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Brookins is the author of three sailing adventure novels featuring Michael Tanner and Mary Whitney, the latest titled OLD SILVER. He also writes a detective series about a short P.I. named Sean Sean. The current novel in that series is called THE CASE OF THE GREEDY LAWYERS. He lives and writes in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Night Sail by C.W. Brookins

Time was running on. Winthrop finished provisioning Obsession with the essentials he would require. He didn't want to stop in marinas unless absolutely necessary, preferably not at all. He was tired of the land, of being ashore, of the dust on the road, of noisy, demanding yachties. He was tired of dealing with other people, period. There'd been trouble last night at the bar. Genna had flirted outrageously with some guy, a guy he'd seen hanging around the marina. Harmless, she'd said. Just relax, she told him when he objected. She'd turned back toward the guy, arching her back to lift her breasts in a manner aimed at provoking Charlie as much as the stranger. Of course the guy had reacted. So had Charlie.

He'd shoved the man away, causing him to stumble and half-fall against the bar. The bartender, who knew Winthrop's history and his short fuse, had been there in an instant. There'd been hard words, a punch or two, almost a brawl. Genna had been pissed, really angry. He'd never seen her so angry. She'd stomped out and gone home alone.

Things like that happened to him when he stayed ashore too long. Even in this marina, isolated in the islands. Prison had almost destroyed his mind. Parole wasn't much better.

Winthrop sold gas and water to two more transient boaters. He moved his spare lanky body about with economy and precision. No wasted motion. He'd honed that skill in the pen. Now, with the golden light of late afternoon highlighting dust motes in the moist harbor air, Winthrop sat on the warm dock staring vacantly at Obsession's water line. He felt a gentle tap on his hand. He brushed it away, but it came again, insistently. He looked up at the slack stern line resting across his hand, brushing him with the gentle rise and fall of the yacht. The tide had turned and Obsession was no longer pushing at the dock. She was telling Winthrop it was time to go.

He switched on the bilge blower and walked to the phone booth at the end of the dock. He called Genna again. No answer. Well, she'd understand, he hoped. He had to get away, off the land, be by himself for a time. He knew he was running once more, but he had to get his head straight again. Somehow, the sea nurtured him, gave him sustenance and strength, defined him. Genna would understand. In the past, whenever his life seemed to fall apart, he could turn to the outdoors, to the sea, except that one time when things went totally out of control.

The manager of the hotel where Genna roomed came on. Winthrop left a message explaining that he was taking the boat out for a few days. He'd be back at the end of the week.

Winthrop cast off the bow line, stepped aboard and pressed the starter on the engine. The diesel under his feet responded and he let it idle while he mentally ran through the steps he would take to cast off and get clear of the dock. He shifted to reverse, engine running dead slow. The tide, now flooding out of the harbor, gently pulled Obsession's bow away from the dock. With bow line loose and stern line taut, the engine pulled the hull tighter to the dock, helping the tide swing the bow out still farther. Charlie gauged her swing, shifted to forward and loosed the stern line. Obsession eased away and lined up a few feet off the dock, mooring lines clear. He felt a quiver of anticipation. Was it the boat or from him?

Winthrop looked all around for hazards, mostly for unwary boats crossing the harbor. He knew the little harbor like he knew the acne pits on his weathered cheeks. He shifted the transmission into forward, dead slow. Obsession slid ahead. When they reached the end of the long dock he turned to port and headed straight for the harbor mouth. Winthrop looked around once again and saw John Martin standing at the door to his office with an arm raised casually in farewell. Winthrop waved back at his employer and inched the throttle lever forward. The engine responded. He felt the breeze on his back and, uncharacteristically, hauled up the big jib he'd previously secured to the forestay. The jib sheets were already run through their shackles, so he controlled the set of the sail and knew he'd made a seaman-like job of getting the sail up. He took the breeze over his right shoulder and with the added lift from the big genoa, motor-sailed briskly toward the harbor entrance.

As Obsession sliced through the narrow harbor mouth, Winthrop glanced back at the marina once more. Martin's Marina, in the heart of the San Juan Islands, where he'd worked since his release from prison, was one of the prettiest. There were beds of bright flowers around all the buildings. Pennants on poles at the building corners snapped in the breeze. The rocky harbor was a deep indentation in the island, facing east on the main commercial shipping route from Seattle to Alaska. Recreational boaters passed on their way up or down the seaway between Desolation Sound in the north and Puget Sound to the south. Boaters entering the deep harbor saw a long wooden wharf parallel to the shore line with a small cluster of fingers jutting out into the harbor on the left. These transient docks were joined by a long wharf to another cluster of slips on the right which were permanent berths for those who lived on the island.

