by Dina Silver
“Have fun and be safe,” she said, giving me a squeeze on the dock. “I’m going to miss having you around, so hurry back, right?”
“Will do.” We hugged again. “I’ll try to e-mail you and my sister with updates as often as I can.”
“All right, take care, you,” she said with her hands resting on my shoulders. “I’ll be rooting for you, my darling.”
She winked at me and gave me one last pat on the rear as I blew her a kiss good-bye.
I lifted a large duffel bag onto my shoulder and grabbed my backpack, then made my way down the dock to Imagine. A wave of contentment washed over me as Quinn hopped off the boat onto the dock and grabbed my bags.
“All hands on deck!” he shouted.
I stepped aboard and greeted them both with hugs, holding Grant for a beat or two longer than Quinn.
“You ready?” Grant asked.
I nodded, grinning from ear to ear.
Once aboard I unpacked what little I brought into the tiny closet in the bunkbed room and placed my traveling Buddha statue on a bookshelf in the salon. There was a working washer and dryer on the boat, and the guys told me to bring as little clothing as possible. A couple bathing suits, couple pairs of shorts, a few tops, underwear, pajamas, and my toiletries. I was perpetually tan those days, so the only makeup I brought along was some lip gloss and mascara. Quinn and I shared a bathroom, and all he had was a toothbrush, a bar of soap, and a razor.
After I’d unpacked, I found the guys up in the cockpit. Grant was starting the motor, and Quinn was logging our route.
“So,” I began, “what’s the plan?”
Grant looked over at me with a subtle smile. “We made the decision to sail back to Langkawi, Malaysia, before hitting the Indian Ocean. It’s only a day’s sail, but we calculated that it would save us at least a thousand dollars. The prices for food, beer, wine, and fuel in Malaysia are kind of hard to beat, and we know we won’t see those prices again for food and alcohol as we approach the Middle East and Med.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“How about a sandwich?” Quinn interjected.
“Screw off, Quinn,” Grant said.
I smiled at Quinn. He was the type of man who needed a woman’s touch, and I was happy to oblige. I lifted a hand to scold Grant for snapping at him. “Quinn, it would be my pleasure to make you a sandwich.”
“I only asked because I know it’ll taste better if you make it,” he shouted after me.
I skipped down below and figured it was as good a time as any to familiarize myself with the galley. I knew my reason for being there was basically to let them sleep when they needed to, and not much else. The least I could do was feed those boys.
I could see why they wanted to load up on food and drink, because the fridge was nearly empty. It was located right next to the sink and resembled more of a chest-like freezer, where the lid lifts up and you have to dig through everything to find what you’re looking for. Organizing the fridge was high on my list of priorities.
I leaned in and pushed a few things around and was able to find some wheat bread, American cheese, and butter. Above the sink were only two cabinets. One had plates and cups, the other had a couple pots and pans. Each had a latch to keep it from flying open while the boat was in motion. The stove was on a gimble, which meant that it moved with the boat to prevent a pot of boiling water from sliding off in turbulent waters. It was a tiny kitchen, but I had no doubt I could get used to cooking under those conditions. Like Quinn said, everything is better with a woman’s touch.
I buttered the bread on both sides and then put about a tablespoon in the pan. Once it was warm, I placed four slices of cheese between the bread and slowly browned the sandwiches in the pan on both sides. My mouthwatering grilled cheeses were done in about five minutes, and Quinn referred to them as marriage material. He never made another sandwich again.
When we arrived in Langkawi to provision, we docked the boat, checked in to the country, and had to rent a car so that we could get to the local grocery.
“Target would kill it over here,” I said to Grant.
Quinn came over and whispered to us, “I just asked about the bacon. Black market only.”
Grant nodded that he understood.
“Wait,” I said quietly. “What’s going on?”
Quinn leaned in close and covert. “It’s an Islamic country, so you can’t get bacon at the supermarket. We gotta go deep underground to procure the pork, Jess. Deep!”
