25 – Human Remains
So there was this wanker, standing there, rocking on his heels, staring at our stranded boat. Likely a gawker, but he wasn't snickering, gesturing derisively or making lewd comments. It was freakishly unusual behaviour for a man around boats.
Elena spotted the bloke, froze and went silent. If she had hackles, they would have risen.
“Ignore him. He’s probably selling something.” I waved a sailboat diagram in her face, pointed at a big fin sticking out of the bottom of the boat. “This thing, what does it do?”
No answer. Elena was on high alert.
I really can't fault the lass. I, too, hate gawkers. They're like tossers watching you pee in the woods. I pulled a Turkish bazaar act. “Yes, please! Finest yachts in all of Christendom! And, fine sir, where are you from?”
He put down his groceries, straightened up and said, “Oregon.”
Whew! He wasn't Russian or homicidally hacked off at me for scuppering his travel lift booking. “OK, Oregon.” I kind of leaned back on my heels like him and said, “British Columbia.”
“I know. We've met.”
“Huh!?” Who was this bloke? Did I owe him money?
“Yeah, we met, briefly. You were looking for a boat. Seemed preoccupied. It's Jon, by the way.”
I still hadn't twigged. “Ummm, OK. I guess.”
“I live on a boat. We met in town. You had just been to see the gulet broker. I sent you to Gino's.”
Ding! Ding! Ding! “Aye!” I kenned. “That was you?” Honestly, when he said he lived on a boat, I thought it was under a derelict barge or bridge somewhere. Elena pegged Jon as another Alexi. She's like that. It's a Russian thing: everyone's out to get you and guilty of something.
“I see you have a boat now, and I hear you are going offshore? Congratulations!”
Congratulations? I was used to, you're-gonna-bloody-die-out-there, not congratulations.
~
“Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffeeee chameleon. You come and gooooo, you ooh oooh—” Pouring my first cup of mercy, I was rudely interrupted by what sounded like someone strangling an old macaw.
“Cooo-weeee! Ellie an Megs, ya 'wyke dine b'lie?” Harvey was on board and down the companionway before I had time to think. “Here it is going on six-thirty, and you're still in your nightie!?”
“It's a t-shirt!” I growled.
“And nothing else, I s'pose, hmmm.”
“I wasn't expecting company.” The boat was back in the water, and we were finally in our own digs. I levelled the glare of death at Harvey, tugged my shirt down and backed slowly out of the galley.
“Aww, don't go on my account. I was just bringing your survey over.”
“Fine, leave it on the table. I'll go through it later.” I had my bahookie backed into a cabin and could just about close the door.
“And my bill.” He smirked. “You don't happen to have twelve-hundred euros under that T-shirt of yours?”
~
I got the Euro-cash from an outdoor cashpoint, and aboard his boat, watched Harvey count and stack the colourful bills. I asked if he could recommend a device or two we might need for long-distance sailing. Well, well, well. I'd certainly come to the right place. Harvey's Yacht Inspection Service instantly morphed into Harvey's Yacht Outfitting Consultancy. “No worries mate. You ladies leave it to me. Go and enjoy your day. You'll have my proposal by morning.”
In fact, Harvey hand-delivered it before the crack of dawn. It included a map showing three possible routes to Canada. The lines all snaked their way through the Mediterranean and down the west coast of Africa. Two of them hung a right near the equator and made a beeline, west, to the Caribbean. The one that didn't, crossed the equator and most of the Southern Hemisphere. Then it took a hard right around Cape Horn—that's the southernmost point of South America, in case you slept through primary school—to traverse the South and North Pacific Ocean and terminate on Vancouver Island. Of the two lines that parted ways in the Caribbean, one of those turned north to Nova Scotia. The other one crossed Panama via the canal to slalom way out into the Pacific, where it joined the other line from Cape Horn.
Brief footnotes rated the routes according to distance, advantages, and pitfalls. The Panamanian route was Harvey's clear winner. It avoided rounding the Horn the wrong way, and instead of Halifax, it got the yacht home; not frozen into the ice in Eastern Canada. Oh, bloody hell, Winter! Another niggling complication I overlooked.
The equipment list was broken into two parts: nice, and necessary. Just the necessary stuff was beyond-it expensive, but I was too far into blood to turn back. I gave Harvey the green light. His take from the project would be a ten percent commission on the parts, shipping, fees, taxes, and labour—including his. For the next two months, Harvey was not only going to be a project manager, but our new best friend.
~
It was sailing lesson number one—manoeuvring under motor. Elena was a natural. Forward. Reverse. Throttle control. Rules of the road—aye, she was a born power boater. Sinem brought a weighted, wooden stick to practise man overboard procedures with. Given what it was made of and what it was for—in rather poor taste—we called it Natalie wood.
Under the guise of, “Let's see how I can do,” I took the wheel and scored an own-goal. I think I actually ran over Natalie wood. I was used to steering a boat with a tiller, not a wheel. Blimey, all the directions were reversed!
~
Our training progressed fast, and we were having a riot with Sinem. Eating bushels of pizza. Doing countless touristy things. Killing time, we absolutely couldn't afford waste.
