The wind was out of the east and had built to a steady twenty or thirty knots. Jimmy shackled a dock line to the turnbuckle on the forestay, and once I had the clevis pin pulled from the front of the step, we carefully lowered the mast, hinged on the aft bolt of the step.
Fortunately, Whole Nine Yards being a small boat, its standing rigging consisted of only the forestay, a single aft stay and two shrouds. Once the mast was down, we removed them from the masthead and carefully coiled them, using cable ties to hold them together. DJ carried them into his boat and stored them in the salon.
Then we turned to the mast itself and removed the antenna, wind vane and cups, the masthead light, and all the wiring. I tied a string to the end of the antenna coax and we pulled all the wiring out at once, leaving the string in its place. That’d make it easier to reinstall everything later.
“Hey, DJ,” I said, as he headed down into the cabin with the wind cups. “Rather than store that below, how about bringing it over here? You’re gonna stay aboard the Revenge, right?”
“You gonna run the AC tonight?”
I grinned. “Yeah. And bring the wind gauge that connects to the other end. Might come in handy, if we can wire it up somehow.”
An anemometer looks like four measuring cups joined together at the handles. The cups catch the wind and spin around, measuring wind speed.
“It has a battery backup,” he said, handing the anemometer over. “Supposed to last for six hours of continuous use.”
By midafternoon, the rain was constant, but not too heavy. Below the tops of the trees, we were shielded from the bulk of the wind. Jimmy took the small anchor, wedged it into the sand beside DJ’s boat, and then we slowly lowered the aluminum mast into the water.
“I sure hope this works,” DJ said. “A sailboat isn’t much good without a mast.”
“We’ll do the same thing with the canoe, man,” Jimmy said. “Best place for them to be is underwater.”
Standing on the foredeck of the Revenge, I surveyed both boats and our surroundings. The sun would go down soon, even though we wouldn’t see it, and the storm would build throughout the night. But the worst wouldn’t come until late tomorrow morning.
Seeing nothing to worry about, we retired to my salon and again, Jimmy went straight to the computer. I’d have to remember to start the generator before we went to sleep. With no sun for most of the day, the solar panels on the roof hadn’t been able to collect much energy.
“She’s down to a Cat-2, man!” Jimmy was practically jubilant. “But it’s headed north-northwest now, just moved back out over water near La Teja.”
I looked at the screen and Jimmy changed to the forecast cone. It showed Irma’s path prediction, strengthening to Cat-4, and moving right through the Middle Keys in the morning, before making another landfall between Cape Sable and Tampa Bay later tomorrow afternoon. In twenty-four hours, this would all be over. But first we had to get through those twenty-four hours.
“We’ll be in the northeast quadrant of the storm,” Jimmy said. “Dude, this could totally harsh my mellow.”
“We’ve been through it before,” I reminded him.
“You guys went through a hurricane on this boat before?” DJ asked.
“Right here in this very creek, man. Hurricane Irene, right, Jesse? We holed up here with that girl—what was her name?”
“Yeah, Irene,” I said, ignoring the reference to Savannah. “That was a long time ago, and it was only a Category-1 when the eye passed over us. This will be worse, but then, varying levels of hell aren’t all that different, really.”
“You were in the eye of the storm?” DJ asked.
“Like I said, it wasn’t much of a blow. This one’s gonna be worse, but we’re completely prepared.”
We assigned a simple four-hour watch as we ate dinner, and DJ volunteered for the mid-watch. Since he was the youngest, I thought it a good idea. I used to be able to get by on just a few hours’ sleep here and there for days on end, but the last two weeks had really taken a toll.
I took first watch and after dinner, DJ and Jimmy turned in.
Sitting in the salon, I read a book on lost treasure ships while the storm raged outside, building steadily. Finn lay beside me on the deck and I reached out a hand to give him an ear scratch. He didn’t move, but his tail beat a fast tattoo on the deck.
