“He’s okay,” she defended him. “He’s a good kid and we need him, so stop riding him so hard.” The jib started to flap wildly as Atrophy rounded up into the wind. Erica instinctively dropped her raised foot to the deck and turned the wheel to port a few degrees, letting the boat fall back off. The knot meter reflected the boat’s response as it heeled over and accelerated briefly to 7 knots before settling back at 6.7.
“See, she’s got a weather helm already,” he complained. “I told you we should have put that mizzen back up before we left.”
“She doesn’t have a weather helm. I just took my mind off steering for a moment so she headed up a little, that’s all. We’re doing fine, so stop worrying and finish with those charts.” She put her right foot back up on the seat for balance, knowing it would attract his attention to the narrow crotch of her bikini. It had the desired result.
He bit hungrily: “Want me to put some more of that sunscreen on your back before I go below to program the autopilot?”
“No,” she replied. “I had Vincent put some on me before when you were below fiddling with the radar.” There was no humor in her voice, only a continuation of the increasing friction between them.
He reacted with as much bravado as he could muster, but his face was beet red as he turned from her and walked over to the hatchway. He felt humiliated, whether she was telling the truth or not. He could feel his ears burning with her laughter as he climbed down the ladder into the cabin.
Beth came up out of the cabin on Red Sky, a chocolate-chip cookie in one hand, and saw Max sitting in the cockpit, the GPS on his lap, patiently hoping to come up with a signal from the homing device on Atrophy.
“Any luck, Dad?”
“Nada.”
“It’s been two days. Do you want half of my cookie?”
“I didn’t know we had any left.”
“It’s the last one.” She extended her hand to him, cookie in the leather palm of her fingerless sailing glove.
“I’m moved, truly.” He took the offering.
“Marylebone only nibbled it a little after I dropped it on the floor of the cabin.”
“Thank you for sharing that information with me.” He popped it gratefully into his mouth. “What’s your mother doing?”
“Reading. She said to tell you we did over sixty-five miles on autopilot last night. We averaged nearly eight knots with one reef in the main.”
“Not bad. The new wind vane steerer is working well. I wonder how Sloane did.”
“I just checked the radar. There’s nothing on the screen.”
“Who knows where Atrophy is. Maybe they’re heading straight for Panama?”
“If they are, they’re in for one hell of a winter storm. Here’s the weatherfax Mom just got.” She handed him the weather map. “Check out that low.”
He took the piece of paper she handed him and looked at it carefully. “That’s the low I saw developing when we left Antigua two days ago. We should still miss most of it.”
“If Sloane’s north of us, he’ll be in for a pounding.”
“That’s a bit of an understatement,” he said, still examining the map. “Winds at the center are gusting to over sixty-five knots. If Sloane is taking the direct route to the Canal, we might not have to bother catching him and Erica.”
“Do you think we’ll find them?”
“Who knows. Losing the mizzen should slow them down.”
“Suppose they put it back before leaving?”
“I’m figuring they left unexpectedly and didn’t do it.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“We’ve maximized our speed pretty well since leaving Antigua. We’re out forty-one hours and we’ve logged three hundred and twelve miles. That’s better than 7.5 knots. They can’t beat that.”
“What’s our distance to Aruba?” Beth asked.
“Two hundred and forty-six miles, according to the GPS.”
“We’re more than halfway there. If they’re taking the same route, we have a chance.”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Len looked at the barometer, tapped it, and looked again before checking the wind indicator. The only weather report he was able to pick up on VHF came from Caracas and was in Spanish, crackling with static. He couldn’t follow it, and he couldn’t find any station broadcasting in English. The weatherfax was still turning out blank paper, and he had given up on it. When he finally located Aruba Radio on the AM band, the weather report was in English, but it sounded like a travelogue: “Warm, mostly sunny, possibility of a brief shower or two later in the day.”
