Chapter 10: Crossing under the Sunshine Skyway.
Saturday, continued:
For lunch we ordered a foot long Italian hoagie at the Yacht Club bar and we ate the leftovers from last night's pork rib dinner. We split the sandwich and ate all the coleslaw and cheese sticks on paper plates with plastic forks. Washing dishes on Susan was still iffy without hot water and just a trickle of water from the steel tank below the floor. I told Carlo it would be nice if that system could be improved somehow. But until then it's the old reliable foot pump to get the water flow started. Really, aside from hand washing and toilet flushing water wasn't used much inside Susan.
It rained buckets and the boat bounced and wiggled all day, we hardly noticed. We spent hours after lunch on the front bunk, naked, talking and caressing each other. It was nice to be able to fully investigate his body by the light of a cloudy day. He did the same back to me, but mostly we talked and touched. I got the impression he had a lot of things to say because he couldn't speak his mind around his parents, Carlo did most of the talking. He spent over an hour telling me about growing up in Laredo, Texas. I heard about childhood friends, his first kiss, his first girlfriend, First Communion, and being whipped in Catholic school.
I spent over an hour investigating his entire upper body above his pubes. I fingered around and down inside his belly button. He reminded me (again) he washed it daily and soaked it with hydrogen peroxide once a week, I offered to clean it for him anyway, and he let me.
I learned that inside it was exactly the size of half a hot dog, it came to a crinkly bottom but the sides were perfectly smooth. I told him it looked like a little vagina. With hydrogen peroxide and paper towels I boiled it three times and rinsed it out while he talked about his childhood and puberty and jerking off, their years before moving to Florida. He said they moved to Florida while he was in the Navy but he came home on leave to pack his stuff and drive his parents to Florida.
Then I rubbed his tits and ran my finger tips in circles around them. He said he felt a special pleasure when people sucked on them (a certain way) but he'd rather have that done to his dick, but he still enjoyed tit attention.
I kissed and licked and rubbed and lip locked and sucked hard, but it just made him horny and he'd move my mouth to his boner and came right away but that time I spit it into an empty beer bottle. He showed me what felt best on his tits but I had a hard time doing it exactly how he liked. I think I was working my tongue wrong (I told him for some physical things I additional training and more time to practice).
He tried to do stuff to mine but since they were flat he had little success except for finger massage and licking. It made me so horny I got on my knees and jerked off (with him watching up close) and came on his chest but we left it there and continued our conversation.
He told me his first orgasms happened while he was asleep and he didn't understand where the gunk in his pants came from until he started to become aware he was having weird dreams on those nights. He said he figured it had something to do with his balls.
Carlo whispered to me, "Want to see a trick?" I mumbled, "Sure."
He climbed out of bed and went to his clothes by the sofa, I heard him fumbling with his jeans then he came back in the front cabin with something in his hand and a bunch of paper towels he grabbed off the table. He got back in the same spot and showed me two packs of KFC Honey. He tore one open and carefully squeezed it into his belly button then just laid still. I chuckled and started to lick it out, which took quite a long time before the honey flavor weakened. I noticed his dick was hard and pointing at me the entire time.
When he no longer tasted like honey I grabbed the used honey pack and milked two more drops from it and applied them to the piss slit on his head. Then I carefully licked it off which really made him moan.
He reached down and grabbed the other packet and set it beside his balls, so I opened it and drizzled half of it over the last two inches of his dick. It took quite a while but I cleaned all that off too, which had him moaning in pleasure and producing drop after drop of pre-come. Before I could get it all cleaned off he told me to stop he couldn't take any more. I flattened the honey pack to remove the final few drops and smeared them on his right tit and licked it off there too.
Using my thumb and first finger I made a ring and micro stroked the flange around his head which made his entire body squirm with waves of intense pleasure. He whimpered and sounded like he was nearly in tears then without warning he shot semen across his body twice, it went everywhere. He raised his hips as if fucking the air during his orgasm. During the process I stuck it back in my mouth and swallowed his final squirt and the drips that followed.
