Sailing Away

I have been around sailing boats pretty much my entire life. My father raced skiffs on Sydney Harbour from the time he was a kid, and it seemed appropriate that me, being the only kid in the family, should follow him into the sport.

Like him, I began in the smaller single hand classes such as the Moths and moved onwards and upwards until I was skippering an 18 footer. This was pretty much the pinnacle of the sport, the 18-foot skiff being the world's fastest mono-hull racing skiff, and while I won a few races, I was never going to be the very best.

When I began my working career I was offered a secretarial job with one of the better Yacht Clubs and I have worked my way up to become the Administrative Secretary of the club. To keep my hand in, I have studied the latest electronic navigational and systems controls needed for modern-day offshore racing. Because of this, I have now done four Sydney to Hobarts as a tactician. The tub was never going to take out line honours against the Super Maxis but we were up there on handicap.

Okay, that's my public persona dealt with, but what about the real me? I'm Jane, Jane Bond, don't laugh it's true, I'm rapidly approaching 30 and, while in Brian Freeman, who is one of the best trapeze men in 18 footers, I have a steady boyfriend. We do not live together but are heading in that direction, both having wardrobe space in the other's apartment. We have not decided on taking the next step, yet. That's a work in progress, the major stumbling block is his job, which takes him around the world on a regular basis. I have no intention of being the little wifey, sitting at home knitting, while I wait for my man to come home.

This is about the time, if you're a fan of those unbelievable romance stories put out by Mills and Boon or Barbara Cartland, and believe me I'm not, where the dashing Lothario arrives on the scene to sweep me off my feet. It wasn't like that at all, his name wasn't Lothario for a start. I recognised him for what he was, the word had got around among the women, so I wasn't about to let him into my life, or my pants.

I underestimated his persistence. But, because my first answer was 'no', and he was not one to take 'no' for an answer, he didn't give up.

Whenever Brian was home, Roderick disappeared into the background until Brian left. Then he was back with a vengeance, chipping away at my resolve until eventually, thinking that once he succeeded he would give up, I relented and went out with him.

He took me to the finest restaurant in town where he was on very good terms with the Maitre d', who treated us like royalty. Obsequious didn't come close, from the table service, to the highly pretentious wine selection complete with a Sommelier and his tasting spoon, to the sniffing of the cork, yes it was an old wine, to the gargle, to the holding the menu behind the glass to gauge the colour of the red wine, to the pronouncement, by Roderick, that the wine was 'perfect as usual'. The food was only deposed by the price. All of this was to impress on me what I was missing by not being his permanent companion.

Following dinner, we were driven in the limo to the yacht club so that the gossip could be in full swing when Brian arrived home the next day. "Oooh, did you see Jane at the club with Roderick last night, what will Brian say when he finds out?"

Brian already knew. When I spoke to him the day before he left London to come home via New York and Los Angeles, I told him that I was having dinner with Roderick. What would the gossips make of his response? "Good, have a good time and pick only the most expensive dishes. He'll take you to Chez Maurice, because he owns the leasehold on that and he gets a discount, particularly on the wine that he gets for the wholesale price, not the inflated to twice the recommended retail. He puts it about that he owns the building as well, but that's fake news.

It was fast approaching two in the morning when the limo pulled up outside my apartment block. "I'd invite you in for coffee except that Brian is due in on the first flight in the morning, and I need my beauty sleep and time to tart myself up for my man".

He was going to get angry but held it together. His attempt at a goodnight kiss hit my ear and he gave up, pulling my door shut behind me and ordering the driver to take him to another club. In his world, the night was still a pup and he wasn't going to be upset by some bitch who wouldn't allow him into her pants.

Any of the weary passengers arriving in the arrivals hall would have had no option but to smile at the welcome kiss that I bestowed on my man. People that had seen me not four hours ago would have said that the kiss had been motivated by guilt, and admired my recuperative powers having, they assumed wrongly, that I had been 'entertaining' Roderick, if you get my drift.

"Well, how did it go?" Brian asked, after the welcome kiss.

