Nobody's Dying Tonight

She was silent, not even meeting his gaze just standing transfixed to a spot. She turned and walked without a further word. So, he let her walk away and said nothing more.

He was relieved that she was leaving and that he would never have to see her again and with luck, never have to speak with her again. He turned away and did not watch her walk out of sight. He would catch a final glimpse of her later as she got into the cab for the airport but, he did not linger, and he did not wave. *******************

Chapter 22

They ate some breakfast though he had no appetite. After eating they began to research flights from the resort's community computer. Laurine would be heading back to Exuma to pick up what was left of her personal belongings before heading back to France. He was happy to see that they would be on the same flight to Miami. After that, he would jump another plane up to Orlando and she would take a flight back to the Bahamas before setting out on the final leg to France.

Later in the day, they had a dinner at a local restaurant and talked about the upcoming trip. While he had little back at home to go to, Laurine was more excited. Understandably, her family had been shocked to find out how close they had come to losing their daughter and had encouraged her to come home as soon as she could manage it.

He was a bit surprised but not disappointed to have gotten thru the day without a visit from Immigration. He was happier still that he had not been visited by the police or Navy or Coast Guard, or some environmental agency looking to lock him up for dumping a boat on their reef. And when the day had passed and no one came, he was relieved and began to think that he just might get out of here one step ahead of the authorities.

He wasn't trying to skirt his responsibilities. His insurance covered environmental damage and felt that it was his duty to clean up the mess he made. The water and reefs were so beautiful here and he didn't want to be one of those people that leave their trash behind to spoil the experience for the next visitors. But he would be just as happy to do it from Florida, just out of reach of the local sheriff. Easier to deal with things from the comfort of his home instead of a Turks and Caicos jail cell.

He had longer to wait for his connection in Miami than Laurine, so he passed the time with her as she waited for her flight. Neither was quite sure what to say and when the flight was called for boarding, they weren't sure how to separate.

"Come here." He said and held his arms wide and she walked into his embrace. "Of all the things that conspired to humble me over the past several days it's hard to find something to feel good about but right now I'm feeling very good that I am able to send you home to your family. If I accomplish nothing else for the rest of my life, I'll be happy to count this as my best moment. When the time came, we met the challenge and now I can send my adopted daughter home to her mother. That, makes me happy!"

"Thank you for my life. Thank you for working so hard to get us here. I don't know what I would have done if you weren't there. You just knew what to do and did it. You should be proud." She said.

"I'll settle for happy." He smiled. "It's just too far a stretch to name it pride. There's nothing like a good shipwreck to help a fellow dial in his humility meter. I'm just glad you are here."

He kissed her lightly on her cheek and turned her toward her plane. "You stole a piece of my heart young lady." He said in a mock tone of rebuke, tapping his chest. "And you will live in that spot forever." And he gave her a final hug and turned her loose to board her plane.

She was openly crying now, and he was afraid that he might break any moment. He brushed a tear away from her cheek and she smiled and started to speak. He touched her lips with his finger. "I know." He said. And he took her head in his hands and kissed her on the forehead. "Safe travels sweetie. Thank you for being there when I needed you most."

And he backed up. She wiped her eyes smiled, reached up and kissed him and turned and walked into the Jetway.

He didn't watch her go out of sight. It was an old superstition. If you watched someone until they went out of sight, the folk tale went, then you would never see them again. He wasn't superstitious but, why tempt the gods. He wanted see her again.

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Chapter 23

The trip home was uneventful and for the most part he kept to himself on the flight to Orlando. Once home he took some time to speak with everyone in his family and bring them up to date on events.

Universally, everyone told him that he should be thankful for being alive and that the boat was just an item that could be replaced while his life could not.

He listened to each predictable response with patience and agreed, more to get off the phone than because he legitimately agreed with the sentiment.

He knew the boat was just a vehicle and he had never been sentimental toward boats or planes or cars for that matter. His attitude had always been that the world was full of boats. Despite that however, he did not feel that way now. The boat was more than just a vehicle. In the time he was master he transformed it from just a boat to HIS boat so now, he felt the loss more then he thought he might.

A week or so went by and he was getting his ashore life back in order. He replaced his laptop and began the chore of setting it up. He opened up the case where he had stored the hard drive from the previous laptop. He would have his daughter "ghost" the drive to the new laptop so that it would look just like the last one. When he opened the case, he saw the SD card that he had removed from the laptop the night of the wreck. He remembered that he had thrown it in with the hard drive but had not thought about it since. A thought crossed his mind and he pulled the SD card out and set it in a small glass dish he used to collect his pocket change.

His daughter did the hard work of setting up his new PC as he watched over her shoulder. She was much more adept at working on computers than he was. He was a user but by no means a computer geek. He was just happy to have a computer back and proceeded to finalize his set up by resetting many of the custom configurations in the various applications.

It was some days later and he was emptying his pockets and placing his change in bowl as he usually did when he came back home when he noticed the SD card.

