Messing About in Boats

Chapter one

Caroline looked in horror at the water spurting into the boat through the hole in the bow. With each stroke of the oars as Michael rowed desperately for land, a fresh stream sprayed into the bilge and joined the growing amount sloshing around her feet. What had started as a light-hearted escapade on the sea was threatening to turn into a disaster.

When she had suggested that they spend a shiny spring morning 'simply messing about in boats', she had had misgivings about the invitation even as she offered it. Yes, it was Saturday, yes, she had been working much too hard, and yes, the complete change from her punishing business schedule would undoubtedly do her good, but there were lots of other reasons why it was not a good idea. As she watched the water's inexorable ingress, she thought of hundreds of reasons, although none were as serious or as pressing as the danger in which she now found herself. At the top of the list of the reasons she had given, first to herself and then to Michael, as to why it was not a good idea was that it was not really appropriate for her to be socialising in such an intimate, albeit public way, with one of her employees.

Michael had rejected that reason outright, and secretly, so had Caroline, but she felt she ought to put up at least a token resistance.

So now she found herself with far important matters to occupy her mind. "Row, Michael, row", she implored her companion. Michael needed no extra incentive; they were a long way from shore and he was as anxious for his own safety as he was for hers. It definitely wouldn't look good on his resume for a paragraph to outline how, on a very personal little boating jaunt, he had succeeded in drowning his boss. He bent his back and urged the little boat towards the shore.

If the situation had not been so serious, Caroline could have spent more time enjoying the sight of Michael as he rowed, his muscles standing out on his shoulders and arms, and his torso rippling as his trunk took the strain of the effort of the rest of his body. His skin was tanned, and as the sweat of his exertions increased, it seemed to define every line of sinew. He certainly had been managing to hide most of that under his tailored suits on work days, she mused. In the many times she had watched him from her window at work, parking his car and walking to the front door of the office, she never once had even imagined that he had such a powerful and vibrant body.

"We need to plug the leak", Michael shouted urgently. "It's a long way yet to shore and we have to stop the water getting in if we're not going to end up in it."

Caroline looked round the boat. She noticed for the first time that there was not one single item of anything in the boat! Its total contents was two people, one rowing and one worrying. There were no life-jackets, no articles of clothing, not even an odd bit of rag as might be found in any boat, with which she could attempt to slow down the filling of the boat. She found herself wondering as she shouted back at Michael how she had managed to go out in a boat, even just for a few hours, with absolutely nothing apart from what she was wearing.

"There's nothing here to plug the hole with", she cried, "No rags, no bottle corks, no nothing."

Michael looked up through his dishevelled and matted hair; "You'll have to use your swimsuit".

Caroline recoiled as the words were spoken. Surely he must be joking. For just a second she thought that this whole scenario might be the aquatic equivalent of the boy running out of petrol while driving the girl home, but she rejected the idea as soon as it entered her mind. They were both in danger; this was for real. But she was not going to remove her clothing to plug a leak.

She looked down as Michael toiled away at the oars. For the first time that day she also became aware of what she was wearing, and what it looked like, to her and to others. As Michael's swim-shorts were so far removed from his board-room regalia, so her deep scarlet bikini bore no resemblance to her usual business-like, one might say austere, suits and slacks. What there was of it clung to her body as if it needed to be in contact with her silken skin with every single fibre. The cups of the top stretched tightly across her breasts, containing everything but at the same time by their closeness and the lightness of the material, revealing everything. She had been aware of Michael's appreciative looks for most of the day, and despite the warmth of the early afternoon sun, and the gravity of the situation, her nipples were anything but soft. Thin strings passed up from the cups and around the back of her neck; two equally fine strands of material met and tied behind her back.

The bottom of her bikini was as brief and revealing; a tiny triangle of material covered her mound, and a slightly bigger triangle covered most of the crack of her bottom. Tiny threads of material held this engineering masterpiece together too.

