“I was right,” Pam said, climbing up onto the flying bridge. “Stacy was just green. Where are we going?”
“I’d say ‘up to you,’ ” Mike replied thoughtfully. “But you don’t know what’s around. The snorkeling in Islamorada is only so-so, but there are a few shallow reefs. Go for that, first?”
“Fine by me,” Pam said, looking at Courtney.
“I’ve never been,” Courtney said.
“It’s not hard,” Mike said, grinning. “And, well, SEALs make Number One life guards.”
“Okay, we’ll try that I guess,” Courtney said, shrugging. “I was just planning on, well, boating and sunning.”
“That too,” Mike said, opening up a glove box and pulling out a foil packet. “You guys know if you’re susceptible to seasickness?”
“No,” Pam said. “I don’t. Courtney?”
“No,” she said, warily, eying the packet.
“Bonine,” Mike said, showing her the printing. “Better than Dramamine, lasts longer, very little in the way of side effects. Not perfect. If you turn out to have real problems, I’ve got scopolamine tablets. They’re prescription in the U.S., but I get mine from Canada where they’re over-the-counter. You probably won’t have any problems, but I recommend taking one before we go out.” He paused and flicked the packet to Courtney. “Sealed.”
“You take this safety stuff seriously, don’t you?” Pam asked, taking the packet from Courtney and pulling out a tablet.
“They’re chewable,” Mike said, starting both engines. “And, yes, I do.”
He climbed down and walked to the stern, throwing the docking lines onto the pier, then scrambling back into position.
“If we do this much, I’ll probably have you guys do that the next time,” he said, engaging the engines and pulling out of the slip, turning hard left with a bit of bow thruster.
“That’s not bad,” Courtney said, washing down a Bonine with her Coke. “You’re strange, Mike. Most guys wouldn’t talk about safe calls and whether a drug is in a sealed packet.”
“Most of the guys you date, maybe,” Mike said, shrugging. “They’re your age and wouldn’t know about it, most of them. Or they’d take it as an insult. ‘What, don’t you trust me?’ ‘Don’t you trust me?’ translates as ‘The check is in the mail’ and ‘I won’t come in your mouth.’ ”
Pam nearly snorted Coke out of her nose at that. “I can’t believe you said that!”
“Why?” Mike said, maneuvering into the narrow channel out of the marina. “You don’t know the list of great lies in history? ‘The DZ is wide enough’ is one that we loved in the teams. Yeah, for one guy to land on at a time,” he added, chuckling. “By the way, you guys want classes in what I’m doing?”
“I’m interested,” Pam said. “But those controls are beyond me.”
“Now,” Mike said, “but I was talking about general navigation. See those posts with signs on them?” he said, pointing to the channel markers.
“Yeah,” Courtney said, frowning. “They’ve got numbers.”
“Thing to remember is color,” Mike said. “Red, Right, Returning. That is, the red one is on your right when you are coming back to port. Which side is it on right now?”
“Left,” Pam said. “We’re going out.”
“Yep,” Mike replied. “But when you’re in some channels, especially in turns, all you’ll have is one channel marker to figure out where the channel is.” He leaned forward and dialed in the GPS to maximum. “See these contour lines? They say what the depth is to either side. This thing draws nearly six feet. See that two? That’s how shallow it can get to either side of the channel. If we drift out of the channel, we’re going aground. That’s why you have to know which side of the channel marker to follow.”
He waved at a passing jet ski and turned to watch as the man jumped his wake.
“That’s what I’d like to do,” Courtney said, watching it recede.
“Hate those things,” Mike replied. “Most of the people who ride them are just fine, but you’ll get some drunk idiot going eighty miles an hour and not realizing he can’t turn in time, and then you’ve got blood on the side of your boat and a hole and a big investigation. But yeah, they’re fun.”
“Well, I’d like to try one,” Courtney said. “Carefully.”
“I shall, as Bill Slim’s logistics chief said, arrange,” Mike replied, grinning.
“I’m going to go up front and sun,” Pam said. “Do you mind?”
“Oh, jeeze,” Mike said. “Break my heart. Beautiful college coed laid out forward. I don’t think I can handle that.”
“You are a tease,” Pam said, getting up and going below.
“Okay, what’s that?” Courtney said, pointing to a screen. “I know that one’s a map or something. But what’s that one?”
“Radar,” Mike said, pointing. “See the red dot?”
“Yes.”
He pointed off to starboard at a boat nearing the end of the channel.
“That’s that dot,” he said, then pointed to a moving blue dot. “That’s an aircraft,” he continued, looking over his shoulder. “Yeah, Coast Guard helicopter.”
“Do you use it much?” Courtney asked, looking around. “I mean, you can see…”
“It’s more useful at night or in storms,” Mike said. “Boats are supposed to have running lights and most do. But this radar is on a computer that can be set to beep if there’s something coming up that looks as if there might be a collision. So, say I’m off coast and I want to go below and get something to eat? I set it for a close point approach of, say, a mile. So when I’m eating and some idiot in a cigarette boat comes barreling in, I have time to get to the bridge and maneuver.”
“Oh.”
“Or, say I’m in a storm, which I have been. I can see what’s around even through the storm. I can see the land forms, the way the islands are laid out,” he added, pointing to the land that was visible on the screen. “Sometimes that gives me a better feel for where I am than the GPS. But mostly I use the GPS to navigate.”
“What’s that one with the fish symbols?” she asked. “Oh, a fish-finder. Stupid.”
“Not stupid, good guess,” Mike said. “It’s that, but it also tells me the depth. I would like to take you guys offshore, if you have time. The water out there…” He paused and shook his head. “Pelagic water has to be seen to be believed. This stuff is what’s called brown water, then you hit green and finally the real blue of the ocean. It’s beautiful.”
“You really like the water,” Courtney said musingly.
“Love it,” Mike replied. “But when I was a SEAL it was almost like it was the enemy. When we trained it was always at night and half the time it was in the northern Pacific, which is mostly zero viz and cold as hell. But this stuff?” he said, waving around. “This is great, brown, green and blue. This is as close as I’ve come to heaven. Great water, good reefs, good fishing and pretty girls,” he finished, grinning at her.
“Have you had a lot of pretty girls on your boat?” Courtney asked archly.
“You’re the first ones,” Mike admitted. “There are ladies who make something of a profession of moving from boat to boat. I prefer not to deal with them, even the pretty ones.” He paused and shook his head. “Crap.”
“What?” Courtney asked as he leaned across her.
“Pam? Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” the girl called from forward.
“There’s a cabin on the right, forward, that’s locked,” he yelled. “Kindly don’t try to find out why. Remember the story of Bluebeard.”
“Now you’ve got me nervous,” Courtney said as he straightened back up and made the next turn in the channel.