He picked up the card and walked over to the desk where his laptop was open and running.

He scrolled thru the list of programs and found the route planning software that he had been using since he bought the boat. The software was developed by the company that manufactured his chart plotter. The attraction of the application was that you could use the maps that the chart plotter displayed and plan your route from your desk then upload it to the chart plotter.

He inserted the SD card into the slot in the computer and opened the planning app. He opened the directory that contained the files held on the SD card and scrolled down until he found what he was looking for.

Two days before they left Long Island in the Bahamas, he was route planning in the salon. Initially he was planning the trip back to Great Exuma to drop off the women but shortly after they had discussed completing the trip to Puerto Rico, he started a new route plan. That was the route plan he now opened.

In a moment the screen displayed a small-scale chart of the North Atlantic covering the area from Florida to the Virgin Islands with the magenta line of his course overlaid on the image.

He used the mouse wheel to zoom in on the course line. He adjusted the image to center the focus on the Turks and Caicos and continued to scroll in and bring the features of the island and surrounding waters into greater detail. Within a moment he had the view he wanted.

The course line ran unbroken from the staring point in Mayaguana to the San Juan safe water buoy. He clicked on North Caicos and scrolled in closer yet.

He studied the course line as it ran south east along the coast of the island. He could see the contour lines that defined the ocean depths and more importantly, the area where the ocean gave way to the reef.

He used the mouse to set the cursor over the Lat/Long of the boat when they hit the reef and was not surprised to see the new waypoint he had just created superimposed on the map's representation of the reef offshore of North Caicos.

The new waypoint was not on the course line.

He used the measure feature in the application and drew a line from the waypoint, the place where his boat died, directly perpendicular up to his route line.

The ruler that displayed the distance registered 3.6 NM from the point of the wreck to the point where he had planned for the boat to pass in more than 1000 feet of water below the hulls.

He backed the cursor up to a point where the boat was on course several hours and several miles north west of where they ran up on the reef and made another waypoint.

He looked back at the log and found the notation he had made for the wind speed and direction. NNE at 18 gusting to 25. He drew a vector that represented the wind angle and overlaid that on the chart. The wind angle was nearly at right angles to the course line.

He remembered that the boat handled well on that tack. Before he went below, he was seeing 9s and 10s for speed over the ground. The angle maximized the impact of the wind on the boat, so they were speeding along on relatively flat seas but, in addition to driving them down their course line, the wind was setting them south slowly, insidiously.

It would not have been hard to adjust for it, a turn of a few degrees to the north would have been plenty to counter the drift but you had to be aware of where you were on the course and how you were tracking down that line. And that was precisely what Jen had not done.

He did a quick calculation for set and drift. While the wind was pushing them along at 10 kts it was also setting them south. The drift was nearly 2 kts.

He went below around 7 and was awakened at about 830. It fit. If Jen never corrected the heading for drift, the rate of their sideways slip would have been right around 3 NM in 90 minutes or so. The tide was low when they were passing their closest approach and that might have contributed to reducing the depth of water over the reef. The wind, the tide, and the drift combined to form the perfect conditions to drive them onto the reef without any ques, noticeable to the casual observer but easily spotted if looking. But Jen wasn't looking was she?

He felt a surge of anger and resentment well up as the cause of the crash became apparent. He let out an unconscious grunt of exasperation. He grabbed a book that was sitting on the desk next to him and flung it out of frustration. It flew through the office and hit the wall with a thump and fell to the floor.

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Chapter 24

He looked again at the chart and the numbers, but they did not change. He sat for a moment more than got up and walked over to pick up the book he had tossed in his tantrum.

He saw the cover as he approached. It was a book of meditations that a former lady friend bought for him. She had told him it was to help with his journey to a spiritual awakening.

He picked it up and turned it over to the open page and read the words.

Some people come into your life

just to teach you how to let go.

Teachings of Lord Buddha

He walked back to the desk still absorbed by the words on the page. He sat without a thought, closed the book, and set it back where it lay before he grabbed it.

Several minutes went by as he sat quietly at his desk.

He used his mouse to frame a box around the image of the chart on his PC display. He clicked the mouse and saved the screen shot to the clipboard.

He opened his email application and clicked on the tab that said "Compose." He moved his cursor into the note field, clicked the right mouse button and selected "Paste," and he hit the enter key several times to space down from the pasted image.

He clicked in the "TO" field and entered Jen's email address.

He looked at the blinking cursor, moved it into the text field and sat for a moment more before he placed his hands on the keyboard and typed.

Three words, "I forgive you" appeared on the screen.

He looked once more then moved his cursor to the send button and clicked.

He smiled, maybe the first genuine smile in the week or so since the wreck and he felt better.

"Let go." He said out loud to nobody.

He clicked on the icon for the web browser and the Google search bar was open and empty in the center of the screen, the cursor blinking awaiting his command.

He placed his hands on the keyboard once more and typed.

"Catamarans for sale near me"

"Let's see what my next boat looks like." He said aloud and then began scrolling thru the images.