Her body had never been so exposed outdoors; and Michael was still shouting about plugging the leak. She looked down at it again. Michael looked at her again, not yelling this time, but simply pleading with his eyes for her to take some part in rescuing them both. What did the company policy say about company directors being half-naked in front of the employees? A very conservative dress code governed the normal conduct of business at Dunster & Allen; although all the employees and staff were very young, considering the company's position in the market-place, frivolous, and certainly provocative clothing, was definitely not allowed. She remembered how Kristen, a young and bright new employee, had started her first day as her PA in a grey business suit which had featured a skirt of scandalous shortness, and a jacket, covering a chiffon blouse which did little to disguise the tiny half-cup brassiere underneath. Certainly she had completed the outfit with stockings and high-heels, even though, as a boat-building company operating right next to the water, none of the other women in the office dressed up to this extent. Nevertheless, despite the appreciative looks from all the men who saw her, the next day she re-appeared in sober tailored slacks and a tailored shirt, with more 'sensible' shoes. Standards had to be maintained.

Then again, she mused, what did the company OH&S Manual say about being out in a boat without any safety equipment? And what would company policy say of her bowing to Michael's request and removing half of the total of the tiny amount of clothing she was wearing in an effort to 'save the day'. What would Kristen say, if she found out?

Caroline looked at her swimsuit, and back at the water relentlessly pumping into the boat. "Standards are one thing", she thought, "but survival surely takes precedence."

There was no question of her removing the bottom 'half' of the bikini; it was bad enough that someone was going to see her breasts. As she reached round behind her neck and undid the tiny strings, she looked Michael firmly in the eye; "If you tell anyone at the office about this I will not only sack you, but I'll make sure that no-one in this city every employs you either."

The bikini top dropped into her lap, and her breasts, free from what little constraint it had imposed, dropped just a little, stretching her nipples to harden. Michael's efforts on the oars didn't slacken, but his eyes widened as her perfect tits swayed gently with the movement of the boat. Caroline noted with wry satisfaction that the bulge in his tight shorts seemed a little more pronounced. She tried to remember the last time, if there had even been one, that anyone had seen her tits, at all, let alone under a sparkling spring sun.

She bent down quickly, tamping the tiny piece of material into the hole in the boat's hull with a perfectly manicured fingertip. As the material filled the hole, the flow of water slowly abated, and eventually stopped. Michael continued to row vigorously, his back bending and his arms straining with each full stroke of the oars, but his head now up, transfixed by the complete exposure of Caroline's gorgeous charms. He could not remember when he had seen such completely perfect tits.

Caroline slid her left arm across in front of her chest, covering her nipples, but not the whole of her tits; she thought wryly that this would have been a good time for her to have been a tiny, flat-chested girl, rather than the well-endowed woman she had become as she had moved into her late twenties. She looked at Michael. His efforts had not slackened, and she silently urged him on, thankful for his strength and power. Half in gratitude for his efforts, and half as she acclimatised to the sun playing on her nude skin, and the unaccustomed enjoyment it brought, she again let her arms fall to her side, and placed the palms of her hands flat on the boat seat. Michael smiled, and mouthed the words "Thank you, Caroline". She watched over his shoulder as the land drew closer.

As the boat drew near the shore, Caroline noted with some concern that there was a small group of people on the dock; obviously their plight had been observed. And as the boat ground against the wharf and Michael slumped in exhaustion over the now-still oars, Caroline looked around for something with which to cover herself. She found nothing, and as her face grew redder, she clambered out of the boat, trying to cover her naked tits with one hand while steadying herself with the other. Being half-naked out in the boat had been a necessity that had saved both their lives; on land with strangers watching, it was embarrassing. The boat rocked and she was forced to grab the wharf with both hands; everyone, including all the men on the dock, was afforded a long and unfettered view of her tits. Men smiled, and the couple of women in the crowd turned away, respecting her embarrassment.

