Link 2

                               Chapter   1
Richard was right; she was there and she wasn't there. Not alive but not quite dead, at least not to me. I hadn't felt the need to tell Richard that I still got startled sometimes when I trimmed the sails at night and heard her gentle laughter in the wind, or heard her giggle somewhere behind me. Nor had I told him that occasionally I still had a bout with the bottle that only served to bring back memories and then the depression and then the damning “why” or “why hadn't I?” and then cursing God or the lack of one and then kneeling by the porcelain confessional, emptying my guts. Alcohol mixed with rage does terrible things to your guts.
After Richard had left, it was too late to start out for Dominica so I had waited until the next morning. I knew damn well that choosing a destination was just a way of pretending it mattered where I went. It didn't. I was lost and didn't care where I went. The destination was always the closest island in the general direction of either north or south.   At that time, I was going south. At least while I was sailing, I found a little peace. I had sailed out the harbor of the French Caribbean Island, Bourge Des Saints, sailed around the rocks called Pain De Sucre and through the pass heading south.
Normally, you could sail from the pass straight down to Dominica in one tack. It’s only 16 miles. At six knots, that's about three hours, including time to get the anchor down. No such luck that day. The winds were light and from the south east, so to get to Dominica, I would have to tack back and forth, first sailing south, and then sailing east. With tacking, I guessed that 16 miles would become 24. And with those light winds, I gauged four knots would be my best speed. It was going to be six hours of going to windward.   Still, better than not going.
I suppose I should have tacked back and forth down the imaginary line between The Saints and Dominica; it would have been the normal way to go. That way, if something went wrong, I wouldn't be so far away from land. But I didn't. I had set sail on the southern tack, set the autopilot, and had gotten lost in mulling over the past week with Richard. I remember setting my wristwatch to beep every fifteen minutes to remind me to pay attention and check for traffic.
   The previous week had started out as one great sail after another. My brother, Richard, had come to the Caribbean for a week of sun and sailing on my thirty foot sailboat, Thalaso. We had met in Guadeloupe, and then sailed south to the group of islands called Isles Des Saints. Most mornings we had sailed to one of the islands and then whiled away afternoons in some waterfront pub.
The last afternoon of Richard's visit, we wound up at the island named Bourge Des Saints. We had the anchor down by one o'clock and took the dingy in so that Richard could clear customs for his early morning flight the next day. After the formalities, we found a second story bar which was mostly an open wooden deck. It was directly on the waterfront, and offered an agreeable view of the harbor. A huge, gnarly old tree growing through the middle of the deck evoked feelings of respect and provided shade for the entire deck and most of the one next door. A breeze off the harbor cooled us from the afternoon heat. It was the kind of bar where meeting others was easy, almost expected. If you kept to yourself, you were suspected of misanthropy. The two women we had joined claimed to speak little English.
Touring these French islands is close to impossible if you're stuck with a little brain like mine that doesn't speak French. Having Richard along was wonderful, although I think he gets tired of always translating.
“You've got to get serious about learning French, Duncan,” he had said while trying to translate, unsuccessfully, some little joke made by one of the French women.
“Not to worry, I've got a plan.”
“Humph. What plan? A tutor? A language program for your computer? A divine infusion?” He had felt the need to translate this last suggestion to the two women who seemed to have been amused.
“No, I'm going to get a French speaking girl friend,” I answered as if this were not going to be any problem at all.
Apparently one of the women did speak a little English. She raised her eyebrows slightly. “Maybe I consider the job,” she said with a coy smile and a charming French accent. I smiled, but said nothing.
As we walked down the stairs to the dock, Richard had felt the need to nag again. “Fat chance,” he commented.
“That's not nice.”
“I saw how you looked at her. Like she was our sister. She was gorgeous and she didn't arouse anything in you. It's been two years, Duncan. She's dead.”
I gave him a you-don't want-to-go-there look. Richard had not yet learned the art of knowing when to quit.
“I can see you've stopped drinking yourself into oblivion, but you've really got to let go and get on with your life. Where is the joy everyone loved in you?”
“Joy is hard to come by. At least I feel at peace sometimes when I'm sailing.”
The next morning, Richard had given me that look, but didn't continue with the nag. I knew he worried, but I guess he understood that I'd have to work it out for myself. “You OK for money?” he said.
“Yea, I get a few hundred a month from the investment of the house money, so I'm doing fine. It's more than enough if the boat holds together.”
“A few years ago, you couldn't make ends meet with four thousand a month.”
“That was a different life. Cars and clothes and a big house and the work and the parties. This is the Caribbean, things are different. The necessities are cheap, the luxuries expensive.”
