Seeking Safe Harbor: Suddenly Everything Changed (The Seeking Series) (14 page)

By ten a.m., all was ready for the hoisting of the sails. When Zach gave the word, Denise cut the engine, and he raised the mainsail. At the same time, Stacey was raising the mizzen sail on the aft mast, and within seconds, Glen had the jib up at the front of the boat. Denise disengaged the autopilot and was at the wheel. There was a ten-knot wind coming from the northeast, and that was enough to move them along comfortably. The boat leaned only a little to starboard with the wind hitting the sails over the port side.

“Dad, with the wind coming from where it is, we can stay right on course for a while,” Denise advised her father.

“Good. Keep that course as long as you can.”

George and Millie watched in awe as each member of the family did their job with coordinated proficiency. “You people are really good,” George said. “I’ve been wanting to learn how to sail, and now seems to be the perfect time.”

“A person is never too old to learn,” Millie added. “Teach me, too.”

Zach readily agreed. “It will be my pleasure. We’ll need all the knowledgeable hands we can get on this trip. Okay, let’s start with what we’re doing right now. A boat can sail in any direction except directly into the wind. The wind is coming in from the northeast. The course we’re on is almost due east, so the northeast wind is coming in on the port side, over the front quarter of the boat. It’s at about thirty degrees off our bow. As long as it keeps coming from there or moves in a northerly direction, we’re okay to stay on this course. Sailing this way, into the wind, is called reaching, or beating. If the wind moves even a little south, however, and I’m afraid it probably will, we will have to fall off and head in a southeasterly direction.”

“Won’t that take us off course?” asked Millie.

“Yes. We’ll be tacking from that point on. That is, we’ll head southeast for awhile, and then come about.” He laughed and took a moment to explain the second sailing term. “All ‘coming about’ means is that we’ll change directions. In this case, we’ll change to a northeasterly course. At that point, the wind will be coming in over the starboard front quarter of the boat. We’ll keep doing that, changing course, for most of the trip. First southeast and then northeast. The idea is… we will end up going to a point in the middle, almost directly east.”

Millie thought that over and had a question. “If you keep changing, and we’re out here in the middle of the ocean, how will you know you’re really heading toward the right spot?”

“Good question. Wait here.” He went below and came back with the sextant Commander Kotchel had given him, along with the book of directions. “At noon,” he said, holding the book up to be seen, “I’ll get a reading, and then I’ll be able to determine exactly where we are.” He thumbed through the book, looking for the chapter on noon sightings.

Millie watched dubiously as he searched. “If you don’t mind my saying so, I get nervous when someone has to look at a book when he’s about to do something he’s supposed to know how to do. We’re a long way from land.”

“I understand your concern,” Zach admitted. “This is not the way we usually do things. In the past, we had a GPS – that means global positioning system – but the system was knocked out of service, so we have to revert to this method. It got people around the globe for hundreds of years, so I’m sure it will get us to where we want to go in California.”

“But,” Millie persisted, “you really don’t know how to use that thing, do you?”

“Millie, it’s not that hard,” he replied, hoping to calm her. “Besides, we have a compass and charts, and the sun always comes up in the east. Even without the sextant, we’d hit California.”

“But where? California is a very long state, so we might end up a hundred miles from where we intend to go.”

“No, not that far off. Look, I…”

Ron Tillman had been watching all that had taken place and now stepped in. “Zach, if you don’t mind, I’d like to help.”

“Help? How?”

“I never did get around to buying a GPS. I’ve been using a sextant since I was a kid, and it’s taken me many places. I can keep us on course and teach you at the same time. In exchange, I’m like George and Millie. I would love to learn to sail, and what better time than now. It seems like the perfect quid pro quo.”

Zach didn’t respond right away. He still wasn’t sure about Tillman and wasn’t keen on giving him the ability to sail the boat away if the opportunity presented itself. On the other hand, there would be nothing else to do for weeks in a confined atmosphere so he was going to learn just by watching, anyway.

Besides, everyone, including himself, would be more comfortable knowing that someone who knew how to do it was taking the sextant readings.

He reluctantly nodded his acceptance of the offer.

S
EVEN days at sea went by more quickly than any of them ever expected. The weather was warm and there was enough wind to move the boat along at an average of about five knots. During most of the daylight hours, Millie, George, and Ron were learning the intricacies of sailing.

The winds, as Zach predicted, started coming from almost due east, and so they began the tacking procedures he outlined – first southeast and then northeast. That gave everyone a chance to participate in the “coming about” exercise many times each day. Every time that happened, the wind changed to the opposite side of the boat from moments before. The booms swung around to the other side, and the sails were trimmed so that they caught the winds in the optimum manner, maintaining the maximum speed. The new members of the crew were learning fast.

Ron proved himself an excellent fisherman. He, Glen, and Denise tossed their lines over the side every morning. The teenagers watched and mimicked everything he did. They were convinced they did exactly the same things, but he caught three times more fish and his tended to be larger. They caught plenty of fish between them, which saved the canned goods they had in storage.

“Dad, what’s wrong with me?” Glen asked. “Why can’t I catch fish like that?”