Closer to the harbor mouth, several mooring buoys floated in an uneven line across the open water between the resort dock and the marina docks. Midway down the long wharf was the harbormaster's tiny shack, and behind that, the gas dock. Along the shore were the marina buildings, white-painted cinder block affairs of one and two stories. They looked like a cluster of dice cubes randomly dropped by a giant hand. The cubes housed offices, showers and a laundry, as well as a grocery, a gift shop and a ship's chandlery.

Near the inner end of the buildings, Charlie glimpsed a dark still figure staring across the water toward him. Genna? He couldn't be sure, and before the binoculars came to hand, Obsession crossed through the mouth of the harbor. His view of the marina narrowed and then disappeared altogether as the headlands on either side of the entrance seemed to slide together. Clear of the harbor, Winthrop set his course and shackled the wheel with a pair of stout shock cords. He nipped below, grabbed a beer and tuned the VHF radio to the weather frequency. "––winds southwest at five to ten knots, calm seas with a one-foot chop," said the announcer.

With an open seaway before him, Winthrop switched off the depth finder and raised the mainsail. For a few minutes he played with the sheet and the traveler, set his sails for the best slot and maximum drive as the big sloop reached up the passage. Then, with a sigh, he shifted the engine to neutral and switched it off. When the sound died away, Winthrop heard the creaking of the rigging and the chuckling sea creaming around Obsession's bow. She took the wind and seemed to lift in response with a slight heel and pressure of the rudder against the wheel. Free of the land and with a silenced engine, the yacht responded to the rhythms of wind and sea and sailed on.

The combination of three knots of favorable tidal current and the breeze out of the south sent Obsession swiftly north toward Desolation Sound. Winthrop automatically adjusted his stance in response to the tilting deck. Although the afternoon wasn't hot, sailing downwind as he was, the air was almost still and the sun warmed his back. He could hear the sea birds crying sounds of welcome as the big Cape Dory rushed northward under a deep blue sky, a sky sparsely populated by small white clouds that appeared to brush the tip of the tall mast. The golden sun, reflected off the white sail, drenched the cockpit. In the middle distance, deep green forests slid by on either side , gradually receding as the passage widened.

For a long time, while the sun sank toward the Pacific ocean behind the shadow of Vancouver Island to the west, Winthrop forgot his recent troubles, his unease, the soreness in his knuckles. He responded to the deep forces of wind and water, concentrated solely on the concerns of the yacht and the natural elements in which he sailed. This is what's real, he thought, this is where I belong. The wind swung slightly to the west. Winthrop trimmed sail.

Leaving the Gulf Islands well to port, he encountered few other boats, most had already found safe harbor for the night. Charlie Winthrop thought ahead to no safe anchorage, he intended to sail through the night, reaching Desolation Sound as soon as possible. If the winds held. Darkness grew and Obsession, as if glad to be released from her mooring lines, sailed peacefully on.

With nightfall, the temperature dropped. The wind shifted more to the west. Winthrop used the shock cord to again secure the wheel while he went below briefly for a sweater and another beer. Supper would wait.

Hours later, hungry, eyes gritty from staring steadily into the blackness, Winthrop changed course to a more northerly track. Night changed to morning in the unceasing darkness. There was no moon. The wind held from the west and he watched over the starboard side as the lights of the city of Vancouver slid by. He held his course for a time longer and then felt the wind begin to freshen. The low chop became more apparent. Weather radio reported that stronger night winds were expected to the north. Winthrop occasionally heard the deep thrum of big marine diesels and saw red and green lights moving along the water. Commercial traffic on the wide Inside Passage rarely ceased. Smaller fishing boats and pleasure boats were well advised to stay away from the big cargo platforms, log booms and sea-going freighters. They had limited maneuvering options.

Charlie realized that he should have prepared for the possibility of having to raise a smaller foresail if conditions changed. Normally an ordinary task, here he was faced with the night and an unfamiliar boat, in addition to being alone. There was no one to steer while he ran forward and changed sails. He thought about dropping the main while he changed the jib, lying dead in the water for the several minutes it took to raise the smaller sail, but that would cost him. Did it matter? The wind shifted still more to the north.

Prudence said stop, drop sails, reef and reset. Or turn and sail across the Inside Passage, away from his destination to make the job easier. But Winthrop decided to keep going. With every passing minute, his spirit lifted, synchronous with the rising bow wave and the tilting, rocking deck, the feel of a good boat beneath his feet. His confidence in his skills, in his core, seemed at that moment to be supreme.

Hell, he could do anything! He raised the can of beer and drained the last swallow, crumpling and discarding the can in a single motion. Still. with all his confidence and jubilation, he knew he must change down to a smaller jib now, while the wind was relatively light and steady. Winthrop shrugged back into his life jacket and then strapped on the safety harness, snugging the straps tight. Even a small misstep on the dark boat could send him over the side. With no one at the whee1, Obsession would simply sail off and leave him. With a sigh he released the lines attached to the clew of the jib, the sheets that controlled the set of the sail. The sudden flapping of the sail sounded like rifle fire. It was as if the sail was about to tear itself into shreds along the mast. An illusion, Winthrop knew. He secured the wheel again and, hooking his safety harness to the lifeline, started forward. As he bounded to the cabin roof he took one more cautionary look around. There were no moving lights on his horizon, none overhead.

