The sails steadied the motion of the boat somewhat, and made the seas appear less frightening. Her husband set the boat to run on autopilot and went below to change out of his wet clothes and put on his foul-weather gear. He told her to call him if she saw any other boats or ships.
It was as though they owned the sea that day. There were no other boats or ships as far as she could see in any direction. She was surprised at how quickly the buildings of Fort Lauderdale were shrinking off their stern. They would soon be surrounded by nothing but angry gray water. Occasionally, one of the seas broke at its peak and made a rushing noise like a wheezy monster exhaling, and when one of those breaking seas hit them, the autopilot groaned and ground its gears in protest as it attempted to right their course.
She heard her husband rummaging around in the galley below, opening the refrigerator, clanking pottery. He went a few steps up the ladder and threw an empty quart milk carton over the side. She stared open-mouthed, startled by the flagrant littering.
“It can handle it,” he said. “It’s a big ocean.”
She turned away from him and watched the white carton rise up on the face of a swell and disappear into the next trough. She saw the white flash only one more time on the peak of a swell before it was lost in the sea of gray. In less than a minute, it was gone.
When her husband came back up the ladder, he was outfitted from top to bottom in a plastic yellow suit. On his feet, he wore shiny new black sea boots. He settled on the cockpit seat and looked around the horizon. A few minutes later he checked the sails, then he checked his watch.
“Only about twenty-eight more hours to go,” he said.
By late morning the seas had grown worse. The boat heeled at a constant twenty-degree angle. She tried going below, but she felt the nausea begin, so she grabbed a paperback novel and found she could read tucked up under the canvas shelter he called a dodger. There, most of the spray missed her. When noon came around, none of them felt like eating, and the only time she saw Cindy was when she came out to fetch the plastic trash can from the galley to use as a puke bucket in their cabin.
Her husband went up and down the ladder all afternoon. The boredom of sailing was something he had not reckoned with. He played with the radio below trying to raise other vessels, then came out into the cockpit and pushed buttons on the electric winches, taking in lines and letting them out again. She’d read over two hundred pages of the espionage thriller, but she was having a difficult time following the plot. The boat was groaning and below, whenever they rose on an extra-large swell, the contents of the cabinets rattled and shook. She imagined broken ketchup bottles and spilled vinegar. The Verity was a very high-sided boat, but when the wires on the low side started dipping underwater as the stronger gusts hit them, she decided she should say something.
“Don’t you think we have too much sail up? Surely we’re going fast enough.” She’d read enough in those books of his to know that when the wind got stronger, you were supposed to put up smaller sails or take them in altogether.
A blast of spray hit the dodger, and it sounded like a round of BBs hitting the plastic window. Her husband had his yellow hood cinched tight around his pinched face. “This boat can take it, honey, don’t you worry. Why don’t you go down and fix me something hot to eat.”
She looked at her watch and was surprised to see it was after five. It would be getting dark soon with the gloom of the heavy overcast and the patch of even darker clouds on the horizon ahead. They hadn’t seen much rain this day, but judging from the look of those black clouds, they would shortly. The sun, though they wouldn’t see it, would set just before six. She tucked a bookmark in her novel and made her way down the ladder, holding tight and determined to keep the nausea at bay.
She decided a can of Campbell’s Chunky soup was the best she could do, and by the time she’d found a can opener and emptied the brown muck into the pot on the gimbaled stove, she was nearly sick. She braced herself on the seat of the navigation table as the cabin grew darker and the soup did its best to prove the adage about a watched pot. She cut off a thick slice of sourdough bread and a chunk of cheddar cheese, wrapped them in a paper towel, and tucked them into her sweatshirt pocket. She poured the soup into a large bowl and made her way to the ladder. The motion was even worse and the degree of heel had increased. She had to walk on the side of the ladder, and she knew she was going to spill the soup. He would be furious.
She’d just made it to the top of the ladder and was reaching out trying to pass him the bowl of soup, when he said, “Canned soup? Is that the best you can do?” Then the boat shuddered from the pounding of a huge wave, and she started to go over. She saw his face turn up, away from her, and in the next second a wall of green water dropped from the sky and enveloped him. Gallons poured down the hatch, bowing her head under the force of it, nearly knocking her off the ladder. The soup bowl was gone from her hand, and she wasn’t even aware of having dropped it, only that she was holding on with both hands as the boat went completely over on her side. She was choking, gagging and spitting up salt water, and when she raised her head, he was gone.
She scrambled into the cockpit as the boat righted herself and looked off the low side. She turned, peering forward and aft, and saw no splash of yellow. The lifelines were still intact, but he was gone.
“Man overboard!” she hollered as loud as she could. “Man overboard!”
She hit at the buttons that should wind up the sails and looked up to see the mainsail gone, some fuzzy tatters blowing in the wind. She reached down and tried to remember the steps he’d taken when he’d started the engine. She pushed the heater and counted to ten as Gator’s colorless face appeared in the companionway.
“What happened?”
She pointed over her shoulder. “He’s back there somewhere. Got to start the engine.”
Gator called over his shoulder, “Cindy, get on the radio and start calling mayday! Try to raise the Coast Guard!”
He climbed out just as the diesel roared to life. She lifted the cockpit locker and grabbed the heaving line. “Circle around this way,” she said. “Look for his yellow jacket.”
Clutching the line, she crawled forward slowly, moving from handhold to handhold, keeping her body low to the deck, her heart pounding and her teeth chattering as much from the cold as from fear. She was surprised that she did not feel particularly frightened. The waves were still huge, and she was rolling from one side to the other, the mast swinging in a wide arc through the black sky. She squinted into misty darkness, scanning the sea slowly, remembering the milk carton, giving him time to rise between the troughs. What she did feel was anger. Why hadn’t he listened to her?
It was Cindy who spotted him. “Over there!” she cried. “See him? Over there!”
She thought she saw a speck of yellow, then it was gone. Night was on them. Gator was turning the boat back into the wind. The spray stung her cheeks and burned her eyes. There. She thought she saw something yellow. She arranged the coils of the heaving line in her left hand and transferred the monkey’s fist to her right, swinging the weight of it comfortably off her hand.