I laughed. “Do you really need bacon?”
He took two steps backward and pointed at me. “Everyone needs bacon.”
After finding the perfect pork dealer at a Chinese black market about a mile from the grocer, we headed back to the marina and unloaded the car in about four separate trips. Each.
Once aboard, Quinn begged me for a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich.
After a couple of whirlwind days getting to and navigating through Malaysia, Imagine was filled to the brim with fifteen hundred liters of fuel, ten cases of beer, heaps of soda, juice, canned goods, cookies, Pringles, bacon, and plenty of wine. With our shopping done, we prepared to set off on an eight-day sail from Langkawi to Galle, Sri Lanka. And even though I would be returning to Phuket in about a month, it was with mixed emotions that I left that part of the world. First of all, I was saddened to leave my friends and makeshift family behind. Second, I was anxious to begin the long passage across the Indian Ocean and into the Red Sea. Although I desperately wanted to visit and enjoy Sri Lanka and the Maldives, the anticipation of the journey—and a bed as narrow as a bathtub—was starting to cause a few sleepless nights. Thank goodness for the wine.
Our second night leaving Malaysia was my first solo night watch. I’d sat up with Grant the previous night to get an idea of what was required of me, but there really wasn’t much to it. Listen for unusual sounds. Look for any foreign movement in the water. Keep your eyes and binoculars peeled for any other lights or blips on the radar. Besides that I was free to read or watch movies on the portable DVD player.
But that first night I wanted to be free of any distractions. I was alone with only the sounds of the waves against the hull, and I was a little nervous. There was a significant responsibility with keeping watch, and I wanted to make certain I did right by Imagine. I was grateful that the moon was especially full that night, because the ocean looked like a brightly lit stage. I could see for miles thanks to its radiance. Periodically, I’d check the controls, and everything seemed to be as it should, until I noticed something odd on the depth meter. Since the meter didn’t measure more than six hundred feet, there would be hash marks on the screen instead of numbers when we were out that far in the ocean—as we were that night. But suddenly the depth meter started to register numbers, and they were getting rapidly lower and lower.
Two hundred feet.
One hundred feet.
Fifty feet.
Ten feet!
My heart was beating out of my chest. The guys were asleep, so before I went to wake them up, I ran up the side of the boat to see if I could see anything. As I was leaning over, my hands tightly gripping the thin rail, a dolphin jumped out of the water next to the boat. I screamed and watched as it dove underneath and came out the other side. I fell to my knees, stunned. Two more appeared by the bow.
“Why, you little rascals,” I said quietly, and then hurried back to the depth meter once they were out of sight. There were only hash marks on the screen.
The next day, we were told by a few boaters that they were suffering through some pretty nasty storms ahead, so we had to heave our sails—put them in a fixed position so the boat wouldn’t move—and we’d just float out there for a day before continuing on.
“Checking the weather is always the most important thing to do before any passage,” Grant told me. “It looks okay tonight, not perfect, but we’ll get on the SSB long-range radio to download the latest weather files in the morning and check in with some o
ther boats that are ahead of us.”
Unfortunately, we must have caught the tail end of one of the storms, because that night there was some rain and rough seas, which kept me up most of the night. At about midnight I ran to the bathroom and emptied my stomach.
“Thought I heard something. You okay?” I heard Grant ask from behind.
I leaned against the wall and nodded. “Dammit. I thought I was getting used to the movement.”
“This one is particularly bad. I’ll get you some water.”
Grant returned with a bottle of water, steadying himself on the doorframe. “Come on,” he said, extending his hand.
I stumbled to my feet and leaned on him as we walked back into my room.
“Thanks for looking out for me.”
“The pleasure is all mine.”
“Did I wake you?”
“Nope. I was up.”
“But it’s Quinn’s watch.”
“He’s up there. I’m just not a great sleeper.”