His father commiserated. “Son, there’s nothing wrong with you or Denise. Or me, for that matter. You’ve seen me fish. I can’t catch as many as the two of you, no matter how hard I try. Some people just have the knack, and he is one of them. That is really handy in the situation we’re in at the moment. We’re eating really well and not depleting our supplies in the process. If you really want to learn, though, keep watching. Maybe you’ll pick up enough that someday you’ll be a great angler, as well. I suspect that a large part of the “knack” is a combination of experience and patience.”

Because he was so useful, Ron was growing on the family, but that did not mean they didn’t still keep an eye on him. There were always two armed people awake when he was, and one was always far enough away so that if he overpowered one, the other would be able to call for help and, if necessary, shoot him.

Because all three of the new people had come aboard on short notice and hadn’t had time to pack, Zach and Glen shared what few clothes they had with Ron and George. Stacey and Denise shared with Millie. It wasn’t a perfect arrangement, especially being as they were limited in how much they could wash and dry things on a forty-one foot boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Fortunately, not one of them had the slightest interest in making a fashion statement – at least not in the situation they were in at the moment.

It wasn't easy with seven people aboard instead of four, but they maintained a habit that they determined was important for people living in close quarters. At some point every day, each person went to the forward deck to be alone for at least half an hour. No one was allowed to bother them in any way during that time. Most didn’t feel they really needed that, yet they all felt a little more serene after their time alone.

As all the bunks were taken, Ron moved around to sleep. He used one of the Arthur family’s sleeping bags and sometimes slept on George’s bunk. When George and he slept at the same time, he either slept on the bunk Glen used or they inflated a mattress for him and he slept on the salon floor, back away from the galley area, which was close to the ladder leading up to the cockpit. Every day, Ron did a noon reading with the sextant and then spent the next hour or two going over the results with the other members of the crew.

They spent their evenings playing card games, studying, or sitting around talking. Their conversation often consisted of telling tall tales from the past. Other times found them drifting toward what they might find when they reached their destination.

“Say, if we’ve been averaging five knots, that’s almost six miles per hour, right?” George asked shortly after they had dinner on the seventh night. They were all sitting around the cockpit enjoying a starlit night, and his question was not directed at anyone in particular. Not waiting for a response, he continued. “According to what I’ve learned, a knot is about one point fifteen statute miles, which means we’ve been traveling at about one hundred and forty miles per day. So we’ve come around nine hundred and eighty miles.” He stopped to do a little calculating.

Those who spent time at sea on a sailboat immediately picked up on his error, and even Ron and Millie seemed to figure it out. None chose to tell him what it was yet. They just smiled and waited for him to give them the conclusion he was working out.

“Based on that, we’ll be in California in about ten or eleven days,” George said, “not the month or more you guys guessed it would be that first day. That’s great!” No one joined him in celebrating the likelihood of a quick trip. He looked around. Everyone was either looking pityingly at him, or smiling smugly. “What?” he asked, his brow furrowed.

“I’ll go get the chart,” Zach said. He went down the steps into the salon, returning a minute later with a large chart. He spread it out over the seat where was sitting, and shined a flashlight with red lens in place to preserve their night vision and prevent them from being seen. “Ron,” he said, “what did today’s noon sighting show our coordinates to be?”

Ron took a pad from the back pocket of his shorts and thumbed through it for a few seconds. When he came to the page he wanted, he read it, then put an index finger down on a spot about one fourth of the way from the Hawaiian Islands to California. “Here’s the coordinates for where we were at noon today.”

George looked over their shoulders. “Hey, that spot can’t be more than five hundred miles from Hilo, not almost a thousand.”

“That’s about right, George,” Zach told him. Remember, we’re not sailing straight at California. Half the time we are heading toward Mexico, and the other half the time toward Canada. Actually, we have been lucky so far. We have been able to sail at close angles to what a direct course would be, so we gained some good distance. Sometimes we must sail further off target, and that means we gain less distance with each tack.”

“This,” George sighed deeply, the wind gone from own his sails, “is going to be a long trip.”

“Nobody in a hurry chooses a sailboat as a means of getting from place to place,” Stacey said. “On the other hand, no other kind of transportation is as enjoyable, and we go to places that people who limit themselves to cars, trains, and planes can only dream about.”

“Maybe so, but I can see this becoming pretty boring.”

“Not likely,” Ron said, looking ahead. “Not in the near future, anyway.”

“You see it, too, huh?” Zach asked, rising and moving toward the main mast.

“What?” George wanted to know. He watched wide-eyed as Ron and the teenagers picked up loose items on the deck, and Zach and Stacey started lowering sails. “See what?”

“Those dark clouds ahead,” Ron said as he passed by.

“Everything’s dark. Everywhere.”

“Not as dark as those clouds in front of us.” Ron stopped and pointed ahead. “See those dashes of white on that thick black line under the clouds?”

George strained to see it. “Maybe. A little. I suppose.”

“Unfortunately, there won’t be any ‘maybes’ or ‘I supposes’ before long. That black line is water being pushed by high winds, and the white dashes are whitecaps. It’ll be on top of us very soon.”

“What will be on top of us?” George asked, but was afraid he knew the answer.

“Judging by what it looks like at this distance, that’s one heckuva storm, and we’re right in its path.”