kill us, he had Chino and Fabio slammed into the slammer. Unfortunate misunderstanding, my ass.”
Jan did a quick, properly indignant, head snap. But I still smelled a rat.
“And?”
“Well, uh…okay! Chino got the feeling that Dickless was less than sorry.”
I snorted. When Jan and I met the slimeball, it was hate at first sight. And when he said, in his oily way, “Please, call me Ricardo. Or Richard
. But please do not call me Dick,” we quite naturally nicknamed him Dickless Richard.
“And?”
“Jeez, Hetta, you just never give up, do you? Okay, here’s the deal. Chino thought Dickless was not there to apologize at all, but to find out where you went.”
My heart did a two-step. I gulped. “What did Chino tell him?”
“That you, and your boyfriend, the FBI agent, went back to California.”
“Wow, that Chino is a fast study. We’ve only known him a short time and already he’s a world class fibber. We have taught him well. However, I would have preferred that he tell Dickless Richard that Hetta Coffey, and Guido, her Mafia hit man boyfriend, were in Sicily.”
We clinked glasses, finished our drinks while watching a spectacular sunset, then grilled a snapper and hit the hay.
For some reason it didn’t occur to me that clouds to the West, thus the vivid sunset, could be less than a good omen.
13
Here’s a quick weather lesson, should you someday cruise the Sea of Cortez. No one, and I mean no one, can predict the weather. John Steinbeck had it right when he said the Sea is subject to sudden and violent storms.
To make things even more interesting, each anchorage is its own meteorological microcosm, and Punta Chivato, I soon learned, is famously unpredictable. A good shelter from a norther, or even passable in a southeasterly if you hugged up near the hotel, the anchorage, when hit with southwesterlies, is a whole ‘nother deal.
Jan and I were rudely awakened just before dawn, when, of course, it is black as pitch. Raymond Johnson was sitting quietly at anchor one minute, then suddenly the bow swung toward the southwest and began bucking. By the time I reached the flying bridge, four footers crashed onto the rocks not all that far behind us.
Jan jammed herself in a stairwell and yelled, “Hetta, what’s happening?”
“We gotta go, Jan. Come up here. I’ll raise the anchor with the remote. If Jenks was here, he’d do it from the foredeck, but you can’t do that and neither can I.” I started the engines.
I knew, from experience, that I had to ease the tension on the chain and hope like hell the snubber hook would fall off. If not, I could only raise the anchor so far, leaving it to swing freely, possibly even punch a hole in the hull. There was one other, risky, move to free us. If I put even more tension on the chain, swung the boat in a large arc, stern to the wind and waves, I could gain momentary slack on the snubber, make it easier to remove by hand. The problem there is that halfway through the arc we get broadsided, and our stern gets walloped by tons of water while I endeavor to dislodge the anchor.
I opted to move forward, into the waves, and hope for the best, which would be not tearing out my bow pulpit and windlass, not losing the anchor, and not putting Raymond Johnson on the rocks in front of the hotel. A hotel I wished I was in.
As I struggled to maintain my cool while courting disaster, I recalled Jenks saying, “‘You do remember that there is no Coast Guard to bail you out if you two have engine problems, or some other disaster? Which, knowing you, is an inevitability.’”
And my answer, “‘Oh, come on, Jenks, I’m hardly taking our lives in my hands, you know.’”
But I was. The only one enjoying this mess was Trouble, who sat on my shoulder and sang while I fought the wheel and played with the windlass to gain some ground, only to lose it when forced to release chain when the bow was literally jerked under a wave.
Jan had been through this kind of drill with me before. She dug out the life preservers and was trying to get one on me, but Trouble dug his talons into my shoulder and refused to let go, even when Jan called him a few choice names.
Lights came on at the hotel and we could make out the outlines of several people on the hotel verandah, drawn from their comfortable beds by clanking chains, roaring engines and a bird belting out "The Yellow Rose of Texas."
“At least if we wash up on shore there’ll be someone there to drag us out of the water,” Jan shouted above the noise.
“We aren’t going to wash up on shore. We’re out of here in a jiffy, don’t worry,” I told her while trying to control the tremor in my voice, sound confident.
“Can I do anything?”
“When was the last time you chatted with a deity?”
“Last time I went anywhere with you.”
“Smarty. Start chatting.”
Her lips moved and whoever she was talking to must have listened, for I caught a trough just right, dislodged the anchor and brought in enough chain to get it off the bottom, then, ever so slowly, we motored forward while bringing in scope. It was a tricky maneuver; too much chain would let the anchor catch bottom again, not enough could smack the anchor into the hull and hole us, or worse, get caught in a prop.