"Great, he honestly believed that he had broken down the last obstacle to his endeavours, and was in with a chance, only to be rejected in favour of you. He took off to find someone more obliging than I was prepared to be."

"I see that I need to take your mind from your gloating for the time being. Your bed or mine?"

It was mine, simply because I had breakfast waiting for him, or should I say brunch, or as it turned out to be, lunch.

"You do realise that he's not going to take this lying down, don't you?" Brian asked.

"That's the point, get him rattled and we can play him any way that we like."

"I know that he hurt your father, but don't you think this is taking things a bit too far?"

"Nowhere is too far as far as I'm concerned."

"But, if it all goes tits up, it will cost you a lot of the money that your father left you."

"I'm prepared to take that risk. If it succeeds a lot of people will be happy, especially when they see at least some of the money that he took from them returned."

"How long is this going to take?" He asked, his hand working wonders on my body.

"There'll be a lot more of this before he gets his."

"He's not getting any of this, I hope?" He had changed from a whole of hand manipulation to just one, or maybe two, fingers.

"No, not even a sniff." Okay, I hadn't had any for the week that he was away and I was as horny as hell. "Who told you that you could stop?"

"Sorry." That was the end of the conversation for the rest of the afternoon. Don't get me wrong, there were the odd disjointed utterances, like 'oh God', 'don't stop', and, you get the gist.

Monday morning, and I strolled through the office with a smug expression on my face. "How was Roderick, is he as good as we have been led to believe? Faith, my assistant asked. "By the looks of you walking down the corridor, I would say that he is as big as his previous lovers have testified."

"I don't know where they got that idea from, but from the little contact that I had with him, I'd say that he is highly over-rated." I didn't tell them that the little contact with his weapon was when he took my hand and placed it hopefully on his thigh. I was underwhelmed, and he was disappointed with my reaction. "What you witnessed was the result of the welcome home that I gave Brian, I tell you, the man has stamina. He was waving it at me as I walked out the door this morning." Okay, I was laying it on a bit thick and wondered how long it would take to reach Roderick's ear. Less than an hour it was before I received the first phone call.

"Hello, Jane here, can I help you?"

"Hi, it's Roderick..."

"Sorry, very busy, can't talk." I hung up.

"Who do you think you are?" The tone of his second call was hardly pleasant.

"When I looked in the mirror this morning I said to myself, 'Jane, you are one lucky person, do you know that?"

"Think you're fucking smart, don't you... "

"Smart enough to slide you further down my priority list for today," I decided that I didn't want to speak with him again. "This call has been recorded for litigation purposes." I said in my best robocall imitation. Not surprising, he hung up.

I went down to the staff dining room for lunch with Brian. "How was your morning?" He asked as I sat down.

"Fine. look I can't stay for long I have a lot of work to get through this arvo." I told him.

"I had an interesting call from a friend of yours."

"Oh yes, now who would that have been?"

"My rival for your affections."

"Did he give you that impression?"

"No, he came out and said it, in a very menacing voice if you must know."

"And I suppose you told him that, as you realised that you could never compete with him, that you would withdraw gracefully from the competition."

"I did no such thing, I asked him how he was getting on. He did mention that he and you had a pleasant dinner Saturday evening, and that you went back to the yacht club afterwards. He described you as a lovely woman and one that he wanted to get to know and like in the future."

"I hope that you didn't lose it and tell him to fuck off."

"I was very polite, I pleaded pressure of work and ended the call."

"I think we should let up on him for a day or two, we can't have him getting too desperate too soon."

"You take care, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he's waiting for you to leave work."

"Well, if he is, I wonder if you could be waiting just down the road from the office and, if he accosts me, I'll stall him long enough for you to slide up and rescue this damsel in distress?"

"Sure thing, I'll see you then, 'bye my love."

As predicted, he was waiting for me to leave the building. I was heading for my car when he stepped out from behind a parked car. "I have a table for two reserved at Chez Maurice." He signalled for the limo to slide up to us.

"What happens if I have other plans?"

"Cancel them."

"My other plans do not include you."

Brian's car pulled up beside me and I jumped in. The kiss that I gave him was as enthusiastic as I'd ever given, and Brian's response was equally enthusiastic. "He's going to have a gravel rash on his chin." Brian said as we left the car park.