According to his calculations, Atrophy was 110 miles north of Aruba, heading on a direct southwesterly course for the Panama Canal. A weather report from some disk jockey in Aruba wasn’t reliable, and anyhow, the barometer was telling him a different story, painting the only picture he needed to see. It had been falling at an increasing rate since midnight, dropping from 30.04 inches to where it now stood at 29.81. In the last hour alone, it had dropped an alarming 0.05 inch.
A glimpse out the porthole over his left shoulder disclosed a cloudless southern sky. No problem if that was the only sky to check. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. He got up from the navigation station and crossed the cabin over to the starboard side, bending slightly to look out one of its portholes. Clouds were developing ominously in the northeast. They were in for a storm, probably before noon.
Erica had taken over the watch at three a.m. and was still up in the cockpit. He had spent his watch dozing on and off behind the wheel, sporadically checking the horizon for cargo ships. They were satisfied to let the autopilot do most of the work as Atrophy continued to sail close-hauled for Panama, constantly heeled over ten to fifteen degrees or more.
Vincent had spent the night up on the deck, sleeping under a blanket on one of the cockpit seats. He hadn’t stirred during Len’s watch, preferring to be awake when Erica was at the helm. Now that she was up there, he could hear her talking softly to Vincent. Vincent was giggling like a little boy in response.
Len stretched out on one of the berths in the main salon of the cabin and closed his eyes in an effort to get some sleep before going back up to relieve Erica on watch. He was able to close his mind off from worry about the impending storm, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the disintegration of his relationship with her. She had changed since they came down to the Caribbean, and not for the better.
All his carefully conceived plans for the future were being rendered meaningless by her efforts to humiliate him. He was finding it all difficult to handle without the reassuring love she had shown him back in New York. Submitting to her domination when it was tempered with affection turned him on. After all, she deserved the respect. It was another thing to accept hateful maliciousness. He didn’t deserve it.
They’d have to talk. He had no intention of going to Australia by boat or by plane with a nasty, foul-tempered bitch. That’s not what he’d planned this whole thing for. That’s not what it was all about. If she couldn’t straighten out, he’d split in Panama with the bonds but without her.
After trying for an hour, he gave up on his efforts to sleep and got up to go to the aft head. The silence from the cockpit attracted him, so he took a step up on the ladder and stuck his head out to see what was doing. Erica was sitting down behind the wheel, her face and torso hidden from his sight by the pedestal that held the steering wheel and the binnacle on top of it.
He could see Vincent, wearing short cutoff jeans, lying down on the other seat along the length of the cockpit, gazing at her adoringly, his long legs hanging easily over the transom.
Len climbed silently back down into the cabin and continued to the head, allowing his fury at her to abate without a confrontation. He then went into the cabin, put on a pair of trunks and a clean T-shirt, and alerted her to his presence by shouting topside to ask if he could bring her up a cup of coffee.
This time he went all the way up the ladder and into the cockpi
t, handing her the cup of coffee and keeping one for himself. She looked at him without any trace of concern for what had just transpired, while Vincent kept his back to the two of them and walked out to his private sanctuary on the bow of the boat.
Len sat on the seat across from her after taking a look at the instruments on the pedestal. The knot meter showed a speed of 6.2 knots, while the wind indicator showed a 19-knot wind coming in from the northeast. The northeastern sky was not perceptibly cloudier than when he had looked earlier from below. “We’re in for a storm within the next couple of hours,” he declared authoritatively.
“I see it,” she responded, looking to her right. “It’s going to hit us right on the nose.”
“The barometer’s dropped fast since last night.”
“Too bad that weatherfax isn’t working. It’d be nice to know what to expect.”
“I told you that would be a problem. Come on, let’s change course for Aruba,” he said. “I have all the waypoints programmed into the GPS. It’ll get us out of the way of the storm. A beam reach will be easier than getting our brains beat out like we’ve been doing close-hauled for the last three days.”
“We’ll be all right. Atrophy is a heavy boat.”