He took a short breath and looked at me as though he was going to elaborate, but didn’t. I thought about the time in Bangkok when he was on the balcony alone in the middle of the night.
I ducked my head, crawled under the blanket, and curled up on the bottom bunk. “Am I green?” I asked.
Grant knelt beside me, our faces inches apart. “Yes. Is there anything else I can do for you?” he asked, and gently brushed some loose hairs off my face.
“Tell me a story.”
He let out a small laugh. “A story?”
“About your trip. I love hearing about the great adventures of Grant Flynn.”
“Let’s see. Well, I told you about the edible island of Dominica, and some of the people we met there. Did I tell you about the orangutans and Komodo dragons in Indonesia?”
I shook my head.
Grant sat on the floor and kept his arm rested on the small of my back. “All right. Well, where do I begin? I met a man in Komodo who worked on a dragon conservation. He was a real character . . .”
I closed my eyes and smiled as he began to speak. The sound of his voice caused my natural breathing to resume, calming me from the inside out and easing the distress in my stomach, allowing me to fall back asleep.
Bad weather delayed our arrival into Sri Lanka, but ten days after we left Langkawi, we arrived in Galle and were greeted by what Grant and Quinn agreed were the worst port conditions they’d seen. The harbor was nasty. Tall concrete docks that were built to accommodate commercial ships, not sailboats. Stray, pissed-off dogs everywhere, filthy run-down conditions, and no electricity on the dock. Which meant no air conditioning for us in the one-hundred-degree heat.
As soon as we pulled into the slip, we were greeted by a wonderful agent named Marlon who took care of our check-in formalities, as they do in most countries. Although in most countries the boaters only deal with the agent, and then the agent deals with the officials. Not in Sri Lanka. About an hour after Marlon left, two grumpy-looking Sri Lankan officials boarded Imagine for their “compliments.”
“Their what?” I whispered to Quinn below in the salon as Grant was trying to talk with the two men in the cockpit.
“They want gifts. Bribes. Booze, cigarettes, whatever we have they’ll take in exchange for letting us into their country. Corrupt bastards.” He took a toothpick out of his mouth and leaned toward me. “You got anything our guests might like?” he said with a wink. “How much for the little girl?” he added, quoting a line from The Blues Brothers.
I smacked him on the arm, and he cracked up. “You’re a creep, and you’re lucky I like you. Do you guys have to do this everywhere?”
“Nope.”
“What do they want exactly?”
“Free shit.”
Grant came down the stairs, rolling his eyes. “Find something to give these mooches so I can get them off my boat.”
“Maybe they like bacon?” I teased.
“Don’t you dare, woman,” Quinn said.
Quinn won them over with a bottle of rum and his infectious personality. About an hour later, the three of them were drunk, and Quinn escorted them off the boat. Since they drank their compliments, they never realized that they’d left empty handed.
Quinn returned from the port captain’s office about an hour later, chewing on a piece of beef jerky.
“I just ran into Angela and Adam,” he said to Grant. “I guess they arrived a couple days ago. They said the Drunken Sailor is docked here too, and they were wondering if we wanted to convoy with both of them for a few days. Angela saw in the MARLO reports that a Russian supply ship was just captured.”
Grant glanced downward in thought. “I guess we could do that, sure.”
“Great,” Quinn said, replacing the jerky with a toothpick. “I’ll be back.” He turned around to face us before hopping off. “I assume we want to leave this place as soon as possible? Couple days?”
“Couple days,” Grant concurred.
Once Quinn was off the boat, Grant sat next to me on the cushioned bench in the cockpit. He smiled and placed his hand on my bare thigh. His touch sent chills through my body, and my arm lit up with goose bumps. Our eyes met, and I smiled as I did every time I held his attention.
“I know Sri Lanka isn’t on your travel wish list, but I thought you might want to do some sightseeing.”
“I would love that.”
He patted my leg and stood. “I’ll have Marlon set up a tour for us.”