After what seemed an eternity, but was probably only three minutes, we cleared the breaker line where the swells were no more than two or three feet, and the boat settled out. I had Jan hold us steady while I went out on the bow and brought the anchor into her chocks.
We motored into the wind until first light, then turned around and made for the point, rounded it, and found a safe spot in a small cove to re-anchor just as the sun came over the horizon. On rubbery legs, we went below into what was formerly my beautiful main saloon.
“Holy moly! No wonder Trouble got out of here. Look at his cage.” I righted the cage, reinserted his perch and began removing his food dishes. Smashed bananas, shredded hot peppers and bird poop littered my rug. Trouble squawked and flew in to inspect his domain, found it unsuitable for his sophisticated tastes, and began shrieking again. Jan, wise to his ways, broke into the chorus from the River City song, and he joined her. It was amazing what a beautiful voice he had. Someone, at sometime in his life, was a talented baritone. I swear, when that bird sings "Danny Boy", his eyes get misty.
While we straightened up the saloon and scrubbed gunk from the carpet, we took turns prompting Trouble to sing songs we only knew parts of, but he knew in full. His "Havah Nagilah" was as rousing as his "Someday My Prince Will Come" was sentimental. And he had his own rendition of one of my favorites, "How Much is That Birdie in the Window?"
“Ya know, Hetta, maybe you should sell this scow and take Trouble on the road, make a fortune renting him out for black tie dinners, weddings and bar mitzvahs. She’ll be coming round the mountain…”
“When she comes,” chorused Trouble. Trouble’s antics, along with the giddiness one experiences when surviving a crisis, send Jan and me into hysterics. I wiped away tears and then spotted the clock. It was time for the Sonrisa Net, and I wanted to grouse at someone for being sooo wrong with yesterday’s weather call. Northers were predicted, southerlies damned near put us on the rocks. Jan and I listened as boats reported in from all over the Sea. Absolutely no one experienced southerlies. In fact, everything was Charlie Charlie, meaning Clear and Calm.
I shrugged and shushed Jan—who began pontificating loudly on how I, Hetta Coffey, was probably the only person on the entire planet who could conjure up her own personal storm—so I could hear the day’s forecast. The general consensus was that it was going to blow hard from the north, and since we had to go north, I started the engines. In less than three hours we’d be in Santa Rosalia, at a dock. Then, let ‘er blow
.
Chapter 14
And boy, did she blow.
We had barely secured our lines at the Santa Rosalia marina when a blast of wind rocked the harbor, instantly raising little whitecaps. Grateful to be safe, I sent thanks upward for getting me into port by the hair on my chinny chin chin, before the big bad wolf of a norther huffed and puffed and blew me away. Okay, so the hair on my chin has long since been lasered into oblivion, but the metaphor works.
We were back in Cellular Land, for my phone, and Trouble, began chirping La Cucaracha. “Hola,” I said, sticking my finger in my ear to block Trouble.
“Hetta?” said the Trob.
“Who else?”
“Turn down that radio
. Where are you? I called the marina when you didn’t answer your phone, and they said your boat was gone.”
Amazing. Not that he’d learned I was gone, but that he managed such a long, non-cryptic, sentence. He’s come a long way in the years I’ve known him, but is making quantum leaps into basic social skills since marrying my friend Allison.
“Jan and I took her out. Why did you call?”
“Google alert.”
Back to cryptic. “Google alert?”
“Your article.”
“My article?” Jan sidled up once she figured I was talking with the Trob. She takes perverse pleasure in listening while I strive to pry basic info from Wontrobski. I rolled my eyes at her and sighed. “Uh, what article?”
“Chronicle.”
“As in, San Francisco Chronicle? Again, what article? And what in the hell is a Google alert?” My voice had gone up a couple of octaves and I was knocking my head up against the wall, delighting Jan no end.
“When something I am interested in hits the Internet, Google alerts me.”
“And what was your interest?”
“Puerto Nuevo Tucson-Guaymas Corridor.”
“Hey, I think I’ll sign up for that Google thing. Matter of fact, I was gonna call you today. I can send you a preliminary report with photos in a few minutes, then finish up the end of next week.”
“Already have some photos.”
How could that be? Jan and I hadn’t sent them to anyone except…oh, dear.
“Wontrobski, are you telling me that the article I wrote for some obscure newspaper in some obscure Arizona berg is in the Chronicle?”
“Internet. Check it out.”
“I will. Bye.”
“Bye.”
While Jan watched, I pulled up the San Francisco Chronicle and sure as hell, there was my article and Jan’s photos, under the caption, ARIZONA TO DUMP CALIFORNIA PORTS, with the sub-caption: Nuevo Puerto de Guyamas and Tucson: Arizona’s new deep water port?
Just Add Trouble Page 9