Harvey, on the other hand, didn't appear to be doing a bloody thing on the boat. All I saw was a lot of surfing the net, printing out fancy equipment adverts, then getting me to phone in my credit card number to pay for his adventures in online shopping.
Jon wandered into the marina at the same time Elena and I headed out. I wasn't sure he could see us over his grocery bags, so I called out, “Ahoy there, Oregon.”
“Meg, Elena! Have you decided to stay in Türkiye?”
“No, why?”
“I haven't seen anything happening on your yacht to make it ready for the high seas.” He pointed at a little marine electronics shop on the marina property. “If you need solar charging, I know he has two big, high-wattage panels. A deal fell through. It might help.”
The solar panels were perfect. The seller covered that month's rent, and we finally started to equip the boat for the voyage home.
~
“Probably, pieces of crap! What did you pay?” Harvey snarled. “I spent hours researching the right panels, not some local pieces of junk. You owe me a commission on the cost of those panels! Including the shipping and bribes for customs. Hah! Bet ya didn't think of that, smart lady!” So, that was the first indication, I wasn't dealing with my kind-hearted grandpa. The next was, “Where are those shitty solar panels? Give them to me!”
“Harvey, it's OK. The bloke I bought them from will keep them safe until we need them.”
“Dingbat! My welders need to make new brackets to mount your panels on the arch I already designed for you!”
“You've started on the mount?”
“It is a good thing I didn't. I need to redesign the whole thing now. These delays are your fault. Push me, lady, and you will see how slow I can go.”
I started for the gangplank.
“Hold up there, deary.” Harvey's voice got all smarmy. “Seeing as you mentioned it, I need two-thousand dollars, in cash. It's for stainless steel. You know, for your mounting arch.”
“That's a lot of steel!”
“It has to hold a lot of stuff. Solar panels, antennas, radar—which is why it's called a 'radar arch.' Satellite dish, wind turbine, barbecue. You might want to hang your tender on it.”
“Tender what?” I took a good long step away from him.
“Tender! Your little boat for getting to shore. Yours is an inflatable. What you'd call a rubber dinghy.”
“We have one?”
“It comes with the boat. I saw the thing while doing your survey.”
“Brill! We have a tender, rubber dinghy?” It felt like winning the lotto. “Where is it? How come I never saw it?”
“Big locker at the bow, that's the pointy end. You're beyond the black stump, lady!” He stood. “Come back with my cash, then I can get started.”
~
Sailing lessons intensified. Elena went from I-don't-wanna-die to completely no-fear! Sinem showed us sailing tricks that would scare the snot from your average yacht clubber. We rescued Natalie wood under full sail in a stiff breeze. Sometimes, not even screaming and swearing too much. It took an awful lot of strength and cool to change the sail configuration completely, maintain control of the yacht, not lose sight of the rapidly receding, wooden pole, and then, retrieve it; entirely on one's own.
We practised climbing back aboard, even underway, without a ladder or assistance from our taunting crew mates. We put out way too much sail in strong wind; just to see what happens. It was ugly but taught us to heed the warning signs before the dishes started flying. We climbed into the rigging while bouncing over waves. We listened to the boat and learned to find the sweet spot: an indefinable set of the sails and helm that brought the yacht to life. Elena, only weeks before, having never been near a sailboat, commanded the vessel, exhilarated, empowered and beaming. It brought tears to my eyes. We and the boat were becoming one.
“Ready to tack!” Elena screamed from the helm. “Grind, grind, grind! Damn you, robotay, work Meg!” I cranked an insanely taut rope through an enormous winch. The sooner the sail was tight as a drum, the faster the speed picked up. She had me begging for mercy. “That's it. I'll take the helm. You grind now, or how about we drop the anchor in the next nook and go for a swim?”
The Mediterranean is salty—really salty! Especially the eastern end of it. If you would rather not shrivel your eyeballs up like raisins, you need a diving mask. Sinem didn't have one. She told us to swim without her. Fine. She moped in the cockpit while Elena and I played crazy-sea-otters-gone-berserk.
We chased each other as deep underwater as our breath held out. Circling rock formations, startling fish, it was all fun and games, until a human skull leered, inches from my mask. Bollocks! I thrashed to the surface. Elena, of course, had to check it out. She surfaced a few seconds later, screaming out the details of our grizzly find. It had been down there a while. The rest of the skeleton was scattered about, probably by something looking for dinner. Still, no mistaking what it was.
Sinem leapt to the helm to start the motor, shouting at the two of us treading water, “Shut-the-fuck-up and get on board. We're going! Right the fuck now!”
“Memorize that spot. We need to tell the police” I pointed, scrambling onto the swim platform through clouds of diesel exhaust.
“The cops! Are you crazy?” Sinem said. “This is Türkiye. You tell the police, you found a body, and they are going to keep you here until they find out how it got there. That takes a long time. Maybe, the guys who put it there will not be happy about you finding it. You might end up down there, keeping it company. You need to forget what you saw.” She slam-sat on a bench, elbows on knees, chin on fists. “You saw a dead goat, that's it! Got it? A dead goat!”