She strode quickly along the wharf, towards the buildings on land, conscious of having left poor Michael behind, but desperately looking for some place or something with which to cover herself from the view of everyone on the dock. Having Michael see her tits when their lives were in danger was one thing; back on shore she was again Caroline Dunster, business executive, but unhappily, nearly nude, and not in control of her situation.

Then, as if her discomfort was not enough already, she heard the 'beep-beep-beep' of a reversing trash-disposal truck. "Oh, great", she thought, "Now some sweaty workmen are going to get a free show as well..". And as the beeping got louder, closer and more insistent.....

she reached out with a firm hand and bashed the 'stop' button on her bedside alarm clock.

Despite the coolness of her room, Caroline sat bolt upright in bed, hot and flushed, her cheeks burning as if the events she had just dreamed had actually happened. She wrapped her t-shirt round her upper body and tried to collect and collate her thoughts. Chapter two

Rich children are often described as having been born with a silver spoon in their mouths. For Caroline it was more a matter of having been born with a silver tiller in her mouth.

Caroline's late father had been a sailor and a boat repairer, and in the later years of his life a boat designer and builder, a pioneer of many innovations bringing boats into the electronic age, both in terms of their user features and in terms of their design and construction. His father before him had been an Olympic-class yachtsman, and a fervent supporter of ocean racing and endurance sailing. The sea, it could fairly be said, was in Caroline's blood. She had grown up near the sea, and many days in her years before her earliest memories had been spent on the sea. She had never lived any more than a couple of kilometres from the harbour, and while other girls as she grew up had aspired to travelling overseas, or the law or medicine, Caroline's natural direction had been to the sea and all things concerning it. Although there had never been any explicit statement of anyone's expectations, she was always going to graduate into the family business. Thus it was that she had gone to university to study Marine Engineering, while spending her time in semester breaks, and when she was not actually studying, at the family works at Chowder Bay, getting her hands dirty in the workshop in the myriad aspects of repairing and building boats. She climbed the same slippery and scary pole of CAD/CAM designing as her father, as he came to grips with technology's inevitable impact on the traditional family craft, and the design and construction of many types of vessels. She saw the ground-breaking advances these processes brought, and also witnessed the failures, seeking from them to learn how better to advance the craft. And as the four years of her studies stretched towards their conclusion, it was more inevitable than it had ever been that her life direction was to be in building boats, rather than the academic study of their design and construction. As her course had neared an end offers of postings within the faculty had been made, but her heart was in the workshop, and as flattered as she was to see her glowing academic qualities recognised, she knew that she was going to build bigger and better boats than her father, and make him proud of his daughter.

Caroline had never thought of herself as a girl, in the 'girly' sense, growing up. Neither had she been, however, the classic Aussie tomboy, playing football and climbing trees with the boys. She had ploughed her own, unique, furrow as she grew from childhood to teenage to young woman-hood. Although a pretty child, inheriting all her mother's classic 40s beauty, she had never, like many of her friends, been interested in her appearance. She had dressed up for the obligatory school formals, and had been somewhat bemused by the rash of sudden attention this had brought, especially from the boys, but apart from school uniform, she had worn whatever had fallen to hand. She had not, as some of her more adventurous peers had done, sought to 'enhance' her school uniform by tucking some of it under the belt, making it shorter, or, as she developed her maturing shape in early high school, dared to leave an extra button on the bodice undone, to afford a slightly better view of blossoming breasts. She was a modest soul, and even her highly-acclaimed academic performance did not encourage her to put herself forward and draw attention to herself. She had to be cajoled into accepting the role of school prefect, and then school captain. She had carried out both these roles with distinction and dignity, but never with arrogance or self-promotion. When she had been presented with the prize as dux of her school, as she prepared to go to university, those close to her on the stage swore she actually blushed with embarrassment.