My mind shifted to the Icelandic woman from Norman Island. How could people go so far off the deep end? Drugging innocent people without their knowledge, kidnapping them, using them for their own perverse games, and even killing some? I could never understand it.
The flight attendant had just been the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. As had the poor sap who’d brought her to Key West from wherever the plane had landed. The dismembered and beheaded body that had washed up on Little Thatch was obviously one of their own; they all wore the same clothes.
Suddenly, something Rusty said earlier clicked in my mind. He’d told me that a Key West store owner had been murdered. Who kills a store owner? Especially for just a couple hundred bucks? I pulled my phone out of my pocket and texted Rusty.
A moment later, I got his reply. Yeah, it was a clothing store.
So, the man killed in Key West owned a clothing store, and the last thing Sunna had been seen wearing was a flight attendant’s uniform, which kinda stuck out.
I texted Rusty back and told him to keep an eye out for a very short blonde with pale blue eyes, who might come looking for me. I doubted she’d be running around in a hurricane looking for anyone, but the Anchor was my address on record. Then again, the killing of the store owner might have been just a coincidence.
I checked the computer every hour and ran the generator constantly. The Revenge was completely closed up, so we’d stay dry, but the outside temperature was still in the 80s and the humidity was right at 100%, so the air inside was hot and saturated. I ran the AC so we could rest comfortably.
With the 2200 update, Irma had slowed her forward speed considerably, wobbling as if uncertain what she wanted to destroy next, after disrupting life throughout the northern and eastern Caribbean. She was whirling around in the Florida Straits, maybe sixty miles south of Marathon, moving in a zig-zag drift toward the Seven Mile Bridge and gaining strength.
A huge gust of wind passed over us and Finn looked up at me.
“You worried about the storm, boy?”
He cocked his head and his ears came up, as if saying, Not as long as we’re together.
I leaned down and scratched the soft fur under his chin. His nose pointed upward and his ears lay back on his head in total bliss.
Suddenly, the boat jerked. Finn’s ears came back up and he looked toward the starboard side. My eyes followed his gaze, but I could see nothing through the large, rain-swept porthole. All I could hear was the wind and the beating of the rain on the roof. But the boat had moved, and Finn had definitely heard something. Finn had been at my side for years, and I’d learned to trust his hearing. He often warned me of distant thunder while out on the water.
The wind was on our bow, so I went aft and opened the salon hatch to check the lines. I really had to tug on the knob; the vacuum created by the wind howling past had it sucked tight to the frame. Finally, I got it open and felt the pressure change in my ears.
“What happened?” Jimmy said, as he and DJ came up from the forward berthing area.
“Don’t know,” I replied, grabbing a flashlight and stepping out into the cockpit. The wind was whipping the treetops at what I’d guess would be close to tropical storm strength.
Jimmy and DJ stepped out behind me, but I told Finn to stay inside. I went to the starboard side and pointed my flashlight toward the mangroves. I saw the problem right off.
“One of the mangroves has snapped.” I had to yell to be heard over the wind. “The line is hanging loose where the branch fell
in the water.”
Earlier, I’d used a clamp and attached DJ’s wind vane to the more exposed starboard handrail on the side of the cabin, strapping the cable to the rail all the way to the cockpit. There, I’d brought the cable under the small overhang and stored the gauge in a mesh netting that held the boat’s life vests, turned so that the gauge could be read from below. Jimmy had switched it on and was staring at it.
“Gusting over forty-five,” he shouted. “It hasn’t dropped below thirty yet.”
I looked up at the treetops around us. “Probably higher than that above those trees.”
“How far away is it?” DJ asked.
“Still a good hundred miles or so,” I replied somberly.
Jimmy whistled; the sound being sucked away by the wind. “Man, there aren’t many storms I’ve heard of with tropical storm-force winds a hundred miles from the center.”
As I moved the flashlight from line to line, we studied each one. We had more than a dozen lines and four anchors out, though the aft one served little purpose until the storm passed. Later, the wind would come at us from the south, then southwest, but diminishing. The aft anchor would keep the wind from pushing us farther up the creek.
