The Great Wide Sea

by M. H. Herlong

  Then we stopped at Spanish Cay. It was beautiful just like all the others. Lonely, small, and empty. Dad and I could do the double-anchor trick now without using the dinghy if the harbor was big enough or empty enough. We sat in the cockpit eating lunch and dozing in the midday sun. Dad finished his drink, crumpled his napkin, and tossed it in the trash. “Boys,” he said. “I’ve made up my mind.”

  I was lying on the port side of the cockpit. I opened my eyes and looked at him. Dylan turned from where he was sitting on the stern, hanging his legs over the side. Gerry pulled his legs up under him and twisted Blankie around his hands.

  “About what?” I finally asked when Dad didn’t speak again.

  “You are an excellent crew,” he said. “Ben, you’re a born sailor. Dylan, your navigation is perfect. Gerry, you try hard and you’re learning. I’ve watched you all and I know you can handle it. You’re the best.”

  I sat up. Dylan moved to the cockpit.

  “And Chrysalis is a good boat. She’s not pretty and she’s not new, but she’s strong and seaworthy. She can take us anywhere.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “I’m saying,” Dad said, “that if we wanted to, we could cross the Atlantic Ocean. We could sail around the world.”

  Hot sun filled up the cockpit. I felt the sweat under my arms. “But we don’t want to,” I said.

  “No,” Dad said. “Not now. But later. First, we’ll just go to Bermuda. Tomorrow we’ll turn back to Marsh Harbour. We need to get the radio repaired. That guy in Nassau didn’t know what he was doing. And I’m still not happy about that noise in the rudder. So we’ll spend a few days in Marsh Harbour making repairs and stocking up. Then we’ll head to Bermuda. It’s not quite nine hundred miles from here. It’ll take us five to seven days to get there, I’d guess.”

  “You’re joking,” I said.

  “No,” Dad said. “I’m perfectly serious. Look what we’ve done, what we’ve learned. Now we have a chance to do even more, learn even more.”

  “What about money?”

  “We’ll work. People do that. Like we did in Nassau. You work where you go, and if you don’t like it, you leave. I could probably teach in Bermuda. You guys could sit in a classroom if you wanted, or we could keep on with the homeschooling. It wouldn’t matter. After storm season ended, we could go to—I don’t know—Spain maybe. Learn Spanish. Or to Portugal, where the great sailors came from.” He laughed. “It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, and now we can do it.” He stood up. “Storm’s coming, boys. Better get the boat ready.”

  He went down below, but we couldn’t move.

  Gerry held Blankie pressed against his mouth. Dylan twisted in his seat and looked out at the water.

  A small sailboat quietly motored into the harbor. We watched the couple drop their anchor, bring up drinks, and sit to rest under their bimini.

  The wind picked up suddenly. Chrysalis started rolling. The couple scrambled down below, but we were still frozen.

  Dad poked his head out of the companionway.

  “You said one year,” I said.

  “Get moving,” he said. “We don’t want everything to get wet.”

  We swung into action, doing storm routine in double time. We saw the line of the rain passing through the entrance to the harbor and had our boat locked up tight and storm-safe before the first drops hit. Down below, nobody spoke. Gerry got out his clothespins and acorns and started a war in his bunk. Dylan was flipping the pages in his star book. Dad was reading, but I guessed it wasn’t poetry this time.

  I sat at the navigation table and looked at the chart. Spanish Cay was part of a curve of islands arching across the northern rim of the Bahamas. We had been sailing west, closer every day to Walker’s Cay, the northwesternmost island in the Bahamas. I had thought we would spend some time there, maybe even a long time, and then sail the final leg, less than two hundred miles back across the Gulf Stream to Florida—and then home.

  It was the obvious thing to do. He had said a year, and by the time we made it back to Florida, it would be almost a year. We had learned the things we needed to learn. We had had the adventures. Sometimes we had even had fun.

  “Dad,” I said, and turned to look into his bunk.

  He was lying on his side gazing out his porthole. The rain thrummed on the deck above us.