He moaned and whimpered nearly in tears and while panting he told me it was over - he surrendered. He told me it `could be years until' he could come again, that was so powerful. I left his dick alone and licked and kissed his tits instead. Down by my hips I too made a large wet spot on the sheets.
In the final fifteen seconds before he first started to come he was so stimulated that he smacked the mattress a few times, clenched his teeth and had a very angry look on his face it was so intense.
Without asking I slowly slithered on top of him, our mouths aligned, my dick pressed against his lower belly, I humped his skin and came on his lower belly. We rubbed our bodies together to smear it between us. I lowered my head to his chest and we both panted for a while, that's when I became aware again of the storm outside. I heard him breathe and the rain hitting the glass in the bow deck hatch.
Nobody spoke or moved for a while, I whispered to him that I'd love to spend a day where he had to do everything I told him, it would be a day of nothing but Steve's Fantasies all day. I never had to ask, I could do whatever I wanted. He chuckled and said that probably meant he'd have to orgasm over and over since I liked his dick more than I liked my own. We chuckled.
He snuggled against me with his head on a pillow, his belly against my hip, and one leg over my legs and fingered my tits. It was very intimate and nice. At 9pm we split an entire tube of Ritz crackers with spray cheese, slices of hard salami, and cracked open some beers and stayed up past midnight talking. We sat on the bunk with our backs against opposite walls, our legs meshed together, one foot on each other's crotch. We both held one foot against each other's balls and rubbed it around but eventually we got tired and the yawns and moved into spoon position and went to sleep. I would have paid money to have that day where we could sit in bed, naked, and I could admire his gorgeous body. Carlo was giving me a look I couldn't decode, he watched my face closely and I caught him glimpsing at my crotch a lot too.
But earlier that evening while we were talking about the water system on Susan and I told him how disappointed I was in how it worked, he asked me to show him.
We went into the bathroom, I lifted the seat and used the foot pedal to flush the toilet, which was a foot pump unless you pressed down all the way then it opened the hatch on the bottom and dumped it into the plastic tank, via a three inch pipe down twelve inches below the floor. He asked how the pump worked. "It pumps air like a tire pump. It pressurizes the water tank and forces water into the lines then comes out where there's an open faucet; the toilet and the two sinks. I worked it with my foot and showed him the flow was rather small, then he asked if I checked for air leaks.
We got two flashlights and went down into the bilge by lifting the hatch in the floor at the bottom of the steps -- in front of the kitchen counter. We both climbed down inside after it was moved out of the way and leaned against the sofa. The hatch had a metal frame and two latches, it measured two feet by two feet. I usually kept a small floor mat over the hatch. Susan had multiple routes for getting into the bilge, like the removable steel battery tray under the captain's bunk -- it was the largest opening. One section of bench on the back deck could be removed to provide access directly over the 290 pound DC motor.
Standing in the bilge floor he looked up at me and said he expected to see rats running around, then he laughed and shone his flashlight around to get his bearings. I apologized for the lack of rodents. He said, "In the movies all large boats have `em in the lowest parts of the ship." We both chuckled, I pictured the rats running up the hallway in the movie Titanic.
Down the middle the bilge was just over four feet tall, so you crawled around on your hands and knees. The bilge was mostly white fiberglass walls and a collection of wires and pipes attached to the underside of the deck above us. It smelled like diesel fuel and fiberglass resin. I shone my light towards the back to show him the diesel engine, the small fuel tank, and the big gray DC motor that spun the prop. Carlo was surprised to see the propeller wasn't connected to the diesel engine but had its own motor, I told him that was common in larger sail boats and gave it better fine control.
He crawled over to the stainless steel water tank and inspected the brass air line fittings then asked me to get him a 7/16 wrench and a cup of water. I went to get the tools while he sat on the floor beside the tank, almost directly under the dinette. But I got him a bottle of drinking water and three wrenches, when I climbed back below deck he told me to go back to the kitchen sink. After a minute he told me to pump the kitchen sink.
While I pumped the pedal he twisted open the bottle and poured water over the air line fittings on the top of the tank then yelled to stop. I heard wrenches hit the floor, he was busy for about one minute then told me to pump it again.