“I think the other lines will hold,” I offered. “You guys get back to sleep.”
“It’s an hour till my watch,” DJ said. “You go ahead, I’ll take over.”
Too tired to argue, I agreed. In my cabin, I toweled myself off and changed into dry clothes before lying down on the bunk. Sleep didn’t come easy with the violent wind roaring over the foredeck just above my head, but finally, I drifted into a fitful rest.
I woke just as tired as I’d been when I went to bed. Light came in through the overhead portlight. Not sunlight—just a dim, gray, non-directional light. Rain was sheeting onto the roof and the starboard side of the hull. Irma had moved further north, and the winds were starting to come around to a slightly more southwesterly direction.
When I went to the galley, the rocking of the boat threw me into the bulkhead. I steadied myself and used both handrails to go up the three steps to the galley. Jimmy and DJ were both there. Jimmy lifted a Thermos from the seat between them.
I grabbed a plastic mug with a lid and handed it to him. The way the boat was rocking, he’d burn my hand if I held it. He got it half full and wedged the lid down. I accepted the hot, Costa Rican coffee with relish.
“I took Finn out a while ago,” DJ said. “He didn’t look real happy about having to squat to pee on the swim platform.”
“Thanks,” I said and turned to my first mate.
“The eye shifted west,” Jimmy said. “The center is fifteen miles south of Summerland. It looks like a landfall somewhere between the Saddlebunch and Big Pine in an hour or so.”
I drank down half the coffee in one big gulp, feeling the caffeine jolt almost instantly. “What are the winds?”
Jimmy’s face told the story. “One-thirty, man.”
“Any mention of storm surge?”
Coming off the coast of Cuba, I knew the surge wouldn’t be as high as it could be, having only ninety miles for it to build.
“Nothing definitive,” Jimmy said. “But seas beyond the reef in the Middle Keys are reported to be higher than ten feet and they’re predicting a five-foot surge.”
To keep from falling, I squeezed in beside Jimmy. “Any surge will grow higher in the shallows of the back country.”
I looked at my watch. It was 0800, but I decided to call Rusty anyway. He answered on the second ring.
“How’re the conditions down there?” I asked.
“Shitty and gettin’ shittier. I think you had the right idea. How’s things there?”
“We had a mangrove break last night,” I replied. “Maybe the anchors dragged a few inches and the line to it was stretched too tight. But we have thirteen more, plus four anchors.”
There was silence for a moment, and I thought I’d lost him. “We had an incident here yesterday,” Rusty said.
My thoughts went back to the day after Hurricane Wilma had passed near the Keys, when two looters had tried to rob us at the Anchor. “What happened?”
“The Other Jack’s dead.”
“What? How?”
The Other Jack was one of the local flats guides. When he came to the Keys, many years ago, there was a guide by the name of Jack Gentles, so people took to calling Jack Clark “The Other Jack.” Long after Gentles went back up north, the name still stuck.
“It was some time after I talked to you on the phone. Shot dead right down at my docks, bro.”
“They catch who did it?”
Again, there was a pause.
“Before he was found, Naomi said she was serving a woman who got up and left before her drink even arrived. Left right after The Other Jack went down to move his boat onto a trailer. Naomi said the woman was smallish, with blond hair and pale blue eyes. With the windows boarded up, and thunder crashing, nobody saw or heard anything. Whoever it was, they took The Other Jack’s boat.”
“In a hurricane?” I asked, incredulously.
“What’s this all about with the blonde?” Rusty asked.
Figuring that Jimmy ought to know as well, I told Rusty to hang on and put the phone on speaker. Then I had Rusty explain everything again, and then I told them who Sunna Johannsdottir was and how she’d escaped custody in the Caymans.
“Well, keep your powder dry,” Rusty said. “Sounds like she’s already killed a few people. If Irma doesn’t swallow her up, I’m guessin’ she’s coming for you, for whatever reason.”