As Richard had climbed into the taxi for the airport, I already knew I'd miss him in spite of his occasional nag. I'd miss his company and his droll sense of humor. I'd spent the best part of the last two years alone on this little boat.
My alarm beeped, reminding me to look around. Scanning the horizon for traffic, I realized I was missing what was all round me and started paying attention to the sky and the sea. The day had become so beautiful. The sky was a blue not seen from land. Not a single cloud that day. The tropical sun warmed me and danced on deep blue waves. The wind carried me and brought the smell of fresh salt air and occasionally, when the bow smacked a wave just so, a light salt spray would cool my skin and make me feel alive. I love being at sea. Sailing is peace. Sailing is freedom.
Once again, the alarm beeped me out of my thoughts, and I realized it was time to turn east. Dominica lay eleven miles away. The wind had shifted east which was going to make this final leg even harder. “We should have tacked much sooner,” I said to the boat.
After setting the new course and trimming the sail, I scanned the horizon, checking for traffic. Something was in the water off my starboard bow and I gauged that I'd miss hitting it without a course change. Maybe it was just curiosity that made me wonder what it was.   Way too far from land to be a fish pot. I eased the wheel a little, turning downwind a few degrees, to get a closer look. It did look like a float from a fish pot, except it was moving with the current, not anchored to the bottom.
When I was a hundred yards away, it grew an arm! My heart pounded. In an instant, I changed from relaxed to planning in high gear. I dug out a harness from under the seat. I attached a six-foot tether to the combination harness-life jacket I always wore when sailing alone. I attached the other end of the tether to a jack line which runs the length of the boat. I walked along the port side of the deck because that was the high side, and went forward to ready the spare halyard if needed to lift him into the boat. This halyard runs from the top of the mast and had both ends tied onto the forward rail where it could be used to hoist the sail in case the main halyard failed.
Since no boat was in sight, I assumed he must have been in the water for quite a while; maybe long enough to be hypothermic and thus too weak to climb aboard himself. I wrapped one end of the halyard around the electric windlass and clipped the other end to a lifeline where I could grab it easily. I ran back to the cockpit and dashed below to turn on the breaker for the electric anchor windlass. I hated doing this because it meant taking my eyes off him and I feared it would be difficult to find him again. The waves were only four feet, but still, that meant his head was out of sight most of the time, visible only when he was on the top of a wave.   It took an anxious two minutes before I spotted him again.
I lowered the boarding ladder in case he could use it or in case I ended up in the water myself. I remember thinking about my worst fear: ending up in the water and unable to get back on board and Thalaso sailing away without me. I knew I had to sail smartly then. Had to stay up wind from him so that he would be in the lee of the boat where he would be protected from the waves. Had to keep the boat far enough away so that a wave couldn't pick up the boat and set it down on top of him. I knew that using the engine to compensate for poor sailing would be a big mistake. The prop could suck him in and chop him up into neat little pieces.
Thirty yards away I could see him looking at me. He was slightly built and calmer than I expected. I uncleated the sheet letting the sail out to depower the boat. As the boat slowed, I gauged it would stop short of the mark and pulled in the sheet for twenty seconds to gain just a little more way.
The boat stopped only five yards away. I was grateful for the light winds and gentle seas. It would be much easier to get him on board in these conditions than it would in the usual twenty knots of wind and eight to ten foot seas. I went forward and heaved a line neatly over his head. As he reached to grab it, I saw slowness in his movement, a lifeless face and eyes darting too slowly with fear and hope and planning moves, and I knew he was hypothermic. He would not be strong enough to help himself aboard. Yet the eyes told me that even with little strength, this person could probably follow directions, could probably help a little.
I considered going into the water to put a harness on him even though getting off the boat with no one else on board was against every instinct I have. I decided to see if he could manage it himself. I clipped the halyard onto one of the D rings on the harness, clipped on a float, and threw it. I was pleased to see him discarding the float and trying to put on the harness. It was a mistake. Apparently, his legs were not strong enough to keep him afloat while he struggled with it. He slipped under the water. Reluctantly, I took off my life vest. With a vest on, I would not have been able to get under water to find him. I tossed in a cushion and dove in. The water was so clear, and the sun so bright, that it took no effort to find him under the water struggling weakly. I pulled him to the surface, and held him up as he coughed up water. I found the cushion and gave it to him and he held onto it with all his strength. He helped as much as he could as I got the harness on him. We didn't need to talk; he knew what I was doing, and what was expected of him. I slipped the second D ring into the snap shackle. With the harness on and shackled to the halyard, I could use the electric windlass to wind in the halyard and hoist him aboard.