We were out of sight before Roderick could get his act together to follow us.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Mum and Dad have invited us to dinner. We have a lot to discuss."

"This sounds ominous, do I get a hint?"

"Nothing bad." Bastard, he was going to keep me in suspense.

"I hear that you've been giving our friend and his a hard time." Martin, Brian's dad, said after the greeting pleasantries were dispensed with.

"You could say that. No more than he deserves I might add."

"You'll get no argument from me. Brian has told me a bit of your plan and I support it one hundred percent. Do you need a hand with anything?"

"Not at this stage, but we will be calling on you in a week or two. It depends on how quickly the bait is set so he can't spit the hook out. He's nibbling at the moment."

"What are you using for bait?" Martin asked.

"Me."

"Is that wise?"

"Oh, there's another bait happening soon. I was going through a yacht sales catalogue, and I think I've found just what I'm looking for. His brokerage has placed an ad for a Farr designed Beneteau 40, he's used this one before, some two years ago. I'll make tentative enquiries tomorrow and see if he approaches me with an offer I'd be stupid to refuse."

"What sort of offer?"

"The way this scam works is that he'll offer me a lease deal at an attractive price with the sweetener of six months before the first payment is due. He will then offer to show me the ropes. It's been set up as a single hand cruiser. He will tell me that it requires special training before I have the competence to sail it on my own. I'll stuff it up initially and he'll offer to take me up the coast for a test run. What he doesn't know is that he won't be making the trip alone with me."

"You've given this some thought, haven't you?"

"After what he did to my father, he deserves no less."

"Let's forget about this, dinner's served." Marion, Brian's mother came into the living room to call us to the table.

It was almost midnight when we arrived back at mine. He was there, across the road. I don't know how long he'd been there and quite frankly I didn't care. As soon as he saw that Brian was coming in with me, he left, quicker than was safe or appropriate.

Next morning he was outside my work waiting for me. "Just what the fuck do you think you're playing at?" He asked angrily.

"Avoiding your anger for a start. When you can conduct yourself in a proper manner, I may be prepared to listen to you." I was polite and quietly spoken.

"You won't even give me a chance to speak to you." His voice was bordering on pleading.

"And that would be why?"

"I don't know, what have I ever done to you?"

"Apart from harassing me until I consented to go out with you, nothing." I looked him in the eyes. "I am in a committed relationship, that is a better fit for me at this time than what you are prepared to offer, so don't expect me to jump ship anytime soon. Now, allow me to pass so that I can get some work done." I brushed past him and entered the building.

The casual observer could reasonably conclude, from Roderick's expression, that he was on the verge of grabbing me and restraining me. The casual observer would have been right.

It was mid-afternoon when I made the first tentative contact. "Roderick, I see that you have a lease deal on a Beneteau 40."

"Oh. so you're speaking to me now."

"No, I'm speaking to the owner of a yacht brokerage enquiring about leasing a yacht. That you just happen to be that person shouldn't be looked on in any other way."

"Oh. Why are you looking at this yacht in particular?"

"I want something that I can sail in the upcoming Brisbane to Gladstone race and then do a little cruising after the event." The bait has been cast. He is just about to suggest that I include him in the crew to sail in the race with the hope of convincing me to let him stay on for the cruise.

"Are you looking for crew members? We can kill two birds with one stone, I can show you the ropes of this yacht on the way up to Brisbane, you can keep me on for the race and after that, who knows what might happen."

"Who Knows." I knew exactly what was going to happen but I wasn't about to tell him, just yet. "When can I look her over?"

"No time like the present."

"You're right, the present is no time. I'm too busy to check it out now, how about on Saturday? I can meet you at the marina at eight and we can take her for a spin around the harbour."

"That sounds great." I could hear the brain ticking over, 'There goes Friday night'.

"Oh, by the way, Brian will be with me, he's interested in the race as well."

"Oh, sure, that'd be okay. I'll see you then, both of you." The disappointment was loud and clear. I hate to think what he was calling me about now.