I ended the call and, having emptied the Thermos, went to the coffeemaker to refill it. Remembering another time when I’d tried that in a storm, I dropped a damp towel onto the deck before pouring. This time, only a few drops slopped out, and I turned off the coffeemaker and secured the pot.
The update at 0900 showed Irma had made landfall on Cudjoe Key, about thirty miles down island from the Rusty Anchor. With its counterclockwise winds, Marathon to Ramrod Key would be getting the brunt of the storm, with winds up to 130 miles per hour and heavy surf.
I knew Rusty’s place was sturdy; it’d survived quite a few lashings, and the combined surge and wave action wouldn’t reach it. But I still worried.
Over the next hour, things started getting really nasty. The wind roared across the Everglades like a bullet-train, with barely anything to slow it down but sawgrass for a hundred miles. Its direction moved slowly from southeast to south as the storm began to pass us not far to the west.
Jimmy and I were both concerned about my island. The storm had been moving due north at fifteen miles per hour when it made landfall, putting my little island, at best, five miles east of the center. Irma’s northeastern eye wall would have brushed very close to it. Most of the wave action would have spent itself on the reef, the other keys, and the shallows, but that dome of water called the surge would only rise, like a small ocean wave rises and crests before falling onto the beach. We’d done all we could to protect the houses and everything I’d built over the last thirteen years. It was out of our hands now.
I sat on the couch, looking out across DJ’s boat. I could see the mangroves on the opposite side intermittently. The constant rocking and bumping of the boats made it difficult to get comfortable.
“You’re worried about the house, huh,” Jimmy stated.
I could read his own worry in his eyes.
“We did what we could,” I said. “Everything’s in Irma’s hands now.”
“There won’t be much left, man.”
“I know,” I whispered. “I know.”
By noon, the hurricane update on NOAA had Irma positioned about twenty-five miles west of our location, still headed almost due north. The wind was now out of the south, almost broadside to us. The Revenge rocked violently, tugging at her lines as if attempting to
uproot the whole Everglades.
Jimmy went to the large porthole aft, protected slightly by the overhanging flybridge. “Gusts to a hundred,” he said. “And not dropping below sixty.”
“Wait,” DJ said. “I thought high winds extended farther out. That’s not even hurricane force, and it’s no more than forty miles away.”
“Twenty-five,” I corrected him. “The wind vane isn’t high enough to catch the windspeed aloft.”
“Just above these mangroves,” Jimmy said, pointing upward, “it’s probably well over a hundred sustained.”
Talking was difficult. Our voices were already becoming hoarse from trying to be heard over the maelstrom outside. We just tried to find a comfortable spot to sit without getting thrown around. Finn lay curled on the deck, his head on his paws. But his eyes were open and he was watching me, reading my attitude. I tried to relax.
At 1400, things had calmed enough that we could get outside for a damage assessment. We hadn’t lost any more lines, but it looked like the boats had shifted in relation to one another. Not much, but the forward lines holding the two boats together were straining the cleats, while the aft ones hung loose. My two anchors had dragged a little. But DJ’s, with another hundred feet of scope out and less windage on the hull, had held. We readjusted the lines and, with another squall quickly approaching from the southwest, hurried inside.
Less than two hours later, Irma made landfall again, roaring up through the Ten Thousand Islands into the heavily developed city of Marco Island. After making its final landfall, Irma weakened quickly over land, as hurricanes always do. They need warm ocean water for fuel.
On Tarpon Bay, the sun was shining, still an hour or so from setting, and winds had dropped to twenty knots. The scattered clouds were moving very fast, heading off to the northeast, trying to catch up to the now fast-moving storm.
Before darkness fell, we got to work rewiring and stepping DJ’s mast. We had the stays retightened to the tape DJ had put on each turnbuckle before we took the mast down, and then we were able to start untying the boats from the mangroves.
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