I put my foot on the pump but noticed it felt a lot stiffer, like I was pumping air into a car tire.
Carlo appeared at the hatch just behind me and handed me the wrenches, then he drank the rest of the water and smiled.
"That fitting was loose, not no more! Try it now." He said gesturing at the sink.
I turned around and lifted the lever, the faucet spurted air then flowed a strong stream that hit the bottom of the sink and splashed all over the inside! While I went to check the faucet in the bathroom and the toilet I found the same thing, it was like actual water pressure. "You fixed it!" I cried as he climbed back on deck and tried to position the floor hatch in exactly the right spot.
I pumped the tank while he washed his hands, we put the tools away and went back to the bathroom. I leaned over the sink and watched him piss in the toilet then pumped it and flushed.
To show him how happy I was after we got back in bed I played with his dick for almost an hour, he made salty goo drops for me the entire time.
It was nasty outside so we feasted on beef jerky, chips, crackers, and drank beer all evening until the yawns started and we slept together like two pups beside mom's warm tummy.
Sunday.
When we woke Sunday morning the rain and wind had slowed a lot, but it was still drizzling, windy and cooler.
I think I woke up first. It looked like we stayed in spoon position all night, him in front facing the hull. Every morning when I woke up I always asked myself what day and time it was. I was usually able to get pretty darn close to the exact time.
When I opened my eyes I saw Carlo's back. His thick black hair and brown skin looked very dark resting on white sheets and pillow cases. I watched him breathe and wished I could see his front side instead. From behind in bed he looked like just another young man, we both did, I'm only three years older.
I put my hand on his left shoulder and gently rolled him on his back, but he never woke up. I watched his chest move with each breath and looked at the side view of his puffy left nipple. It occurred to me just then that he sort of looked like a guy that had started taking female hormones because of how big they were. He really did have a fantastic body, too bad he didn't think so but in my book he was blessed.
Carlo also had tons of street smarts and a strong problem solving attitude I really respected. He thought in terms of solving problems right away, which was different from me where my mind went straight to hiring the right person to fix things for me. But I could do most of my own computer repairs. Carlo saw his hands his body as tools, I saw the phone as my primary power tool.
When I set my hand on his chest he slowly woke up and looked at me with a smile, then crawled out of bed and used the toilet.
I asked about breakfast and he was hungry. We got dressed and walked to iHop and got steak and eggs, coffee, and toast. Our normal routine was for him to go home after breakfast.
I offered to pick him up next time he came to visit but he gave me a long explanation about snooping eyes in their neighborhood reporting that Carlo was seen getting into or out of a car (with the license plate written down) two blocks from home. Eventually his parents and the entire neighborhood would find out and the shit storm would begin (again) after they were reminded about his presumed secret gayness and his sinful sex rendezvous.
Carlo explained that if he used Uber the neighbors would see the sign on the door and ignore that car. Even if he walked five blocks away and met a car along the main drag he'd still get busted because that area was full of nosey old people that repeated everything they saw or heard. It also meant that crime was non-existent in their neighborhood.
He said he was not out but was sure everyone knew, but the subject of sexuality was never to be discussed at home. He was sure his mother figured it out, he was sure his father didn't even know what day it was anymore. He said his mother was in denial about his gayness. And all that didn't even address the stares and whispers at church:
"Oh look, there's Claudia's boy, they say he's a homo, poor Claudia." The little old Mexican ladies at church would glance at him then nod their heads side to side and return to their Blessed Virgin Mary rosary prayers.
I asked him if he really had neighbors spying on him and he said unless the car stopped in the driveway someone jotted down the license plate, car description, time and location and emailed it to the neighborhood watch group, so everyone saw it. He's seen it dozens of times, it's the neighborhood busybody brigade. He said they're a bunch of nosey-bored old ladies with nothing else to do all day but watch cars or Oprah on TV, and take notes. They're not spying on him, they spy on everyone.