Saturday was sunny with a light to moderate breeze, just right for a test sail of an unfamiliar yacht. I was dressed in shorts and a casual top, I wore canvas shoes and a cap. Brian was similarly dressed, while Roderick wore what he thought to be the appropriate attire for a yacht salesman. cream trousers, a long-sleeved blue shirt and a white panama hat.

I wore shorts for a reason, to wind him up. We had just slipped away from the marina and had set the sails for a reach down the harbour towards the heads when I took some tissues from the bag on the deck beside me. "Fuck, my god Darling, when you come you come, in buckets. I didn't get it all out and it's running down my leg." I wiped the inside of my leg, my hand sliding inside the leg of my shorts. I finish the totally unnecessary wiping and stowed the tissue in a zip-lock bag and shoved it back into the bag. If looks could kill, Roderick would be charged with murder. It was all that Brian could do to prevent losing it and laughing.

I worked the dumb blonde act for all it was worth, given that I was neither dumb nor blonde. At the rate that I was picking up Roderick's direction, it would take forever for me to be competent enough to sail alone. The fact was, I could teach him more than he could teach me. The longer we sailed, the more frustrated he got. At one point I felt that he was about to throw me overboard and, if it wasn't for the presence of Brian, he probably would have.

The upside of our harbour adventure was that he didn't ask me to have dinner with him, instead suggesting that I should find a better teacher before he would consider the lease agreement. Nothing would please me more, him thinking that I was incompetent. If he had bothered to check, he would have realised how competent I was, you don't become a tactician in an ocean race like the Sydney to Hobart unless you're good at it.

He rang me at work on Monday. I don't know whether he wasn't about to ring me on Sunday in case Brian was with me or just that he was allowing the tenseness of our parting remarks to settle. "I think that I may have been a little harsh on Saturday.. "

"You think? I was just about to call you, you see, I'm looking at another yacht, it may not be as good as yours but the deal is more attractive. I'm trying her out on Saturday."

"I know of no other similar yachts that are for lease in Sydney."

"Oh, it's not in Sydney. It's currently in Grafton and the owner is flying Brian and I up there on Saturday and we're taking her downriver to Yamba and off-shore for an hour or two. He's putting us up overnight and flying us back on Sunday."

"That's funny, I know of no broker in that part of the world."

"It's a private deal. If it works out, we lease her for the race and, if we like her, he'll sell her to us at a good price."

"If she's so good, why is he getting rid of her?"

"Apparently, it's his health that's the problem, that and his wife has died recently and he's lost the enthusiasm the two of them had for sailing."

"I've been looking at the deal that we discussed and I think that I can sweeten the deal a little. I have the chance of getting a similar yacht at a good price, better than I had budgeted on, and I can make adjustments to the deal that we discussed."

"What numbers are we talking about?"

"I haven't crunched the numbers yet, but it will be worth you keeping this option open."

"I'll think about it."

I mentioned the conversation to Brian over dinner. "I know the yacht that he's talking about. I need you to string him along for a couple of weeks. The timing has to be right for us, and you."

"We have about a fortnight before we have to sail north for the race, will that be enough time?"

"Yes. Don't be surprised, if he starts to get a bit anxious in about a week before then. He has customers waiting for the product to arrive."

"When you say product, you mean nose candy don't you?"

"Yes. He has a substantial shipment coming in. The yacht is due to arrive in Brisbane around then. The drop will be somewhere outside the reef, probably out from Yepoon, and he'll want to sail up to Brisbane before she docks, just to be sure that the pickup has been successful. A fishing boat will rendezvous with it on its return from a fishing charter outside the reef. The crew are a part of the syndicate that's pulling this off, they hope."

"How will you know that the drugs have been picked up?"

"This particular yacht has been tracked since leaving Panama. That's where money changed hands and the product was delivered. She has been under surveillance at each stop to make sure that the product is not off-loaded. We will have a fix on her and the fishing boat. We'll know where their paths cross and the pick up is made. Both will be impounded before they arrive in Brisbane, and arrests will be made. If we time our arrival right, Roderick will already have been arrested."

"How can you be so sure that this will succeed?"