The next morning Marlon had arranged for us to go on a four-wheel-drive Jeep safari tour, and both our butts were sore after bouncing around looking for wildlife. At one point I was literally thrown into Grant’s lap, and he wrapped his arms around me to keep me from falling out the other side.
“Are you going to turn green again?” he asked.
“Did you rent this particular car for that particular purpose? To see how many bumpy vessels cause me to lose my lunch?”
He smiled and glanced at my lips. I thought for sure he was going to kiss me, but he didn’t. I scooted off his lap back into my seat.
“Two can play at your game,” I said.
“What game is that?”
I squared my shoulders to him. “This flirty, teasy whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Yes, I’m waiting for you to kiss me. Yes, you know it. And yes, I can play hard to get too, so look out.”
Grant’s eyes lit up with the rest of his face. “Is that a challenge?”
“You’re a challenge.” I crossed my arms and faced forward.
He bent close to my ear. “When the time is right, Jess,” he said, and then asked the driver to pull over for a minute. “Please look at me,” he said once the car had come to a stop.
I turned toward him.
“Are you angry with me?”
I shook my head. “No, of course not.”
“Good. Because I don’t mean to be a tease. I don’t want you to get that impression. That’s not who I am at all, I promise you.”
“I know.”
“I would like to think that I’m too old for that, but clearly I’m too old for any of this, because I’m screwing it up so badly. He gently ran his fingers through the ends of my hair, causing my breath to still. “I like being with you a lot. You’ve managed to make me feel . . . like myself again, and I just don’t want to rush anything. I just want to enjoy some time with you without any expectations.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but the words didn’t come. I wanted to be careful about what I said, so instead I closed my mouth.
“Is that selfish of me?” he asked.
I shook my head. “There’s nothing selfish about you,” I said. “I enjoy my time with you more than anything in the world. And to be fair to you, I get pure enjoyment out of the times when you flirt with me, so next time I’m going to keep my mouth shut.”
“Well, to be fair to you, it’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to kiss anyone this badly.”
“I know the feeling.”
Grant aske
d the driver to continue on what was one of the most harrowing car rides I’d ever endured. Sri Lanka is a very populous island, with cars everywhere. However, the roads are “island roads.” Outdated, winding, and just plain terrifying. People drive fast and pass each other with reckless abandon. In fact, at one time we were in the middle of a line of five cars with everyone passing each other in different directions. I was white knuckled for most of the day.
“And you were worried about a little rainstorm,” Grant shouted, clutching the handle above his head.
Our next stop was at an elephant orphanage that was really more of a zoo-type tourist attraction. It was quite enjoyable, though, to see so many elephants up close—about forty in all—and some as young as three months old bathing in the river and wandering about.
As we were turning to leave, Grant reached for my hand.
“This is not a tease . . .”
“Wait,” I interrupted, and placed my other hand over his lips for a second. “If you want to hold my hand, please hold my hand. If you want to kiss me, please do so. And if you don’t, I promise not to read into anything or accuse you of playing games or taunting me in any way. I also guarantee that I will be receptive, because I spend most of my days hoping you’ll do at least one of those two things.”
He smiled, and we held hands on our way back to the death Jeep.
I clutched Grant’s hand and closed my eyes during most of the ride back to the marina. Once we reached our slip, I bent down and kissed Imagine.
“I will never leave you for four wheels again,” I said aloud.
The next day we left the marina in Galle with little regret and were treated to a gorgeous three-day sail from Sri Lanka to the Maldives. Downwind sailing, smooth waters, clear, starry skies at night, and periodic flirting. What more could a girl ask for?
Chapter 19
About a week had passed since we left Sri Lanka, and I’d finally gotten my sea legs. I’d slept through the night and awoke with a new energy and infatuation with the water. I could smell that the coffee had been made and saw that Grant and Quinn were up top in the cockpit when I emerged from my bunk. But before I joined them, I made myself sit down and write an e-mail to Caroline. I knew she got terribly worried when she didn’t hear from me.