He said it was time to go home while I paid for breakfast. During my long slow walk back to Susan I thought about his situation and decided to stop repeating my offer. He couldn't abandon his parents and the only career he's had since the Navy. The only thing I was doing was encouraging him to walk away from everything he valued. I texted Carlo and apologized for being insensitive and I wouldn't do it anymore. He replied that he understood my offer and assumed my frequent reminders were related to autistic insensitivity. I told him I would only tell him about major steps towards moving day.
Thirty seconds later he texted a message of thanks, he said I was the best friend he ever had. He also said he did not decline my invitation, he did not know what might happen between now and the day I left. He said he may not be able to decide until that week. But he already started talking to his mother about leaving Florida weeks ago and seldom let a day go by when he didn't remind her to hire someone to take his place. She said she called in a job ad to the newspaper.
September, 2018 was a month of boating activities. On Friday September 7th I left work early and went straight to see Susan, she was already packed. But I stopped to get food and one block of dry ice. At 5pm I sailed out of the harbor and Tampa Bay too, I sailed straight west on the Gulf.
I was going to sail for twelve hours then possibly stop for an hour with the sails down. Then I'd set a course back to Tampa Bay. My best estimate was I'd sail west about 110-130 miles, then turn around and sail back. I expected to see commercial ships out here because the Gulf was a very busy place.
The three main reasons for this test cruise were: (1) to see if the GPS alarm would wake me up, and (2) if my test GPS map actually worked (it was new software), and (3) could I actually sleep on the back deck seats while sailing alone without autopilot. This trip would be like my own Apollo-8 mission, a feasibility test.
By 6:20pm I was on the Gulf and kept glancing back and saw Florida and the Sunshine Skyway slowly disappear. Ahead of me sat nothing but choppy gray ocean, with bands of clouds and scattered rain showers. A few times I saw lightning leap from the clouds to the sea, but it was too far away to hear.
There was a wide CAT-1 hurricane south of Jamaica over the Caribbean moving towards Yucatan. Up on the Gulf of Mexico I saw bands of clouds and rain then ten minutes later we'd have beautiful sunshine and gentle breezes again. I watched the pointer on my barometer slowly sink lower.
The exact track of the storm was unclear, the hurricane center in Florida predicted it would land in northern Belize after drenching western Jamaica. My boat was aimed at Corpus Christi, Texas which was almost a thousand miles away but I was only going a little over 110 miles then turning around.
Next week the marine mechanic shop was supposed to come over and sail Susan out of the harbor and down the river about two thousand feet to his boat shop where they would install the radar on the mast near the top, they would also upgrade my red beacon to the newest LED lighting that used a third of the current of the old bulb in a socket. He said the old one held two standard 1950s automotive turn signal bulbs. While they were working on her I asked them to replace all the running light bulbs with new bulbs, there's three of them. They would also replace the rope pulley at the top of the mast, the one that lifts the mainsail. That pulley was over 30 years old.
Friday morning at work they informed me I would spend two days next week at the same hotel in Miami again, doing more interviews, probably mostly Cuban and Dominican refugees. All the people I saw were already interviewed by the paralegal to make sure they met minimum criteria for an interview with the lawyer. With me they had to sign for us to represent them in court and what percentage the law office got of their award. No reward, no fee, so this part of the suit was very expensive and risky to operate.
The most important things I had to confirm with each person were: that they were never charged with a criminal offense, and never plead to any charge or signed any police documents. And despite that they were detained and forced to work despite asking to exercise their rights. About one in every three met our criteria.
After signing the forms I had them identify themselves on the videos we obtained from the Miami Police and their laundry service.
One video I saw made me so angry I actually vomited, it was a laundry guard beating a woman when she refused to work. She was a slender Cuban farm woman that said she was pregnant, the cop punched her in the abdomen, and she collapsed and gave birth to a deceased child that afternoon, the woman died the next day. That cop was the one that hung himself four weeks ago.