While her female peers moved on into academia and the corporate world, adopting the business dress codes and trappings this brought, Caroline's usual mode was fibre-glass impregnated shorts, and singlet tops. Both, after a very short period in the messiest areas of the workshop, could almost stand up by themselves, and her work attire was replaced far more frequently than might have been the case with young ladies working in offices only a few kilometres away. Her changes were brought about by necessity, not fashion.

Boys, and men had only been an incidental part of her world. While the girls at school had competed with each other for the attention of their male counterparts, Caroline had been uninterested, although not unaware. She had had the usual crushes on a couple of the senior boys, but never more than as just the stirrings of her rite of passage from girl to woman. While several of her peers in their senior years boasted of their sexual activities, always very secretively, of course, Caroline was aware of what it all meant, partly scandalised, partly curious but mainly focused the career path she had set upon. Boys (and young men, more so) seemed to be a huge distraction, if the results of other girls' 'relationships' were to be taken as an accurate guide. Thus she passed from high school to university as a virgin, not because she necessarily wanted to stay in that state, but simply because there seemed to be better and less complicated ways to spend time. At university, however, she met Sally. Chapter three

Sally was unlike any girl Caroline had ever met, even the self-professed 'experienced' girls at high school. They at least had paid lip-service to the 'rules'; Sally lived and looked as if she didn't know they existed.

The two unmatched young ladies were thrown together in the very first class of their first year, and as fate would have it, since the lecture hall was already nearly full, they ended up sitting next to each other. Caroline nodded a conservative 'hello' to the person next to her; Sally Armitage, blonde, tall, and totally self-assured, grinned back and returned the greeting in a loud and friendly tone. Everyone turned to look at the source of the words.

An astute observer of social mores could have written a thesis on the snapshot the two girls sitting together afforded.

Although it was summer term, Caroline was conservatively dressed, as always, in designer slacks and a long-sleeved cotton blouse. Her feet were covered with the obligatory designer runners, and her hair was pulled back into a short pony tail, and secured with a simple pink ruffle. She would have blended into the most average of crowds.

Sally on the other hand, was wearing a tiny, red singlet top, with straps so thin that from a short distance they were almost invisible. The neckline was cocktail-dress low, showing a generous view of her tanned and perky breasts. Although she was wearing no brassiere, in a seeming triumph of style over gravity, they were as firm as if they had been supported. The top was teamed with an equally tiny pleated tartan skirt. Sitting down, (as she was when she 'announced her presence') it showed a generous expanse of her tanned thighs. The skirt was inevitably complemented by a pair of fire-engine-red stiletto-heeled shoes. Her hair was piled up on the top of her head in a seemingly-random, but carefully-styled swirl, and while a close observer would have been able to discern the expert application of her makeup, from just a short distance away her expertise succeeded in creating the illusion that she was wearing none.

Caroline blushed at the attention her companion had brought upon her, while Sally, for her part smiled radiantly, and winked at one of the young men sitting a few rows forward and below her. In an instant the lecturer had restored order and the moment had passed. Sally reached over a perfectly-manicured hand towards Caroline; "Sally Armitage; sorry", she whispered. "Caroline Dunster, that's okay", Caroline graciously replied.

As the lecture as breaking up, Sally whispered to Caroline, "I owe you a coffee". "No, that's fine, honest." Sally insisted, and strode off in the direction of the nearest watering-hole. Caroline followed in her wake; this girl sure knew what she wanted!

"Latte, cap, flat white?, Sally threw back over her shoulder as she neared the counter. "Skim flat white would be fine, thanks", Caroline muttered. Sally sashayed up to the young man behind the counter, leaned over as close to him as possible, and ordered the coffees. Given the generous view she had offered him of her tits it was somewhat of a miracle that the correct order arrived a minute later. Sally grabbed both cups and motioned Caroline to the nearest table.

"You get great service if you flash your tits at the boys", she began. "Do you ever do that, Caroline?", she asked. Caroline looked away in embarrassment, and took a sip of her coffee before quietly answering in the negative. "You should", Sally continued, "You look like you've got the goods."