27 – Going Overboard
Knock, knock, knock.
“Meg. Lenna. You there? It's me. Jon.”
“Oregon!” I opened the companionway. “Get down here.”
“God damn it! You two really know how to stir up the shit.”
“And you haven't heard the half of it.”
Elena translated the girlfriend's death threat.
Jon was sullen. “That Russian is one tough cookie.” He stopped, took a deep breath. “Well, now you’ve done it. I never would have crossed her, if I had to cross anyone.”
“I wasn't out to grass Harvey's bint! But Jon, the wanker is holding our kit for ransom, and he wiped out my credit card.”
“I still wouldn't have squealed.”
“Aye, maybe you wouldn't. But it's not like I've a choice. We're running out of time and have less of a boat than we started with. The fraud squad cancelled my credit card, and I've used up all the cash I can pull, borrow, steal from my bank. We're not your average holidaymakers, sunning our bahookies on the Turkish Riviera.
Jon groaned, shook his head. “All right, enough. You do realize, the police used your little disagreement to get at his girlfriend. They don't give a crap about Harvey or your stuff.”
I gaped.
Meg, that floozy is a madam.”
“A madam?” Elena said.
“A female pimp.” She didn't twig. Jon explained. “A woman who sells girls to men as prostitutes. Russian, Ukrainian. She's running some kind of speciality brothel: white girls to an exclusive clientele. You know, she was in a knife fight. Ended up with her chest hanging wide open. Somehow, she made it back to the gulet and somebody sewed her back together. Have you seen her chest?”
“Ah, no. I have hardly seen her.”
Jon peeked out a porthole. “Harvey's just some fool; a bumbling idiot with a rich wife he had locked up in an English loony bin. He sets up on other people's yachts. Lives a fantasy life.” He gestured toward the gulet. “Another thing, that rotting, piece of shit ain't even his.”
“What do you mean, 'not his'?”
“No kidding. Belongs to a client. Some sucker that doesn't know Harvey's got his girlfriend using it as a whorehouse. The local police know what's going on, but can't do shit. Then you come to them with a sob story about getting swindled. They've got their excuse to get on board and toss the joint.” He looked at me through his eyebrows. “Don't suppose they told you any of this?”
“Uhh, no.”
“Figures. I should have warned you, but I thought you kind of liked the guy. Thought, maybe you had some kind of deal going on.”
“I do. I did. I don't know. I was stupid.”
“Not just you. A lot of people around this town, be happier than a cow in clover, if something bad were to happen to him. That it hasn't, tells me his girlfriend's got room for him under her roof.”
“Roof?” I asked.
“Yeah, mob protection. Russian, not Turkish. But you've got friends; like just about every Turk tied to this marina. I honestly don't know how you did it.” Jon put one foot on the companionway's first step, his hands on the rails above his head. Instead of hauling his sizeable frame topside, he froze and turned to glare at us, like we were overripe roadkill. “I shouldn't say anything, but is this whole sailing thing really such a good idea?”
Elena and I looked at each other.
“Oh, come on.” Jon back-stepped from the companionway. “You've said it yourself, Meg. You have 'less boat than you started with.' Maybe a few weeks left to put it together, and now you've got a serious enemy.”
“Not like we have options, Jon! We're sailing for Canada, or we're going to die trying.”
“That's what I am afraid of.” He sat back down, arms crossed, elbows on the table. “To not die trying, you have a lot of work to do. Let's talk about your route. You have one?”
Elena filled the kettle, slammed it on a hob. Her hands were shaking. She kept her back to us.
Harvey's planning proposal already had me sold on chancing the Panama Canal. Jon wasn't sure a visa-less Russian with a tagged passport was allowed in. “What about the straits of Magellan? Did you check to see if Chile or Argentina will allow you to transit their waters with Elena?” He stopped, chuckled. “Damn it, you get that far south, you might as well go round Cape Horn.”
I thought he was serious. “Good point. Rounding Cape Horn sounds like it's the least complicated.”
“Really? Know what the weather is like down there? And you are going the wrong way! Against the prevailing weather and current. God-damned dangerous. I wouldn't do it. What about the Suez Canal, then the Indian Ocean? Different side of the world, you need a different set of charts. You got charts for anything?”
“Jon, stop!” I slapped the table. “I bloody ken. Charts, I need charts.”
“I thought we were going through Panama.” Elena broke in. “If we cannot cross through canal, then to Novo Shetlandia. No horn!”
“She means, Nova Scotia.” I said.
“Good! You do have a plan.” Jon looked relieved. “Come to my boat tomorrow. I will lend you a book for chart selection and ordering. You won't get any of the charts here, maybe Istanbul, and that will be iffy.” He shook his head slowly. “I don't know how you two are going to do it. I don't know how you have done any of the things you have, and now this!” He waved in the direction of the gulet. “But if you are going to do it, and not die trying, you need every second of every day you have left. And still, that might not be enough.”