“But her balance is off without the mizzen. The radar is acting up. The weatherfax is out. We’re not in condition for a storm.”
“It’ll probably just be a short squall, and we’re halfway to the Canal already. I don’t want to lose time detouring to Aruba, especially if Leung or Beth Swahn is there.”
“Then shorten the main.”
“We can shorten it later. Those clouds don’t look so bad and they’re a long way off.” She looked at her wristwatch and then at him. “It’s nearly five. Take the watch so I can go below for some sleep while it’s still dark.” She stood up from behind the wheel and moved toward the hatch opening. She noticed Vincent looking at her from the bow and silently motioned for him to come below. He got up and began wending his way aft.
“Did you show Vincent the leather jewelry in the forward cabin?” Len asked.
“No, but he did something very vulgar before. I’m going to talk to him about it now.”
Beth was slouched down behind the wheel, lazily steering Red Sky with her feet. Max was stretched out on the windward side of the cockpit, his head propped up against a red cushion, making revisions to his book. Off in the distance, a container ship was passing on its way south.
Andi came up out of the hatch carrying a tray loaded with food. Three sets of eyes, triggered by insatiable appetites, homed in on her, carefully following her progress toward the stern. Only Marylebone moved, wanting to be closer to the action. Beth automatically reached her foot through the steering wheel and, with her toes, released the folding teak table that was attached to the front of the pedestal.
Red Sky was heeled over smartly on a starboard tack with the knot log reading a steady 9.2 knots, close to hull speed for a forty-seven-foot sloop confined by the inexorable laws of nature governing displacement vessels. The arrow on the wind indicator dial was pointing to the northeast, with the LCD readout showing a wind speed of 22 knots. The waves looked to be about four or five feet high. A fair number of them had whitecaps cresting off their tops.
“What a glorious day for a sail, huh, Mom?”
“A beam reach all the way,” Andi said, putting the tray of food down on the table. “Why don’t you turn on the autopilot and we’ll have lunch.”
“I’d rather stay at the wheel. Make better speed than on auto.” In deference to lunch, however, she sat up, replacing her feet at the wheel with her hands.
“What’s on the radar, Andi?” Max asked.
“I just checked. There’s that tanker you can see passing ahead of us now and a couple of other big ships crossing our stern about fifteen miles away, barely on the screen.”
“No sailboats, I take it?”
“No sailboats. Who but us would be crazy enough to sail across the Caribbean this time of year?”
“Len Sloane,” Beth volunteered.
“He’s not on the radar screen.”
“We’ll get him.”
“I know, but better have a sandwich first.” She handed Beth a plate with a tuna-salad sandwich and potato chips, gave one to Max, and then sat down herself, reaching over to the table for her plate.
“Did you check the weather?” Beth asked between mouthfuls.
“The storm is still off to the northeast. About a hundred miles away on a parallel course. No real trouble.”
“Good thing we didn’t head straight for the Canal.”
“We may get winds up to thirty-five knots later this afternoon, but not much worse.”
“With this beam reach we’re on, it’ll be a sleigh ride to Aruba.” Beth was excited by the prospect.
“The wind’s at twenty-three knots now,” Max said. “As soon as we’re finished eating, I want us to take a reef in the main and get the umbilical cords on. Harnesses for everyone on deck.”
“Oh, c’mon,” Beth protested, skillfully steering Red Sky along on her rhumb line to Aruba. “We’re flying. We just hit ten knots a minute ago and almost fifteen knots surfing down the backside of that last wave. Let’s not slow down now.” She was eating with one hand and steering with the other as the bow dug its nose confidently into each wave and then lifted up, causing spray to blow back, deflected by the dodger.
“We are going to reef,” Max said, popping the last olive into his mouth, “and when she hits twenty-five knots, we’ll roll the genny up a little. No sense in pushing the rig too hard.”
