The Incredible Naked Adventure at Batsto (Jayne's Nature)

by Jayne Louise

  from Jayne’s Nature:

  The incredible naked adventure

  at Batsto .

  by

  Jayne Louise.

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  A Kindle™ e-text.

  Surf City Source

  New Jersey

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  The incredible naked adventure at Batsto

  Text © 2004 by Girls Of the Dove LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the manuscript or artwork included in this e-text

  may be reproduced, stored or transmitted by any means

  without express written permission from the Publisher.

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  Text edited by Melissa Stockhart.

  HTML edited by The Girls of The Dove.

  From the original America Online journal of July 2004

  Surf City Source media group

  New Jersey

  www.surfcitysource.com

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  Foreword

  The following adventure is actually true. My journal from which these stories come does name real places and real people, but for this edition I have left out many details that might embarrass someone, or give too much of my private life away, or reveal the exact location of places that are better kept secret. The stories aren’t for people to come looking for me and stalk me. They’re for letting people know that things like this really can and do occur and that nothing here is really anything terrible at all. My sisters and I are proper young ladies who wouldn’t hurt a soul nor do anything unsafe or sinful, and as long as we are healthy and respected you’ll never see us become petulant or insist on our own way. So I need to say that if you’re looking for some really hot sexy stories about nice girls going bad, this is not the story you’ll want to read. For everyone else, if you stick with it I think you’ll enjoy it.

  A word of caution: there are many dangers for any person, clothed or unclothed, prowling about the Pine Barrens, some of which can be much worse than a mild scratch or a case of poison ivy. Also, technically, some of the activities we have pursued in these adventures are against the rules. To allay any formal concerns, we rely on our intentions to not disturb anyone else and on our conscious efforts to defend the pristine natural environment as citizen caretakers. Therefore we, as The Girls of the Dove, do not endorse anything we have done here, do not advise others to follow our examples or surpass such activities on their own, and do not accept responsibility for anyone who does anything following our examples. This advisory is made for legal as well as for ethical reasons. And anyway we’re sure you can find your own unique way of having fun without copying what other people have done.

  Jayne Louise

  New Jersey, September 2006

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  The Girls of The Dove,

  in

  The incredible naked adventure at Batsto.

  by Jayne Louise.

  I

  The trip upriver.

  Monday, July 19, 2004

  Daddy drove us to the boat on his way to work, because we had a big canvas bag full of canned goods and a case of bottled water, a case of juice-boxes and two bags of ice. ‘Be safe,’ he kept telling us. ‘And call me or your mother whenever you get somewhere different.’

  I laughed. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You know what it means. Call us when you get to the bridges, or something.’

  ‘You’ll be at work,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Call anyway.’

  There was no one around– even the sailing classes would not start for another hour. We stuffed the ice into the cooler for the sandwiches we made last night, two half-gallons of orange juice, a quart of milk, and about half the juice-boxes, and then I primed the fuel line and got the motor started. Jem and I eased the boat backwards out of the slip. Jules hopped off onto the dock and towed the canoe out, and Daddy took the line for her and twirled the canoe there like a toy even as I was shifting into forwards and steering the boat around. Jules met us at the end of the dock and hopped aboard by the shrouds and Daddy handed over the canoe line. Jules tied it off securely and then we all looked up to wave to Daddy. ‘Call,’ he said. ‘Remember to call.’

  ‘Yes, Daddy,’ Jules said. ‘We love you.’

  He nodded and waved a little, but he had to be at the office and it was almost 8:30. So he turned to leave, feeling sad that we were sailing away from him, even just for two days. We know he misses us. We know we are the light of his life. That’s one reason we are so careful.

  But this is how we usually do it– the boat is so low-maintenance that anything that does not stop us from getting under way at once can be checked on the way. Especially since I have turned sixteen both Daddy and Mom have been trusting us all a little more. I think they both believe I will be in charge and be responsible, but the three of us girls all know that it’s more like a democracy most of the time and I only ever become the captain of Dove when there is some major decision to be made or a formal crisis to face And we never worry about the Bay, where we have been sailing since we were all little, especially in weather like this. The water was glassy smooth, glowing bright grayish green in the early-morning sun, scarcely rippled with moving air about a quarter of a mile out. And it was getting hot.

  To leave the house I had put on my plain cotton gray-green shirt over a pale-blue cotton camisole top, something I would

  never wear without something under it if I were not alone with my sisters on the boat, and the bottom of my medium-blue bikini. And my Reeboks. Jules and Jem had t-shirts on over their swimsuits, Jules had her sneakers on, and Jem had left the house barefoot. So we were three blonde chicks on our own for three days and we weren’t even very completely dressed.

  Jem pulled out the inner jib and I set a course of about 285 for the channel. It was easy going with just the little sail up and we took on a little heel angle. With the engine running we were making 5 knots. That would do for now.