I heard two of the Cubans say they were going to dig him up and conduct a rare pagan ceremony called: Caminando Muerto para Siempre (Walking Dead Forever). This curse was reserved for sins that even Jesus would not forgive. They told me when Adolph Hitler arrived in Argentina in 1946 that ritual was conducted on him one night when they caught the `Little Corporal' walking to town alone. They tied him to a tree and let the hogs eat him alive then conducted the ceremony on the leftover parts the hogs didn't eat.
I finally got comfortable beside the wheel, steering with my left foot. I had my little battery powered GPS on the cushion beside me, the display showed we were heading 270 degrees and moving at 13mph on a steady wind from the south east.
This GPS connected to my laptop so I could create routes on a blank map then program the GPS to follow the route, which was sort of like a long skinny rectangle box, with point A at one end C at the other end, if I drifted out of that box the GPS would beep continuously and display what direction to get back inside the box. The box I created was four miles wide and 130 miles long, Point-A was directly under the Sunshine Skyway bridge and Point-B was a copy of BEANPASS (27.546591, -82.742847), then Point-C was the far end of the 130 mile rectangle, a rectangle with a slight bend near the east end to go around Passage Key.
I got the cheaper software version that only created blank charts, I entered the three positions and the dimensions of the box to trigger an alarm. It also let you make curved routes to sail around things like shoals and sandbars. If you wanted to spend a ton of money a system like that it could run the steering too, but on a sailboat it still required someone to watch the sails and angle of the decks. Susan had none of the mechanical hardware to support computer steering, we relied on a compass, a rubber strap, and my left foot to keep us on course. Susan was really built for a four-man crew to race around Long Island. The doctor told me Susan twice won the race from Nantucket Island to Avalon, NJ held each May.
I left the helm and walked up the gangway to shine the flashlight and closely inspect the sails for signs of failure, could they survive the trip to Los Angeles? As far as I could see they looked fine, except slightly yellowed from the sun and pollution. Back at the helm I watched how the black rubber cargo strap held the wheel, our course was still okay. So I went below and lifted one of the floor panels and looked around with a flashlight, everything was dry and looked like it should. With my head below deck I shone the flashlight around the diesel engine for water leakage, if we were taking on water it should appear there first, but it was dry too. I'm not sure what I should do if I suddenly found six inches of water, aside from running the bilge pump and freaking out.
I thought about installing some kind of bilge water alarm but I'd check below deck anyway in case the sensor failed.
I sat on the bow deck and watched the sun set into the Gulf, too bad Carlo wasn't here to share the moment, but I took a few shots with my cell. It looked like I might be heading into a period of clear skies and calmer seas, after the sunset color display I checked the GPS and saw we were down to 9mph. After darkness arrived I saw the lights of a few cargo ships in the distance, this was a time when I wished I'd had that radar installed weeks earlier.
For our trip to Key West I purchased a satellite phone. The service plan I got was like a pay-per-use thing for people that only planned on calling in emergencies but I wanted to know if it worked so I called the nursing home to check on my mother. They said she was asleep, just took sips of water but never spoke. She was stable but probably wouldn't last much longer. I had her confirm the correct funeral home to call when she passed. Everything was set so I said bye and turned it off. That was a three minute call, probably $15 before tax, but now I knew it worked okay.
Standing by the helm in the dark I imagined being out here in the 1940s with German U-Boats below and American Navy vessels above. What it would have been like to be seventeen years old standing watch on an old World War -1 era gun ship patrolling at night out here. And I wondered what Tampa Bay would have looked like in the late 1800s with those big wood cargo ships and their handmade woolen sails. Too bad it's almost like all those people never existed, I bet they had lots of interesting stories. That might make an interesting book too, sort of a common man's Moby Dick on the Gulf. I could write a book about a vindictive Marlin named Marvin attacking a twelve foot fishing boat of horrified fishermen near a school of hungry sharks.
My mind drifted from topic to topic and for a while I thought about what Tim told me he remembered about the nineteen year old girl my boat was named after. She was wreck diving with a group of friends after high school graduation, sort of a bucket list thing before they all left for college. They took a quickie three hour scuba certification course and went on a shallow wreck dive along the Florida coast. The wreck was an old iron hull passenger and freight ship that hit a rock (in the fog) and sunk in fifty feet of water just off the west coast near Naples. Until the 1960s the wreck was still visible from the beach at high tide so everyone knew about it.