“Hang on buddy, we'll have you out of here in no time. Just hang on tight.” I let go of the halyard with some reluctance. It was the only thing attaching me to the boat. The loud popping noise of the sail flailing grabbed my attention. The boom swung back and forth across the boat. I cursed myself for not dropping the sail when I realized that if the sheet caught on anything, the boat would sail away. But I'd left myself no options at this point. I let go and swam to the stern, got up the boarding ladder and ran forward.
I put my foot on the electric windlass switch and got ready to lift him on board. Because the halyard runs to the top of the mast fifty feet above the water, hoisting him would take some care. If pulled up as the boat rolled away from him, he would swing into the hull with crushing force. I saw his eyes following the line up to the top of the mast and trying to put his feet out to brace himself against the hull. He obviously understood the problem. I also saw his frustration that his legs wouldn't do what he wanted them to do. They just weren't going to move until he warmed.
Looking at the waves to gauge the right moment, when the boat had rolled away and was just beginning to roll back I shouted. “Get ready!” When the moment was right, I shouted “Now!” and stepped on the foot switch and pulled in the line. He came out of the water grabbing at the lifelines, and still trying to brace himself away from the hull. At that particular moment, I was too busy to notice much except getting him on board in one piece and keeping myself on board. But as I grabbed the harness to pull him in, I did notice a nice pair of breasts.
Chapter 2
After carrying her below and wrapping her in a blanket, I went topside to neaten up, stow the spare halyard, pull up the boarding ladder, and get the boat back on course. The boat was uncomfortable wallowing in the seas, rolling from gunnel to gunnel, but once the sail was set and the boat moving, a more comfortable motion returned.
Back below, I needed to determine the degree of hypothermia. If not treated, or treated incorrectly, she could still die. I had worried about the movement needed to get her on board. That alone can kill a hypothermic victim by pumping cold blood from the limbs into their chest, bringing on heart failure.   Warming too rapidly can also cause a heart attack, while too slowly leaves the victim dying from the cold. At that point, I admit I felt some anxiety as I realized the responsibility I had acquired for myself. I had to get it right.
I filled the galley sink with lukewarm water, soaked towels and placed them around her head, on the chest, and around her legs. I felt her throat and smiled to hide my concern over the weak pulse I found.
“I'm OK,” she said. Her voice was weak, her words slurred.
“Just lay still and warm up. You'll be fine. You're safe now.” During the next hour I kept the towels warm and smiled for real as I found her pulse becoming stronger and the color returning to her face. When she started to shiver, I knew all would be well. I handed her a dry towel, a dry blanket, a pair of shorts and a tee shirt. “I'm going to look after the boat,” I said, and went up the ladder to give her privacy. In another hour, she came up and sat opposite me in the cockpit. I gave her my warmest smile and held out a hand. “Duncan Fitzroy.”
“Alexandra” was the only name she gave me.
“How you feeling?”
“A little woozy, but I'm sure I'll be fine soon.”
“How did you end up in the drink with nothing but half a bathing suit, and a boat nowhere in sight? How long were you in the water?”
Her smile faded; her lips tightened a little. “Fell off a boat.”
“Well, I'd better call the coast guard and let them know you're safe.”
“Please don't.”
“But, someone will be looking for you.”
“Please.”
“Why not?”
“Look, mister. You saved my life and I'm very grateful. Now save me again. Please don't ask; don't wonder. Just sail to wherever you were headed and drop me off. I'll be fine.”
Don't wonder I thought. How the hell did she get into that predicament? Fell off and left? I didn't think so; they would have been looking for her and would have called a Mayday on the radio. Jumped off? They would still be looking for her. Pushed off and left? By whom? Jumped off to escape? From what? Yeah, right. Don't wonder. “Yes, I'm sure you'll be fine. No money, the clothes on your back and no friends in sight.”
I looked at her face trying to read her state of mind, trying to guess if I should pursue that particular conversation just then. What a face I thought. A French nose, milk chocolate skin, high cheekbones, and a luscious, full mouth on an oval face. She was exotic. She was stunning. Her eyes were very dark, so dark that it was hard to see the pupil, and had an unusual look that was vaguely familiar. I couldn't remember where I'd seen those eyes, couldn't think of what they reminded me.
“I can telephone a friend in the States,” she said. “She'll send me some money and a ticket to fly out of here. Do you have a jacket I could borrow?”