When the full darkness of night closed in, enveloping Atrophy within its frightening confines of blindness and loss of depth perception, Leonard could no longer see the waves smashing into them. His daylong anxiety became terror.
Since leaving Antigua, they had been beating to windward, as near to the wind as possible, for three days of wet, jarring, and miserable sailing, with their lee rail in the water much of the time. Len had been unable to relax, being whiplashed by the ceaseless pounding of the ocean against the boat. Then, when the storm hit around three p.m. with heavy sheeting rain, ten-foot seas, and gale-force winds gusting to 45 knots, it became intolerable for him.
Vincent was useless around the deck, and the more Len screamed at him, the more useless he became and the more Erica defended him. Vincent had lived his entire life on Antigua, and while he had seen mountainous waves and felt the force of hurricanes, it had been from the relative safety of shore. He was unprepared for a storm at sea, so the teenager spent most of the time huddled pathetically in a fetal position on one of the berths below. Erica’s ministrations, clandestine or overt, erotic or otherwise, did little to enlist his help.
It was now slightly after nine o’clock, and the red glow from the wind meter reflected a velocity of 43 knots, gusting to 48, 49. Then it suddenly zoomed past 50 to 54 knots, before settling back again to 45. They didn’t have a heavyweight storm sail on board and had long since furled up the genoa. Erica decided it was time to take the third reef in the mainsail.
She steered Atrophy up into the wind and tightened down the boom. The deafening sound of the wind combined with the wildly flapping sail unnerved Len. The deck under him was a gyrating, erratic platform, moving up as the boat climbed waves and dropping down precipitously as the boat fell off.
He and Erica climbed up on the cabin roof, trying to maintain their balance. They had the tethers from their safety harnesses hooked into the base of the mast and were desperately holding on to the boom with one hand while trying to shorten the sail with the other.
Len uncleated the main halyard and struggled to lower the sail until the grommet that marked the third set of reef points was next to the tack hook on the boom. After catching the grommet on the hook, he raised the halyard back up the mast until the shortened sail had been pulled tight, and then he recleated it. Erica used the small winch at the end of the boom to pull in the reefing line.
Afte
r ten minutes of intense effort, they had the job completed. Erica climbed down off the cabin top, returned to the steering wheel, and hooked her safety line to the pedestal. As soon as she had Atrophy back on course, she turned on the autopilot, but it stubbornly refused to engage.
Len, making his way back from the roof of the cabin, lost his footing and fell heavily into the cockpit, landing on his back just as a wave flooded in. He lay in a heap on the floor of the cockpit, trying to catch his breath.
“You clumsy idiot!” Erica berated him reflexively, and then, concerned he might really be injured, she asked, “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” he gasped, pushing himself up to a sitting position. “Look, we’ve got to get out of this,” he pleaded. “We’ve made no progress in the last five hours and been blown God knows how far off course. We’re heading right into the storm and getting beaten to death. Let’s head for Aruba. It’s only about eighty-five miles south of us.”
“You jerk!” she screamed again, demanding to be heard over the shrieking wind. “The only thing waiting for us in Aruba is Leung.”
“Anything’s better than this.”
“This storm won’t last long and we’ll be back on course. You might as well go below and dry off while I wrestle with the autopilot. Check on Vincent and I’ll be down in a second.”
He picked himself up from the cockpit floor just in time to be flattened again as a wave hit them broadside, causing Atrophy to round up abruptly, threatening to broach. Suddenly, three more waves hit them in rapid succession. The last one rolled the boat over so far that the mast scooped into the water before she finally righted itself. Erica was smashed down onto the seat against her shoulder but grabbed on to her shortened safety line and pulled herself painfully back up to the wheel, where she continued to work on the autopilot controls.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
Stunned by the pain, she looked up to see him staring at her, horror in his face. “Yes, now go below,” she ordered, out of what little patience she had. “You’re not helping up here.” She continued to struggle with the autopilot, trying to get it back in operation.
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