  Jules had eaten breakfast at the house– being the first one awake– but Jem and I had not and she went down to get the boxed doughnuts I’d bought at the market. Well, it was breakfast– sort of. She held the helm and I pulled the main up. Jules tailed the winch for me. We always work as a team like this– one of us on the helm and the other two doing whatever has to be done, and we never care who is doing what. We don’t have assigned jobs. It’s only that all of us have the combined responsibility to sail the boat.

  We got under the causeway bridge by 7:15 and Jem came up with the suntan lotion. We were far enough away from the bridge that she just took her top off then and got me to put it on her back. Jules rolled out the outer jib and then joined her on the foredeck, where with the breeze to port they had uninterrupted sun up there. I steered us on a course for the lower bay, on a pretty good beam reach. I even shut the engine off and we still made about four and a half like that.

  Once it got hot enough that the breeze was not chilly, I took off the gray-green shirt. Jules took off her swimsuit top for a while and had me put lotion all over her. Even like that she basked on the cabin top for a while, but she is an eager sail handler and is always there to tend something if it needs tending.

  We power-sailed like that for another four hours till we were down under the Parkway bridge and coming about onto a starboard reach. That’s when Jem phoned Daddy on the cell phone to tell him where we were. She stood there naked in the open hatchway, with that incredibly lush leonine mane fluttering in the breezze, talking on t
he phone till another boat coming up towards us got too close, and then she just stepped down and hung onto the hatch rail as we bounced over the swells from the other boat’s wake. Jules was in the cockpit with me and just sort of crouched down on the cockpit floor so they wouldn’t notice she was topless. Neither of them was any more worried than that. But I told them both they’d have to put shirts on for the trip up the river.

  Once we were around the first point in the River I took out the cell phone to call the bridge guy to make sure it would open for us. Now we’ve done this before– it’s easier than using the VHF radio and a little more… stealthy. The VHF is open airwaves and lets everyone know everything. Going up the River by ourselves sort of depends on not letting everyone know where we’ll anchor.

  At about 12:30 she brought up a sandwich and a juice-box drink for each of us. Jules is the usual food-server on the boat– I think she likes to believe she’s playing house. Being only thirteen she still hasn’t outgrown that tendency to make anything into a theatrical little game. Jem went below for the potty and then lay on the dinette berth, reading Wuthering Heights. –for summer reading, though she likes it anyway. She is the middle one and much more of a princess, preferring sappy romantic sensibilities– though she is, in fact, exceptionally intelligent and logical– and preferring to be a little pampered even if she has to pamper herself. So she is usually the first one to undress amongst us and the last one to take to clothes even when it seems necessary for safety or health or propriety.

  The tide was running a little against us and about 7:00, a mile below the Lower Bank bridge, I put the motor on. So we were motor-sailing with the little jib as we approached the bridge.

  From upwind we would not hear it, but as we came round the last bend and headed straight for the bridge we saw the roadway lights moving. Then the span had swung out of the way. At the first bridge we had to pull the jib in a little to keep it clear. Jules should have done it from up there but as we approached she lost her nerve and gathered up her bikini top and towel and slithered down the forward hatch.

  Good thing, too– the guy was there at the bridge and waved to us. ‘Are you going through Green Bank too?’ he called down.

  We all nodded, even Jem cowering naked just behind the hatch rail. ‘Yes!’

  ‘We called about that,’ I said.

  He nodded and made the ‘ok’ sign. ‘Eight-twenty?’

  I nodded. We were by him and I called back, ‘Yes, about then. If we’re early we’ll wait.’

  The guy nodded, and the bridge was closing again. I reached down and opened the throttle a little more.

  Ten minutes later another open outboard boat went by, the guys all waving cheerfully at us. We waved back. Jem waved from the hatchway. The two passengers in front stayed turned to keep watching us till they went around the next bend. Jules came aft along the deck then. ‘Do you want to take the main down yet?’ she asked.

  I shrugged. ‘There’s still a breeze,’ I said. ‘As long as it saves gas–?’

  She nodded. ‘Okay. Are you getting hungry?’

  ‘I thought we’d eat something nice when we got there,’ I said. ‘It’ll only be another hour or so.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I think there are pretzels, or something.’

  ‘Ew,’ I said. ‘Those things are duck food by now. There’s some fresh carrots though.’

  ‘Okay.’ She went below, switching on the red light that would not make glare in my eyes.

  I jibed the sails gently and steered a little more north, according to the channel. Now the trees would block the breeze. The sails draped loosely from the halyards. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘we’ll leave the main up and roll the jibs in. ‘Ready?’

  Jem nodded, her cheeks full of carrot cud, and stepped up to tend the furling line. We rolled the outer one in first and then the lower one. Under power we came up on the second bridge, reaching it with about the last rays of sunlight. Jules wanted to be lookout on the foredeck again and Jem stepped below as we went through. Actually I think she used the potty. The same bridge guy was on and waved to us. ‘Are you going back through tonight?’