As she got out of the blanket and put on the jacket, I saw what a muscular frame she had. Wide shoulders, a thin waist, and wonderfully round hips and firm breasts. I gauged dress size eight, five foot ten or eleven and a hundred thirty five pounds. The muscles in her arms and legs were well defined. I didn't know the sea gods liked me that much. While I didn't know much about her, her speech told me two things. She had a charming, very melodic quality to her voice, yet she used rather formal syntax. That combination appears no where else except in educated people from the Eastern Caribbean. She was from the Islands.
“We'll be in Dominica in a couple of hours,” I told her.
She jumped like a startled gazelle, her eyes going wide. “Dominica?”
“So what's wrong with Dominica?” She gave me the slightly tight-lipped look.
“I know. Don't ask. So where would you like to go?”
“Saint Lucia would be nice. They have exactly what a lady needs.” I raised eyebrows asking what. “An international airport,” she answered.
“To the southern end of Saint Lucia, where Hewanora Airport would be found, is about 120 miles from here. Maybe a twenty-hour sail. I'm not ready to sail another twenty hours without sleep.”
“Well I noticed you have an autopilot and a GPS. If I don't have to steer, I can stand watch while you sleep. We could make it.”
My, my I thought. The lady knows about the GPS navigational system and knows how to sail? I will never speak unkindly about the sea gods again. I gave her a do-you-really-know-what-you're-doing? look.
“I've never seen a boat like this. Show me how it works, and I'll be fine.”
I remember thinking how nice to have a destination other than the next island in the chain. “OK. Saint Lucia it is.” In a few minutes, the course was plotted and a few waypoints entered into the GPS. When the boat turned south to a compass course of 175o, the motion became pleasant. We were on a nice reach with the wind on our beam rather than beating into the wind. The course would keep us ten miles offshore as we passed Martinique, the island between Dominica and Saint Lucia. If someone were looking for her, I didn't want to be in the usual sailing lanes closer to shore. At one o’clock I made a note in the logbook of our position and our new course. Being on a reach, the speed easily picked up to six knots.
“What would you like to drink? Tea? Rum?”
“That would be nice.”
I put on the kettle to boil and set out tea bags, sugar, lime, and the best rum on board, Plantation Rum from Grenada. I hoped the tea laced with rum would warm her. Because she sat to port looking out to sea, I could study her face from my position behind the wheel without being obvious that I was staring. It didn't take much to guess she was mulling over the events which left her in her present situation. She sat with her knees pulled up against her chest with her arms around them and her chin resting on one knee. Her face had little vitality, no sparkle. It pained me to see the sadness in her eyes. It didn't look like the kind of sadness that comes from a broken love affair or a jerk of a husband. It looked worse.
“What would you like to eat?” I said “There's fruit in the hammock. I could cook some linguini or whip up an omelet.”
“I'll get some fruit. Want any?”
“Just an orange.”
She brought up oranges and bananas and peeled an orange, handed it to me and began peeling another. “This boat is too neat for a guy. Where is the wife?”
“Gone.”
“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked. I didn't mean to bring up your pain.”
“Does it show that much?”
“Well, --- yes. It does. Did she die?”
   I'm not sure why I decided to tell her. I hadn't talked about it to anyone in over a year. “Two years ago. Killed by a two-bit robber in Orlando. We gave him everything and he still shot her. Just for meanness I suppose. I tried everything but there was no saving her. He was getting into a car driven by another guy. He just turned and fired casually, not really looking, like he didn't care if he hit anything or not.”
“I'm so sorry.” The look on her face startled me. Some vitality had returned. Here she was in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, left to drown, to die alone, and her face showed genuine empathy for my loss. “What was her name?”
“Ann. We had a good marriage. We had a lot of fun together. We were still in love after all those years.”
“There's nothing I can say except it's nice that you had a good marriage. Not everyone has that. I am sorry for your loss.”
“Never did catch up with him, but I'll not forget that face. One day I'll find him.”
“And what will you do when you next meet Mr. Two Bit Asshole?” I gave her a look and she understood I wasn't willing to talk about it just then. Truth be told, I wasn't sure what I would do when I next met him. I still oscillated between wanting to rip his heart out and knowing revenge would cost me and wouldn't bring her back. One side of me says I've never killed anyone and really don't want to. Yet I don't have a great deal of confidence in the justice system. You get law, not justice. He had killed her almost casually; like it didn't make any difference one way or another. I couldn't believe Ann was his first victim and doubted it would be his last. He needed killing so that he couldn't kill other women. But would I? Revenge seems such a stupid waste of energy. My rage toward him had cost me a lot and had not cost him one iota. The question what to do about him plagues me.