  “You can’t do this,” I said. “You can’t just decide.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but I went on. “It’s just like before. You can’t just—”

  Then the other boat hit us. Dad thunked against the side of the boat and Gerry fell out of his bunk. A wave lifted us apart, and then the other boat got us again. I fell out of my seat and hit the cabin sole on my knees. We heard screaming voices, and Dad and I were out in the cockpit before either of us said anything more. The little boat, about two-thirds our size, was dragging her anchor and broadsiding our stern. Dad and I were hauling out the fenders and Dad was cursing the other sailors.

  “Get your motor on!” he screamed.

  The guy in the other boat was fumbling with his engine and shouting instructions to the woman. She was looking for their fenders and dropping lines all over the cockpit floor. The rain was sheeting down.

  The seas lifted them toward us again. They came from slightly above and then raked down across our stern, their lifelines momentarily catching on our stern rail. The pressure of their boat against ours ripped the fender out of my hands before I could tie it off on the lines. Dad grabbed the boat hook and held it out like a spear to push the other boat away.

  The boat rose and came at us again. The thud caught Dad off balance and knocked him flat. He lost his grip on the boat hook and it went flying into the cockpit, whacking Dylan on the head just as he and Gerry stumbled through the companionway hatch.

  “Stay below! You’ll get hurt!” Dad yelled at them. “Just lie down on the cabin floor.”

  They scrambled back down as the other boat’s engine finally chugged into life. Dad was yelling at them not to cut our anchor lines as they motored away from us, pulling up their own useless anchor and screaming at each other. They had no choice now but to motor out of the harbor. The rain was already much lighter, but the space was too small and the sea too rough for them to try anchoring again.

  Dad threw himself down on the cockpit seat in the rain puddles. He leaned back on his elbows and let the thick drops fall straight into his face. I stood on the stern in the rain, holding on to the backstay and concentrating on the up-and-down motion of the ocean rolling under us. Dad and I were breathing hard and our clothes were wet to the skin. Then Dylan’s and Gerry’s faces appeared like twin moons in the dark square of the companionway hatch.

  “Are we going to sink?” Gerry asked.

  “No.” Dad was short with him. “Of course not.” He roused himself and leaned over the stern to look.

  We all looked.

  “It’s just scratches, Dad,” Dylan said.

  The collision had taken out part of the name painted on the stern. Now it said Chrys—is.

  Dad looked at that for a few minutes, then answered Dylan. “Yes. Just scratches, a fender, and the GPS antenna.”

  The sensor for our navigation system was usually hanging there attached to the stern rail. Now it was gone.

  Gerry looked at the empty space. He sat down in the cockpit and slowly pulled Blankie over his head.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll replace it in Marsh Harbour.”

  Dad snorted. “You’ve obviously never been to Marsh Harbour.”

  White heat rolled over me like a tidal wave as I turned to speak to Dad. “You’re right,” I said. “I haven’t ever been to Marsh Harbour, and I never want to go to Marsh Harbour. Not now. Not ever.”

  “Then we won’t,” Dad said evenly.

  I could feel the adrenaline pumping into the tips of my fingers. I could feel the rush in the soles of my feet.

  “We’re going home?” I asked.

  “
No,” Dad said. “We’ll head straight for Bermuda and replace the GPS antenna there. We’d have to order a new one in Marsh Harbour and have it mailed. It could take weeks. The season’s closing in. We don’t need to waste time in Marsh Harbour waiting for what we can buy in half an hour in Bermuda.”

  He bent to gather the remaining fenders.

  “What about the radio?” Dylan asked. “That guy in Nassau didn’t fix it. It still goes in and out.”

  “Why don’t you look at it, Ben?” Dad started. “You’re good with—”

  “Sorry. I don’t do radios. Just engines. You said the guy in Marsh Harbour could fix it.”

  “The guy in Bermuda can fix it. We can pick up the weather report fine. That’s all that matters.”

  “Exactly how do you plan to find Bermuda without a GPS?”