Damn, he thought, I haven't turned on the running lights. Shrugging, Winthrop ignored the rules and crabbed forward to the bow of the yacht, carrying the free end of the jib halyard. He gathered in the bucking sail and lowered it quickly to the deck, keeping it out of the sea. He lashed down the sail and scrambled back to the cockpit. Again he took a long look around to be sure no traffic was approaching. With a hand-held compass he took two bearings to verify his approximate position off the north side of Vancouver. He felt the wind shifting north again and strengthening. Soon, he'd be beating upwind. He made a quick notation in the ship's log.

From the locker under a cockpit bench he pulled out a sail bag holding the smaller jib he wanted. Winthrop reconnected his safety harness to the single line running from bow to stern and carried the sail forward. Already the freshening wind-driven waves were causing the bow to rise and fall an alarming amount. The wind rattled loudly in his ears. Squatting there at the bow in the dark, it seemed to Winthrop that he was now in the midst of a raging storm. Intellectually he knew that wasn't the case, but then his stomach turned over.

"Oh,oh," he muttered. "Lets not get sick out here." Ignoring his sudden queasiness, Winthrop secured the jib to the forestay, a wire cable running from the bow to the tip of the mast. Then he connected the shackle on the jib halyard to an eye in the top of the sail. Finally he scuttled back along the lifeline to the security of the cockpit where the motion of the boat was much less. He raised the smaller jib, turning Obsession slightly into the wind as he did so to ease wind pressure on the sail. Winthrop corrected his course to take the wind from his port side and sailed on north and northwest, up the east side of the Inside Passage. Puffing slightly from his exertions, he peered at the sails and then checked his instruments.

Not too bad, he thought. Sure would have been easier if Genna had been here. More fun too. She loved sailing at night. With him.

The wind, redolent with the mingled smells of fish and salt, freshened and Obsession heeled to the challenge. Winthrop smiled and unconsciously hummed a non-melody. He settled comfortably behind the wheel. The wind rose and Obsession heeled still more. Winthrop frowned. Weather radio hadn't said anything about a gale, or about a major wind shift. Another knot of wind and he'd have to reef the main. Holding the wheel with his knees, Winthrop swept the empty horizon, eyes tearing. He was still alone on the black sea. The wind pushed his uncovered hair into whorls and tangles. He grinned again, breathing deeper, steadier.

God! This is it! This is the best. Why couldn't this go on forever? All he needed now was Genna, beside him in the rocking cockpit, her warm hand in his, her warm thigh pressed against him.

The wind rose, slamming against the yards of white sail that climbed Obsession's mast. Each gust seemed to increase its power, and sustain the blast, so wind speed increased in steps. Larger waves sent cold spume flying over the bow, wetting down the deck.

Winthrop knew he could turn downwind. He had plenty of sea room. But he wouldn't. Time to reef the main, though. Turn into the wind. Fix the wheel in place with a shock cord. The main flapped and snapped cannon shots that were swept away in a cacophony of other sounds. Rigging wailed and thrummed. The mast quivered, straining against its mounting. Chunks of cold green water rose roaring over the bow and slammed down the deck.

Winthrop jumped to the cabin roof and grabbed the mast. His safety harness banged against the boom. The lifeline was tight, snagged on a winch, probably and the harness tether too short so he couldn't stand upright. With widespread legs, Winthrop wrestled with the halyard and the boom until he got the sail slack enough so he could tie in the reef cords. Back in the cockpit, he yanked up the shortened sail and cleated the main halyard. Releasing the rudder, Obsession found her head and heeled again with the wind, moving more comfortably now. But it still wasn't quite right. The rudder balance was still off.

Winthrop peered at the sail and realized the main halyard had knotted in a pulley near the foot of the mast. Back to the cabin roof. It took only a minute to untangle the line and he turned to jump back down into the cockpit. He held the lifeline in one hand and jumped. Unexpectedly a gust struck the sloop hard and the rising deck spanked Winthrop's feet when he landed. The shifting stern sent the wheel smacking into Winthrop's side. He grabbed at the wheel and missed, the sudden lurch pitching him over the stern, safety harness hammering at his body.

Thank God for the harness, he thought as he hit the water. The shock of the icy sea squeezed his chest. When he broke the surface, Obsession was already ten feet away, just out of reach. Winthrop grabbed the safety line still hooked to his harness. His fingers found the clean end of the severed line, sliced almost through by a sharp blade. His last conscious vision was the faint sight of his yacht sailing serenely away into the starless night. Alone.

THE END