Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries) (19 page)

We all agreed that we were with her.
At this point, my phone vibrated, signaling I had a text message. I ignored it steadfastly, paying close attention to the captain. I generally enjoyed paying close attention to her.

“Another thing. We use certain terms in sailing, like port for left, and starboard for right. Using these terms while we are on board will keep everything clear so that we all understand each other in
an
emergency, and even for just sailing the boat.” She glanced significantly at me. I looked up at the mast.

“So, just so you know what we're doing, and you can help sail if you want to, and so you won't be confused in an emergency, let's go over the terms.”

She went over port and starboard again. The very front of the boat was called the bow. Anything toward the front was “forward.” Anything toward the rear was “aft.” The very back of the boat was called the “stern.”

Leyla also showed us where the life jackets were stowed, under one of the cockpit benches. “It if gets rough,” she said
, “
we’ll want to wear these whenever we are in the cockpit or on deck.”
There were short metal railings around the bow and the stern. Between them on each side stretched metal cable life-lines, running through stanchions set along the sides of the boat. There were two cables, one at about shin height, the other maybe thigh high.

Tony Stone was regarding Leyla with
a level of attention that was a bit more than polite
. Jasmine noticed this and elbowed him so hard, he grunted. I pretended not to notice the sound, or the look she gave him. It all reminded me that I had my work cut out for me, and it was not going to be all fun and games out on the lake.

If only I had known how true that was.

It was about
eleven
o'clock when we set sail. Well, technically, we didn't set the actual sail until after, but we left the marina at that point. Leyla turned a key and the big diesel engine rumbled to life below decks somewhere. I unhooked the ropes that tied the
Tiny Dancer
to the dock, and then jumped back on board. We chugged slowly backward out of our berth, and then slowly forward out of the harbor into the wide channel between Bayfield and Madeline Island.

To my surprise, we were towing a little ding
h
y on a long rope behind us. “What's that for?” I asked Leyla.

“I
f we anchor in a bay, we can use that g
et to shore without swimming,
”
she replied.
I nodded. “It has other uses too,” she added, “but we won't need it for that.”

“Doesn't it slow us down?” asked Phil.

“A little bit, maybe,” said Leyla, “but we aren't racing here, and it doesn't slow us much. This isn't like a speed boat – it isn't going to bounce around in our wake like a water skier.”

“It'll slide smoothly through the
soft,
silky water,” I said. Nobody paid any attention. I thought about repeating it louder, but ultimately went for the dignity of silence.

It was still a perfect day. The lake was as blue as the eyes of a blond Norwegian child, mirroring the perfect sky.
T
hey were both the kind of blue that you only see on fine fall days – never in summer or winter. On shore
,
it had been almost seventy-five degrees. Out on the water where the wind blew
,
it was probably closer to sixty, but for autumn on Lake Superior, that was spectacularly and unusually warm. The trees on the shore were mostly leafless or brown, but there were vibrant stands of dark pine, offset by the stately muted hues of orange oaks. If this atmosphere couldn't help the two couples work through their differences, I didn't know what could. The setting was picture perfect.

That sparked a thought. “Camera!” I said out loud.

“Me
,
too!” said Jasmine.

I went below, and she followed. I opened one of the cupboards in the saloon to dig out the camera. Jasmine hovered for a moment, and then Angela came quickly down the four steps of the companionway, stumbling as the boat shifted in the swell of the great lake.

“Are you OK?” I asked, turning and reaching out towards her, rocking a little on my feet as well.

She waved me off. “I feel a little woozy is all,” she said, grimacing. “I guess maybe I'm not a good sailor. I think I'm going to lie down for a little while.” She continued past me to the bow cabin. An unpleasant thought popped into my mind. This would hardly be a weekend of marriage restoration if they were lying around sick the whole time. I realized, feeling a little sick in a different way, that I hadn't even brought any motion-sickness medicine for anyone.

Jasmine disappeared into her cabin under the cockpit. She emerged a second later, shaking her head ruefully. “I can't believe it. We forgot our camera.”

“Don't worry about it,” I said. “I'll give you copies of everything I take. If you want
to
take some shots yourself, feel free.”

She glanced at me. “Do you have a video capture mode too?”

“Sure,” I said. “Kno
ck
yourself out.”

“Okay,” she said. “I'll borrow it later.”

Back in the pristine Superior air, I took some shots of the lake and the brilliant fall colors of the shore.

I turned to capture an image of Leyla behind the wheel. She stuck out her tongue as I clicked the button.

“Nice,” I said. “Maybe that one should go on the
I
nternet.”

She laughed, her hair billowing in the breeze and eyes sparkling. Then she set her face in a more somber expression.

“OK, do it again.”

As I snapped the second picture, she deepened her expression into a severe mock-frown.

“Seriously!”

She was laughing again. “All right, this time I promise.” But I had already taken two shots of her laughing at the wheel. I felt a strange joy as I smiled and said, “Never mind.”

I turned and took some candids of the Stones and then Phil Kruger, lounging on the deck in front of the mast.

Jasmine saw me and offered a stunning smile for the camera. Tony Stone just looked at me without expression.

“Hey
,
Tony,” I said, trying to loosen him up, “we need to at least pretend to be having fun. How about a smile?”

He looked quizzically at Jasmine, and then back at me.

“I am smiling.”