The Coast Guard said it appeared she swam through an open door and under a steel pipe that hung down, it came between her tank and her oxygen hose and she got stuck on the pipe which was above and behind her, she never saw what snagged her then sliced her airline, so she switched to her back-up and tried to swim backwards but when she tried to turn around her back-up line was sliced by another sharp piece of iron. In a panic she drowned inside a compartment on the 220 foot long 1920s era steamship.
Tim said the only good part was it went fast, she probably passed out after thirty seconds of terror, trapped inside the radio room. He said Coast Guard recovered her three hours later. Her tragic story made headlines across the entire state and in scuba magazines around the world.
The divers were told to not go inside the wreck because it was dangerous. I guess they should have said the temptation to swim in one of the open doors was as dangerous as the wreck itself. He showed me Susan's high school graduation photo (1971) and 3rd year class photo, she was a very good looking young lady, it was such a dreadful loss. That was when I started to change my mind about re-naming the sailboat. Tim told me after she died the Navy placed depth charges on it and destroyed most of the wreck, reduced it to a pile of bent iron plates. He said they carefully placed five depth charges on the hull during a very low tide when parts of the ship were above water. When the high tide came in the depth charges went off and flattened it. If I understood the story correctly, if Susan hadn't drowned that day she'd be around 68 years old today.
My speed was down to 8mph and the seas were nearly flat so I closed my eyes and stretched out beside the wheel with the little GPS near my head and I fell asleep for a few hours, the beeps woke me up. I loosened the strap and re-set the course for 270 degrees. After that I couldn't fall asleep again so I made some coffee and stayed up. The GPS said I had forty five miles to go to what I named Darrow Point, Point-C at the end of the long GPS box.
Slowly, the stars marched across the sky and the miles ticked off as the clock counted the hours.
At 3:36am I arrived at the imaginary Darrow Point. The GPS alarmed because we sailed beyond the point and outside the box. The winds were slow and I was only going about 7mph, leaving the three sails up I made a very wide u-turn and adjusted my brain (and the sails) to the new heading, suddenly the stars were upside down and the wind was backwards. At that hour I wasn't going to get in the water for a swim or try to catch any fish. I could have stopped for a bucket shower but I didn't do that either. The CAT-1 hurricane, now 90 miles south of Negril, Jamaica and was pushing the weather way up north on the Gulf, 900 miles away. Susan now leaned to the left and I aimed us to a spot already programmed into the GPS, the mouth of Tampa Bay, to the waypoint I made earlier this year, now called BEANPASS in the GPS.
Again, I kicked back and tried to take another short nap, four hours would've been nice. Sleeping at the helm with the GPS alarm was one of the primary reasons I made this trip.
The sun on my eye lids woke me at 6:50am, I jumped up and checked my heading, I was off course a little but okay. The boat had drifted north in the box almost a mile but no its big deal. Maybe what I needed was a two hour alarm timer to wake me to check course then go back to sleep. I decided to stay up now and make some coffee, with the wheel strapped in place I went below and got food out of the ice box. I also made a mental note because it's possible this GPS had the ability to alarm at set intervals, like every two hours.
At 1pm I ate lunch and used the toilet then dumped the tank since I was thirty two miles from shore, the very tops of the bridge would become visible pretty soon. That was usually the first thing you saw but rarely without binoculars. Because of the humidity the sky was usually hazy which reduced visibility and made the bridge harder to see.
To hold the wheel in place I used a black rubber strap with metal S-hooks on both ends, it's a strap like the ones people used in truck beds. Under one bench seat position was a metal loop-hook screwed into the boat deck frame behind the fiberglass. It was there for this purpose, to strap the steering wheel in place. You fed it through the helm and hooked it to itself, the rubber gripped the wheel and didn't mark or stain the beautiful large (brass, chrome, and oak) steering wheel. Sitting next to the helm you could stick your leg out and move the handles that stuck out of the wheel with your foot and lean way back and look up the left side gangway to see nearly straight ahead of the boat. Some people installed a nice seat on a pedestal at the helm, this boat didn't have that but I considered adding one. I thought it was never installed because it occupied valuable deck space, because boats like this spent most of their time beside a pier.