  ‘No,’ I said calmly, knowing he would hear me better up there than I would hear him over the motor right behind me. ‘We’re at Sweetwater for a few days.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, and waved, and we were through.

  The night had gone charcoal-gray and visibility was nearly nothing. We went around one bend in the river and found ourselves completely alone on the water and amidst all the scenery. Jem came out and sat on the cockpit seat, spreading Off all over herself. Jules came up without the t-shirt and leaned against the shrouds, gazing off at the passing forest and grassland. It was a very eerie but pleasant kind of aura, surrounding us even as we, on the boat, were isolated from it.

  We still had the main up but it was barely staying full in four knots of headwind from the outboard. Fortunately, it was still hot. There’s nothing worse than a chilly evening spent with no clothes on. Of course that was our intention all along, and here only Jem had kept to it. But she hadn’t been much help with the boat either. Even now she was just lying back on the cockpit seat staring up at the stars. ‘Getting a moon-tan?’ I teased her.

  She shrugged, ‘Maybe.’

  I nodded. ‘Okay.’

  She smiled at me. ‘Okay.’

  I squinted forward at the marker and adjusted course, and she sat up to let the main traveler down a little. Abruptly a little breeze came up the River and the boom ran out. I trimmed it at once and Dove heeled a little. That was a pretty welcome sign. After all it did not get any cooler, really.

  ‘I’m going to try to put it up into the little cove,’ I said, almost in a whisper as our voices would carry for hundreds of yards on the quiet river. ‘We might just put the bow into the mud. We’ll run a line around a tree– maybe even a piece of cable or chain, that we can padlock, and then take an anchor out astern to hold us there.’

  ‘Swim it out,’ she said. ‘Like last time.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Like last time.’

  Jem smiled. Last time she had been the one to swim the anchor out. It was usually our excuse to be the first one to go skinny-dipping. We’d all taken turns at it– this was actually my turn.

  Batsto River is a tiny little inlet just above Sweetwater Marina, a silted-over delta that only a canoe can get past. Unfortunately it tends to be popular with canoeists. Tonight there would be no one about, but tomorrow morning there would be little privacy. Our other option was to put into the mudbank directly below it, where the boat would be more visible from the River, but it would be a long ugly trek through the mud if anyone wanted to get to us from the shore, and very shallow water, even for a small outboard boat, if they came by water. It was probably the better idea, but for now, I preferred hiding ourselves in the trees for the night. Either way someone would get to swim out with the stern anchor.

  Jem went forward with Jules to pull the mainsail down and furl it securely on top of the boom. We would draw the cover over it after we anchored. Once they were out of my way again I winched the board the rest of the way up. Dove was now a little round-bottomed motorboat drawing about 18 inches– perfect for this territory. I stood up on the cockpit seat and was able to spot the place where we would deviate from the channel and feel our way up towards the Batsto delta. As long as the tide hadn’t gotten too slack yet we’d be able to get in pretty close. I’d just have to gauge the conditions of the bank from the edge of the channel, and hope for the best.

  ‘This looks like it,’ Jem whispered to me in the cockpit.

  I nodded. ‘It is,’ I whispered back. ‘Do you have a line ready for the bow?’

  She nodded. ‘I think it’s long enough. If you can get close enough.’

  ‘Yes.’ I shielded my eyes from the moon’s glare on the water. Yes– there was the delta itself, the edge overshrouded with trees, and there was our little mud bank at the very corner of it. I steered l
eft, sharply, to get us farther into the center of the delta. The rudder rubbed the mud once, and then we were in the clear cool bottom current of the Batsto. You can’t wade it– it’s probably six feet deep here. But it shallows back fast if you’re even a few feet too far to the side. I put the motor in neutral and let Dove glide in, steering carefully to keep us dead into the current even as Jem pulled up the rudder blade. The boat slowed, almost to a standstill, and then, just before we lost headway, I set the tiller into the chock and put the outboard into gear to steer it hard around to starboard. Dove swung round nimbly like a little motorboat, lifting her bow ever so slightly before we felt the bottom come up to meet us.

  ‘That’s enough!’ Jem said, and she was right– the tide had too recently been high and we could easily go too far ashore that we’d never get it off again. I shut down the motor at once, hoping to keep ourselves inconspicuous, and reached down to fend off the canoe as it glided up to bump the transom. As Jem went forward I reached down to switch off the running lights. We were now into what we called ‘stealth mode’.

  The state really does not want you to anchor at any of these little coves. They don’t patrol them– I don’t think we’ve ever seen a marine police boat up here, ever. So there is no regulation, but also no safety. The people who use these waterways prefer to be quiet, inconspicuous, and focused on their own agendas anyway. No one bothers anyone else, and if you see a boat moored somewhere you wouldn’t expect a boat to be moored, you leave them alone because they are obviously interested in their own privacy, just like you are interested in your own. And the thing about privacy is that you can’t interrupt someone else’s without letting them sort of interrupt your own. So no one has any incentive to bother anyone else anyway.