  “Dead reckoning,” Dad said. “Dylan and I can both easily get us to Bermuda.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said. “I thought you were better, but you’re not. You’re still crazy. You want us to sail out into the middle of the ocean with a broken radio and a busted navigation system because you’re angry at some stupid stranger. Well, we’re not doing it. We’re not leaving for Bermuda in the morning. We’re going home.”

  Dad stood and tossed the fender to me. I caught it.

  “Stow it,” he said.

  “No,” I said, and dropped the fender on the deck.

  Dad stood on the back of the boat and looked over our heads. He was so still, I could see that he was trembling all over. “I am the captain,” Dad said. “We will sail for Bermuda in the morning.”

  “No!” I screamed. “Not this time. You can’t make us go this time.”

  Then suddenly Dad raised his hand and slapped me hard across my face.

  “Stop!” Dylan shouted. “Please stop.”

  “Don’t stop!” I yelled, my face stinging as Dad raised his hand again. “Go ahead. Hit the other side.”

  Then from under Blankie came Gerry’s little voice. “I can see you,” he said. “Did you know that?”

  Dad jerked back his hand and looked at Gerry sitting there like a Halloween ghost.

  “Blankie is so thin, I can see right through him.”

  Dad’s face pinched. He turned his back on us and leaned over the stern, holding on to the lifelines. Then he threw up. Just like that. Whomp. Right into the ocean.

  “You’re sick,” Dylan said.

  “No,” Dad said. He straightened up, looking a little white. “I am not sick.” Then he looked at me. “And I am not crazy.”

  I felt prickles like fear in the hair on the back of my neck.

  “I am a very lonely man—who wants his wife back.”

  “Dad—” I started.

  “Just shut up,” he shot back. “For once can you just shut up.”

  Dylan handed him a cloth to wipe his face.

  Dad rubbed his mouth and chin, then threw the cloth in the water. “We’ll sail tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”

  So the next day we set sail for Bermuda. If we had had more time, if the storm hadn’t come just then, if the other boat hadn’t hit us, if I hadn’t gotten so angry—maybe we could have talked. Maybe we could have changed his mind.

  But it all happened so fast. One minute I was thinking we were heading home. Then the next minute I was lashing the dinghy over the forward hatch and hauling up the sails as we turned Chrysalis toward Bermuda, farther from home than ever.

  We sailed on Dylan’s sun shots all that first day. At night Dad set watches. The second day was easy too. Bright and sunny. I went to bed that second night with Dylan at the helm holding a compass course of thirty-five degrees north-northeast. We were making about six knots. Bermuda was only a few more days away. I figured that after we’d been there a while, we could talk to Dad and he would change his mind. In the meantime, he was right—the compass was as good as the electronics. We were going to make it. We were going to make it easily.

  But we didn’t. We never reached Bermuda. And it wasn’t because we got lost. It was because we lost Dad.

  THE STORM

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ON THE THIRD morning at sea I woke up and heard the boat. When you’ve been on a boat for a while, its sound gets to be like the sound of your own heartbeat. It’s always there, constant and steady, until after a while you don’t hear it anymore. Then something changes. The speed, or the rhythm, or the tune. Suddenly the sound rings in your ears.

  That morning when I woke up the boat sounded different. It felt different. The sails were slapping in and out, and we were wallowing between the waves. The wind had died or Dad had headed up into the wind on purpose. Maybe something had snapped and he needed the pressure off the sails to fix it. That was easy to imagine after the whacks we took a few days before in Spanish Cay.

  I rolled over in my berth. Eight o’clock. I had missed my whole watch. Dad hadn’t waked me. I put the pillow over my head.

  “Thanks,” I said to the pillowcase.

  The sails slapped. We rode sideways between the waves. I heard a winch handle scrape across the cockpit floor next to my head. Whatever was broken was taking a while to fix. I listened for Dad’s footsteps on the bow. The boat was quiet. The winch handle skidded again.

  I sat up. I figured Dad was waiting for me to come up. When I appeared, he’d be bleary-eyed, repairing a sail maybe, feeling so self-reliant and self-sufficient, the sailor’s palm fitted over his hand, the huge needle going up and down. If I wasn’t impressed, I thought, he’d probably get angry.