“You seem to know what's what about boats. Been sailing forever?”
I remember wondering if she changed the subject so deftly out of kindness, cleverness or just luck.
“Nope. My wife and I planned to sail the Caribbean. After she was killed, I just went with the plan alone. I was too broken up to go back to work. What was I going to do?”
“You sure learned a lot in two years.”
“One. I cried and drank for the first year.”
“So how did you learn to sail in just one year?”
“Read some books and then just went out and did it. I remember the first time I got on the boat, ready to go out and try some moves. It was in a slip at a dock in Puerto Rico. With my hand on the start button, I realized that I couldn't take the boat out. I didn't know how to park it. I figured I could get it out OK, but knew I'd never get it back into the slip without crashing into a piling or another boat.”
“So what did you do?”
“Hired a kid who spent two days helping me undock and dock the boat. The rest of the people on the pier watched with some amusement. When I finally managed to dock it by myself, stopping neatly in the middle of the slip and jumped onto the dock, lines in hand, they all applauded and invited me over for a drink. In the usual style of Puerto Ricans, a drink turned into a nice little party.
“You know,” I said, “I think that was the first time I had smiled in two years. It was a real nice day.”
“You never took sailing lessons?”
“Nope. Just learned from books.”
“I didn't know you could learn to sail from books.”
“You can learn anything from books if you love it and are willing to look foolish occasionally. Where did you learn to sail?”
“My dad and his brother sailed all the time when I was a young girl. They took me along often, and taught me everything I could learn. God, I loved those days.”
Another hour of light conversation; I explained to Alexandra how a cat boat works with its huge mainsail and no jib; how the strange wishbone boom, which made the boat look like an oversized wind surfer, made the sail so much more efficient than sails on conventions rigs, and how it made the boat easier to sail. I taught her how to trim the sail, which is done quite differently than trimming other mainsails, and how to use the choker to control the shape of the sail. “That's hard to do on a sloop rig,” I bragged.
“It sure is easy here. I see why you like this boat.”
By the time she had learned the autopilot, it was obvious this wasn't the first autopilot she had ever used. And it was obvious that this lady had more than her share of brains. She was a quick study. As we chatted, I watched with some pleasure as she stopped shaking. She had warmed from her trip through hypothermia, and her fear was pushed back into someplace where it didn't chill her so much. Her face was more alive, although, the strain still showed. I wondered what it must have been like, in the water, cold and alone, knowing the chance of a rescue was not real high. I wondered how she had managed to keep up her hope. Where did she get the strength to keep struggling enough to stay afloat? If she ever wanted to talk about it, she would. And if not, she wouldn't. Not my place to pry. But I wondered about it.
“Why don't you get some sleep now?” I suggested. “Clean sheets are in the forward locker. Sleep as long as you need. You can spell me when you wake up.”
Alexandra came up the ladder at ten p.m., just as I was making an entry into the log. I asked her to record our position every hour and gave her my wristwatch, which beeps every fifteen minutes. “Stand up and stretch and look all around the horizon when it beeps. If you see any lights, wake me if they're close or coming closer. Don't be bashful about waking me if you've got any questions. Will you be all right?”
“Go to sleep. I can handle it.”
“OK. Wake me at midnight. I do two hour watches.”
“What if I'm not sleepy at midnight?”
“I do two hour watches.” I gave her the harness-life jacket and admonished her to tether herself to the steering post. “Don't want to fish you out again.”
“Go to sleep, Fitzroy.”
When she shook my arm at midnight, it interrupted a startling dream. She and Ann were having a friendly conversation like new girl friends who just met and liked each other. My brain must have been fried. I made a pot of coffee and took my place behind the wheel. I checked the logbook and found two neat entries, one at eleven and one at twelve. Checking the compass and the GPS, I saw we were exactly on course. “Can you sleep now?”
“Not really. I'd rather just sit here with you if that's OK.” She didn't really want to talk. It's not usual for strangers to feel comfortable sitting together and not talking, but it seemed fine. The wind had freshened a little; the log showed us making nearly seven knots.
Sailing that night, no moon and the stars so vivid, was truly incredible. The sea was black, almost invisible, giving the feeling that we were floating amongst the stars, rocked by an unknown hand like a mother rocking the cradle of the child she cherishes. The rise and fall with each swell, gently rolling, with the sound of the water swishing under the hull, the rhythmic movement, the stars shimmering, and no sign of other humanity brought a mind state unavailable on land. A mind state somewhere between complete peace and subtle power. We were riding the wind. Not controlling it, not capturing it, just catching a little corner of it, and going where we wanted to go. It was magic.

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