I gave up and turned the lens toward Phil. He seemed very tense, and his smile for the camera was patently forced.

Suddenly
,
the engine note changed, as Leyla dropped into idle. The boat slowly lost way, and sat, heaving in the swell with the engine ticking over.

“All right people,” said Leyla. “Let's do some sailing.”

My plan, which I had talked over with Leyla, was to take the afternoon to relax and enjoy the sailing, and not start in on the group sessions until we anchored for the evening in some secluded bay. Phil came back to the cockpit, to get out of the way.

Leyla reached over the port side of the deck and pulled on a rope. As far as I could see, it didn't do anything. She removed a kind of winch
handle
from a bracket in the cockpit and handed it to me, pointing at a big round pulley sort of thing that was fasted to the deck just outside the cockpit on the starboard side.

“Stick that in the hole at the top
of the winch
,” she said.

She then grabbed another rope
and wrapped it around the pulley a couple times.

“Now crank,” she ordered.”

I began cranking. The line tightened, and as it did, the front sail
began
to unwind off the forward stay
and open up toward the starboard side. The wind began tugging at it, and it made a loud flapping noise.

“Faster,” she said, and I cranked faster. The sail slowly unfurled, and then the wind caught it full, and I could feel the pressure of it on the boat. The rope pulled tight. Leyla leaned around me and did something with it, and then leaped back to the wheel. The boat turned its shoulder, shifted a little, and then leaned over and began to push through the water. Leyla reached over and abruptly the noise of the engine ceased.

“We're sailing!” cried Leyla exuberantly.

The first thing I noticed was the absence of noise. Except when I was hiking
or skiing
, going from one place to another required an engin
e
and
,
therefore
,
noise. But here we were, sliding through the clear waters of Superior, and there was no sound but the gurgle and slap of the waves on the hull, and breeze in our ears. Over the past year I had sailed several times with Leyla, but it still delighted me to realize that we were moving, powered by nothing more than the wind.

Jasmine made her way to the bow, glancing down at the skylight that opened into the bow cabin. She sat at the very front, looking out at the waves and the shore.

Stone sat in the cockpit looking around. It seemed like he was enjoying himself, but with him, it was hard to tell. Phil Kruger sat opposite him, on the starboard side, which happened to be the low side at the moment. He looked around and fidgeted, drumming his fingers on the gunwale, shifting his weight. He seemed keyed up.

Finally, he stood up. “I'm gonna check on Angie,” he said.

I resisted the urge to say “Angela,” and settled for nodding. He went below. Tony Stone looked up, suddenly alert. He glanced at the bow where Jasmine sat, facing into the oncoming waves. Then he looked at me like he was about to say something. I waited expectantly. It wasn't unusual for reticent people to want to talk about marital issues in privacy. He drew a breath
,
and then Phil Kruger came back up into the cockpit and the moment passed. Stone looked away like he never had intended to say anything.

“How's Angela?” I asked Phil.

“O
kay
, I guess,” he said. “Probably more tired than anything.” He stretched. “So how deep are we here, anyway?

I glanced at the depth finder next to Leyla. “Around
two-hundred
feet, looks like.”

“About a mile along here, and it will be three hundred and fifty feet.” said Leyla, gazing off into the distance. “Past Outer Island it stays around six or seven hundred feet. The deepest part is more than thirteen hundred feet.”

“Deep enough to drown in,” said Phil.

We sailed in silence for a few more minutes. There was a muffled sound from forward. The skylight over the bow cabin rose slightly and stayed there.

A minute later
,
Angela came up the companionway.

“How are you feeling?” asked Leyla.

“I'm fine now, thanks,” said Angela. She finished wrapping her hair into a ponytail. “I opened up the skylight to let in air. I hope that's
okay
.”

“It is in this weather,” said Leyla. “If the weather gets bad, we may have to close it.”

“We listened to weather on the way here. It sounds good.”

Leyla shrugged
. “It does.” She jerked
her hea
d over her shoulder. “But i
f that catches up with us, we'll have to run for shelter.”

I looked astern. We were out of the shadow of the blue hills near Bayfield. In the distance far to the west was a dark smudge the covered the bottom quarter of the sky. It seemed to be coming from the northwest.

“Should we be concerned?”

Leyla shrugged again. “Angela's right. I check
ed
the weather on the on-board radio when we first got the boat. Sounds like they aren't expecting anything. The trouble is, sometimes things happen that they don't expect.” She looked directly at Angela again. “So
,
you are feeling
okay
?”

Angela nodded. “
F
ine. It was probably just nerves or something.”

I was surprised Angela would be that nervous. Maybe she was afraid of the water. Maybe she felt there was a lot riding on this trip.

“Well, if you all agree, I'd like to hoist the mainsail too, and show you what real sailing is all about.”

We all agreed, and Leyla swung the bow into the wind. She reached over and snapped a rope loose from its clamp. The jib in front spilled all of its air, and flapped idly while we heaved in the waves. Leyla began to direct us to pull some lines and loosen others

Stone cranked on the pulley I had used earlier, while I worked the line that pulled the sail slowly up the mast. Leyla made some adjustments, and slowly the big white sail began to tighten and catch the wind
from the northwest. Next we worked the jib, and within about five minutes both sails were full. The
Tiny Dancer
drove her st
arboard shoulder into the water
and leaped forward.