~
I was up, slurping coffee like it was going out of style. With the sound bollocking I got from Jon, and then Elena crying all night, sleep was something I hadn't got a lot of.
Tap, tap, tap. Sinem came aboard. She left Natalie wood and her sailing kit in the cockpit. “Girls! What is this?”
“Ghar-ells!?” Elena moaned from under the covers.
“Yeah, what's with, girls?” I hoisted my mega-mug of coffee. “We are sailors! Garrr.”
“Girls, little city girls! The boat is tied to the dock. The engine is not running. Where is Lenna?” She clapped her hands. “Give me that coffee. Sail covers off. Lenna, up! Check the oil, start the engine. Right now! We shall have sails up before I finish Meg’s coffee, or we can be done with lessons, and you can swim to Canada for all I care.”
~
Mid-bay, a fresh breeze had us zipping along under full sail on a beam reach. It was damp, bone-chilling cold and pitch dark. Sinem engaged the autopilot and sent me below deck to grab a jumper for Elena. I rummaged around, found something I thought was appropriate, and climbed back to the cockpit.
Elena sat there, arms folded across her chest, glaring at me.
“She is not here. You saw her last when you went below for the sweater.” Sinem waved around the cockpit. Natalie wood was gone. “OK Meg. It is Lenna out there. Now what?”
My heart thrashed in my chest. Sure enough, Sinem's man-overboard stick was gone. That it could be Elena out there, ran my blood cold.
“Well, Meg, what? I am not here and Lenna is out there.” Sinem pointed into our dark, foaming wake.
I was frozen. Elena sat on a cockpit bench, stony. She glared at me. In her eyes, I saw fear.
I slammed the throttle into reverse. That was stupid, the engine wasn't running. The yacht was sailing. Think through the problem. I have to turn the boat one-hundred-eighty degrees. Two sails flying. Two gigantic sails. OK, OK, OK. Deep breath. I killed the autopilot, cranked the wheel, started to turn downwind.
Sinem shrieked, “You want to gybe? In this much wind! You will snap the mast when the mainsail back-winds.” She was right. If this were real, my stupidity would probably kill both of us. In the scenario we were enacting, I'd destroy the boat, or seriously cripple it.
I cranked the wheel the other way and pointed the nose into the wind. The sails luffed like crazy—crashing, banging, trying to rip themselves free. I yanked what felt like miles of rope through pulleys, tightening the mainsail as flat as it would go. It caught wind, the boat picked up speed. The huge forward sail was still crashing and banging. “Sod it. I can't fly both sails myself.”
“Furl it or fly it, Meg!” Sinem screamed into the wind. “Now! Before you lose the fucking boat.”
More miles of rope to haul. My muscles ached. Lungs burned. Eyes stung with tears. It felt like my palms were bleeding when the last of the Genoa rolled onto the furling unit. Only one big sail left to deal with. OK, I had control but was leaving Elena in my wake—no wait, a stupid wooden stick—oh bloody hell, it could be her. I tacked the wind onto the other side, eased the mainsail, turned away from the wind a little more, checked the compass: backtracking, yay! How long had I been heading upwind, and then downwind, and then, all that mucking about? At least the sky was starting to lighten. I could almost see the surface. Choppy waves. Huge bay. No man-overboard stick in sight.
“Where is she, Meg?” Sinem chided. “Do you know how much time passed while you sailed away from her? How fast were you going? How much time have you spent sailing back with only one sail up?”
I did the maths. Dozens of square miles. I felt sick, my knees were shaking. This was Marmaris's completely protected bay. Out there was a wooden stick, a mere analogue for an infinitely precious life. What if this had been the ocean? What if this had been real?
~
I was shattered, gutted and frighteningly sobered by the botched man-overboard exercise. Everything was getting far too real for fun. Knackered after a few hours on a protected body of water wasn't a good omen. What about weeks, maybe months, out there? I'd seen the ocean from above in its many moods, and it looked nothing like that picturesque bay.
Sinem wasn't happy. On the way back to the marina, she ignored us and blethered away on her mobile. Clearing the breakwater, she took the helm. “You have a new parking spot. We're going there now.”
“What about all our things at the old spot?”
“My uncle is getting your stuff.” Gliding by, Sinem waved at a giant of a man piling our things in a wheelbarrow. “That's him, friends call him, Albatross.” Then, “He is taking the parts of that windvane to my best girlfriend, Nadia. And any other stuff you managed to get from Harvey.”
“Not bloody much.” I growled under my breath.
“I think Albatross will help get things from Harvey. He is a good man, my uncle.” Then Sinem pointed at the tallest, rockiest, scrubbiest hill around, and said, “After that, girls, we are going to climb up there.”
Elena flashed her deer-in-the-headlights look. Something I hadn't seen in a while.
“Why?”
“Who needs to be sailors? Who needs to sail across oceans?” She took Elena's arm, squeezed her biceps. “You are in training. This is not a joke. I want you two not to die tomorrow,” OK, she had heard what happened, “and not to die in a few weeks, when you will be meeting, for the first time, the open sea.”