  I threw the pillow off and dragged on some shorts. I rubbed my face hard with my palms. “Okay,” I said. “I’m impressed. I am really impressed.”

  I swung myself through the companionway and blinked in the sun. At home, eight o’clock seemed early. The sun just barely reached in between the buildings and under the trees. But here, nothing blocked the eight o’clock sun. It was already hot and bright. Here even the eight o’clock sun could burn you.

  “Morning,” I said as I stepped into the cockpit.

  The cockpit was empty, but the autopilot was still connected, still whining and grinding, still trying to steer the old course in this different wind.

  I turned toward the bow with my “Golly, I’m impressed” face fixed on tight.

  Before the jib slapped across the bow, I thought I caught a glimpse of Dad bending under the bow pulpit, as if he were looking for something in the water. Then the sail popped back and I realized it was an illusion.

  “Dad,” I called, looking around the deck.

  There was no answer except the autopilot. I hadn’t realized how much noise it made when it was trying to steer an impossible course.

  The deck was clearly empty.

  I felt a little chill. Suddenly I thought maybe I had really seen him and he’d fallen overboard at just that second. I thumped to the bow. No Dad. There had been no splash anyway. As quiet as everything was, I would have heard him calling. And we weren’t moving in the water. He would be right there beside the boat.

  So where was Dad? Why was the autopilot on? And why hadn’t he waked me?

  I turned to go back to the cockpit and noticed the dinghy. The bow line and one stern line were untied. Why would Dad do that? If he was hiding under there, something was really wrong.

  I knelt quickly and slowly lifted up the dinghy. Nothing was there, not even the emergency pack. What had Dad done with that? When we were under way it was never supposed to be moved. I scanned the deck. No pack anywhere.

  Why was the dinghy loose? What had happened to the pack? And where was Dad?

  I went below and checked his bunk. No Dad. I could have bounced a quarter on the sheets. His poetry collection was lying smack in the middle of his pillow.

  Nowhere to hide in the main cabin, either.

  Not in the V-berths. Dylan was snoring away up there alone.

  Not squirreled away in the engine room. Not scrunched into the hanging locker. I eased past Dylan and gently opene
d the sail locker. The big orange bags were stowed in exactly the order Dad had commanded. Nothing there but sails.

  The boat wallowed. The sails banged. The autopilot whined. I realized my blood was rushing in my ears. It was so loud I almost didn’t hear Dylan’s whisper.

  “What’s wrong, Ben?”

  I jumped and banged my head.

  “Nothing!” I rubbed my head while Dylan waited and I cursed.

  Then I looked at him. “You want to know what’s wrong?” I said. “Well, I’ll tell you. Dad has disappeared. Gone! Vamoose!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I felt suddenly dizzy and sat on his bed. “I’m talking about the fact that Dad is nowhere on this boat. He’s gone.”

  Dylan sat up. He pulled on his shorts and rubbed his face.

  “Don’t wake up Gerry,” he said. “He’ll be scared. Let’s go look again.”

  “Gerry will be scared. And you’re not?”

  “Shhh,” Dylan said.

  He tiptoed past Gerry’s bunk and up onto the deck.

  Eight o’clock is hot. Eight thirty is hotter. The wind had almost completely died, and the air was heavy. The rollers were smooth and glassy across their curving backs.

  “Dad!” Dylan called. I guess he figured I hadn’t thought of doing that.

  “His cup,” Dylan said. And it was. His coffee cup, half-empty and cold.

  “His lifeline,” he said, and was right again. Dylan held up the end attached to the boat. The other end was supposed to be hooked to Dad’s safety harness, but he had taken it off. In the middle of a night watch. Alone. Why?

  The autopilot ground and whined in the wallows.

  “Look at the dinghy,” I said.

  He went forward and lifted it just as I had. “Where’s the pack?”

  “Don’t know.”

  We sat in the cockpit. I picked up the winch handle before it slid across the floor again. The sails cracked against themselves. I turned off the autopilot and disconnected it. The air filled up with silence. The tiller bounced against my thigh. I grabbed it and held it still.

  “What was our heading supposed to be?” I asked Dylan.