Neither did Eston have a trained pool of talent that would attract another company. The work at the plant had been simple canning and routine mechanical work that didn’t require extensive training. Most of the people in the town were farmers or watermen and felt that was their true calling, even if they did have to do something else to live on. Jake had to admit that the future of Eston looked grim indeed. If even the politicos couldn’t steer work this way, what hope did the town folk have?
Deciding that he wasn’t terribly welcome, with half the folks damning him, along with Mary, for their misfortune and the other half planning on how to leave for better communities and cursing him for the drain on their savings, Jake pushed the little wesort into the water and hopped aboard to catch the outgoing tide. After navigating the shallow harbor he headed around the point to have a look at this platform everybody was so mad about. Mary had said they anchored it near the mouth of Candle Creek, if he recalled correctly, but he couldn’t see it from the point. He turned and headed back out into the river when he noticed a smudge in the distance. It looked like an island, only there were no islands in this part of the Bay.
So quickly that Chessie nearly fell overboard with the sudden heeling of the craft, he brought the bow around, swung the jib across and leaned out to flatten the vessel in the water. The wind bit hard into the sail and pushed Gull forward. The tide was running out into the Bay so he gained a knot or two from that in addition to the wind.
Within an hour or so he had caught up with the free-floating platform and made his boat fast to one of the steel rings. Chessie leaped across into the grassy mat, happy to be free of the tilting sailboat and splashing water that rolled off her oily coat. Jake pulled up one of the platform’s anchor lines and examined the ends. They had been cleanly cut just below the water line. Only a knife could sever a line that way, with no signs of fraying or stretching. Clearly someone in the town had taken their vengeance out on the most easily identified source of their problems and timed it to the change in the tides.
What was he supposed to do with this platform now that he had caught it? It was too large to paddle and too heavy to pull. Since the platform was scarcely two feet high in the water it wouldn’t show enough of a profile on radar or even to the eye until you were right up on it. That would be a hazard when it reached the eastern shipping channel. He hoped no freighter would be making its way into Baltimore when it got there; with the momentum those huge ships built up they’d have a hard time avoiding it, even if they could see it in the dark—and Jake didn’t have to wonder at which would come off second best. Be a damn waste to lose something so precious to Mary Kelly. If it missed being hit and destroyed by a tanker or freighter in the night it might even wander farther down the Bay, come aground in some lonesome backwater, and become a swim platform for some kids. He had to think of some way to get this huge, awkward platform under control.
By dead reckoning he guessed that they were making about two or three knots across the bottom, mostly borne by the outward flow of the tide and with a slight push from the wind on the tall grasses. Maybe he could rig some sort of tiller and steer the thing to shore before they reached the opening to the Bay. Quickly he lifted the tiller from Gull, grabbed some line and lashed it to one of the aft cross spars of the platform. The tiller’s blade only went down two feet into the water, hardly enough to exert much force, but even some steerage would be better than none. He tied the tiller so as to steer the platform toward the south side of the channel. After a long wait he saw that the combined forces of wind and tiller weren’t going to be enough to save the platform. It would be in the Bay long before it turned enough to matter. How could he gain more control? He sat down on one of the pontoons and thought hard as Chessie sniffed the deterius for any hidden ducks or geese she might have missed.
A sailboat uses two devices to move through the water. The sail gathers the force of the wind and is the prime mover. But without a cen-terboard providing a corresponding and opposing force on the water a sailboat would only move with the wind. It would have little control over its direction. Jake wondered if the mesh support, marine growth, and roots that hung below the platform would act as a somewhat inefficient but workable centerboard.
Worth a try, he decided, and grabbed the bow of Gull to haul her onto the platform. It was a struggle to drag her through the heavy grasses to the center of the float. “Not the man I used to be,” he muttered in self deprecation as he pulled the small anchor from the bow and lashed Gull to a cross spar. Once that was secure he raised the main sail and adjusted it to take advantage of the wind. He’d be sailing on a reach, so he could use the small spinnaker he kept on board. Quickly he ran the sheets through the two ring bolts at the platform’s stern where he could adjust the angle of the sail. “Need a whisker pole, I guess,” he muttered as he lashed the two oars together to form a heavy and awkward pole to hold the spinnaker in place. Finally he settled himself carefully to where he could see ahead, and waited for the wind and water to provide some help. He watched the land slip away as the platform started south, toward Poole’s Island.
“Coast Guard… squawk… old man sailing an island, for God’s sake,” the radio blared. Mary snapped to attention and turned the squelch on the boat’s radio down. She always kept it tuned to the emergency channel when she was working in the channel. It was too easy for one of the big ships to sneak up on you and wash you overboard with their wake. Better to keep the radio on and hear the warnings of the pilots.
“Right in the middle of the channel south of Eston. Better get the Coast Guard down there before it rams something.” The voice of the Chesapeake pilot was on an edge between amusement and indignation. “Now that I’m closer it looks more like a pontoon craft with weeds on it. No, not a pontoon craft at all; there’s a little rowboat, an old guy, and a dog on it. Damndest thing I ever saw.”
Only one thing in that part of the Bay could meet that description. Mary thought, and that was one of her platforms. She grabbed the radio and turned to channel sixteen. “Vessel needs a tow,” she called and read off the position the pilot had reported. When one of the tow pirates nearest the spot answered she gave him her credit card information, hoping Jim would validate the expense, and issued destination instructions. With luck the vagrant platform and its erstwhile captain would be returned to Eston by nightfall. She headed back to shore to get in her car for the trip down to Eston, taking a grad student or two along for protection. The people had not been terribly friendly the last time she visited and, if they had gone to the extent of cutting the platform loose, there was no telling what they might do to her car.
Quite a crowd had gathered to see the tow vehicle bring the platform into the harbor. Both the Coast Guard and the DNR boys provided an escort and, if her guess were any good, had their little citation books all ready. She waved to the DNR boat to come over. She knew most of them personally, and used them to take her to the platform. Jake and Chessie were on deck sharing a mug of hot chocolate from the thermos. Most of the pirates had such little amenities for the people they rescued. A few of them even left it off of the list of charges.
“Never seen the like,” the capt’n said as she stepped aboard. “I’ve pulled barges, and boats, and jet skis, and even a sailplane, but this is the first time I seen anybody sailing a freaking island in the Bay.”