At 2:01pm I caught my first glimpse of land, I steered directly at BEANPASS and could see the bay bridge (through the humidity haze) the entrance to Tampa Bay. The amount of boats nearby had suddenly increased, most of them were speed pleasure boats but sailboats still had the right of way. I feared the huge commercial freighters the most because they could barely see little boats, some didn't watch at all. They created currents and water effects all around them so it was best to stay far away.
About five miles out I realized I was too far north so I had to turn hard to the right and sail 1.8 miles south then turn straight east towards BEANPASS.
When I got close to the waypoint I stood on the bench and blasted the air horn several times so the drunks would see me coming. I also made a mental note to order a few more horns, mine felt like it was almost used up.
Twenty minutes after the pass I sailed under the Sunshine Skyway and kept a steady heading northeast then started to make my curve to the left to parallel the coast but stayed a few miles off shore, there were lots of sandbars in the bay, and they moved around over time. Most of Tampa Bay was around twelve feet deep but they had a few corridors dredged to about twenty six feet. I only needed six feet to stay off the muddy bottom. My GPS started to alarm when I sailed out of the box on the east side of the big bridge.
At 2:51pm I sighted airplanes landing at the airport and my GPS said the harbor was five miles away so I went up front and dropped all the sails and slipped on their covers. Back at the helm I turned on the electric motor and piloted us safely towards home.
Five minutes later Susan and I entered the mouth of the harbor, then slowed to 2mph near the Coast Guard ships and half mile an hour once I got inside the seawall. Ten minutes later I was shut down, tied-up, and back on shore power. None of my neighbors were there so I had nobody to share my moment of glory with.
That was my first solo trip on the open ocean and had no problems, it proved that I could probably make that trip to California this winter. But thinking about all the crap that could go wrong still gave me anxiety. Sinking was always my biggest fear. I was already having nightmares about sinking, or sailing into an uncharted underwater rock while I was asleep beside the wheel. What I should probably do is email my friend the university teacher and ask him what a logical check list would be if I suddenly found water in the bilge.
If you were on the Gulf and a huge whale crashed into the side of the boat at 40mph and cracked the hull, and water started to spray through the crack, and you were 300 miles from shore... what should you do? Was there something you could put over a crack while you were out to sea, or do you just abandon ship, watch it sink, and pray for the Coast Guard?
I felt the single biggest risk for unexpected sinking would be if the hose that connected the diesel engine to the hull to bring in cooling water and discharge hot water out the side above the water line, it that line broke it would flood the ship. That's why most people replaced them every other year regardless of condition but you gotta lift the boat out of the water to do it. I've also heard of people hiring a swimmer to go underneath and cap the water intake with something, then swap the hose. The guy that did that job had to know his shit really well because one small mistake could cost millions of bucks and kill innocent people.
When I got in my car there was a voice message from Carlo, he said he was back at the hospital again, his father punched his mother twice then strangled her, they called police. He was being committed to a locked memory care facility. I texted him back but got no reply so I drove home with my cell on the passenger seat.
Back at home I ordered two strap-on satellite tracking alarms. It flashed brightly, chirped loudly, and sent a locator signal to satellites to summon the Coast Guard in any country for 72 hours. This device was what they called a Man Overboard Tracking Alarm, it was similar looking to the ones prisoners wore for home confinement.
I texted Carlo again that if he needed me I'd drop and dash but I felt for them this was a private family matter.
I also sent Tim an email that I wanted to chat with him about my safety on the boat considering all the enemies I was making down in Miami, could they place an explosive device on Susan to sink her while I was out at sea?
While I was online I made a note on my Amazon page to search for bilge alarms, like a smoke detector for the water.
Contact the author: borischenaz gmail
My other books: https://www.amazon.com/s?k="boris+chen"&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
Note from author: You have reached the bottom of page 172. We have a long way to go.