She Wore a Bikini

When we rounded Lover's Key and were in the passage to Estero Bay, I dropped the main sail and jib, then started the auxiliary to motor through the Big Carlos Pass Bridge. We had to wait until the bridge operator got my signal, stopped traffic, and then raised the draw, but that was the only way to get into Estero Bay. The fifty-three foot mast on The Southern Belle was too tall to make it under the bridge if the draw was down. There's been talk about building a new bridge with a sixty-foot clearance, but I really hope they don't. The extra clearance will just increase boat traffic and I like it like it is.

The Southern Belle is a Catalina 42 MKII I bought three years ago, and she was sort of a spur of the moment purchase. I'd been sailing a Catalina Capri 22 for about five years and she suited me just fine. I did my sailing on the weekends and usually traveled along the Florida Gulf coast. It was a nice place to sail and I could sail all day, pull into a marina for the night, and then sail back on Sunday. I was always within sight of land, so if something happened, I could always make one of the ports that dotted the shore and get it fixed. If it was serious, the US Coast Guard was only an hour or so away.

In between my sailing weekends, I was a Senior Financial Analyst for Barkley, Biggs, and Anderson, an investment firm that managed investment portfolios for several 401k's offered by some major corporations as well as some personal portfolios of well-to-do retirees. There are a lot of both in South Florida, so I was doing very well. I was thirty-nine, divorced, and pulling down a little over a hundred grand a year before taxes. My ex was bleeding me for about forty thousand a year, but I still had more income than I could spend without being extravagant.

I said that for a reason -- that in between my sailing weekends I had a job. That's because after eighteen years of working, that's how it felt. I was living for Saturday and Sunday on the Cat 22, and enduring the rest of the week as best I could.

It was in January, four years ago, my ex's lawyer sent my lawyer a letter informing me that my ex had remarried. What that meant was I could stop paying her alimony. For the rest of the year, I put that money into low risk stocks and my own 401k. The next January, when I did my taxes, I totaled all my assets and then did some thinking.

If I kept working, I'd continue to be bored out of my mind five days a week. My assets would continue to increase, but what good would that do me? I had no taste for expensive cars, and living by myself and working fourteen hours a day, I didn't need a mansion. All I needed was a bed and a place to take a shower.

I did need some sort of income though, if only so when I decided to retire I wouldn't have to worry about money. With what I already had, I didn't need six figures. I just needed enough to cover my expenses so I didn't have to touch my long-term investments. When I went sailing the following Saturday, I discovered the answer to all my problems.

I'd seen the charter cruise boats before, but I really didn't have any interest in them. They took people on day cruises or overnight cruises for a fee. I didn't need to pay somebody for a day cruise to wherever their standard route was. I had my own boat and could go where I wanted to go.

As I watched a young couple board the boat next to my slip though, I realized I could do the same thing. I just needed a bigger boat. I could sail every day, or at least every day I had paying customers, and if I had a bigger boat, I wouldn't need my apartment. I could just live on the boat.

Every night for the next week, I browsed the Internet for local used boats for sale, and the next Saturday, I looked at the best of the boats I'd located. I figured I'd need at least a forty-foot boat in order to have a couple cabins for customers and still have a place for me to live. It would also have to be rigged so I could sail her by myself. That meant a self-furling main and self-tacking jib, running rigging that ran back to winches in the cockpit, and an automatic pilot. It would also have to be pretty nicely fitted out inside so my customers would feel like they got everything they paid for. I couldn't charge Hilton rates for a Red Roof cabin.

I found The Southern Belle at the fifth marina I visited, though she was named The Rich Witch then. She'd been bought by a former stockbroker and his wife, and then fitted out for blue water. She even had a six-foot dinghy with an outboard motor hanging from davits at the stern instead of an inflatable with oars.

His intention was to sail around the Gulf for a year to get comfortable handling her and then head out on a cruise to Europe. Those plans came to an end when he had a heart attack and passed away. His wife wasn't so keen on sailing by herself and put The Rich Witch up for sale.

I liked the boat for a lot of reasons. She had two cabins under the cockpit with access to a head, and a captain's cabin in the bow with its own head. In the middle was a spacious galley and eating area. Everything looked almost new from the shining stainless steel of the stove, sink, and refrigerator/freezer to the rich wood and red leather of the seating.

The wife had listed her at a hundred and eighty thousand. I had her surveyed and she appraised at a hundred and fifty because her spare sails had been repaired and her bottom hadn't been cleaned in a couple years. After a quick sit-down with my bank, I made an offer of a hundred and forty thousand, and we clinched the deal at one forty-five.

Her slip was rented for another three months, but that marina didn't allow living on board. After another Saturday of visiting marinas, I rented a slip at Snook Bight and on Sunday, motored into that slip and tied up. I gave a month's notice to Barkley, Biggs, and Anderson that Monday morning, and arranged to have her hauled out and her bottom cleaned. By the time I cleaned out my desk at work and said goodbye to everybody, she was named The Southern Belle and had a new set of sails in her sail locker, and I'd sub-let my apartment and moved aboard.

Like her former owner, I wanted a little time to get the feel of her before venturing out with passengers. After two weeks of sailing up and down the coast, I stocked the fridge and filled up the water and fuel tanks, motored out of the Estero Bay passage, then raised the sails and steered a course for Pensacola. A week later, I was back at Snook Bight and making contact with several travel agencies in the US. I also paid a kid studying computers in college to build a web-site for me explaining what I offered and the prices. I was no longer Mark Johnson, Senior Financial Analyst. I was now Mark Johnson, sole owner of Southern Belle Charters and captain of The Southern Belle.

I got several inquiries over the next few weeks. The cruising season in Florida is the winter months, and most inquiries I got were asking about cruise dates between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. I soon had three bookings, not as many as I would have liked, but enough to keep me in food and fuel. I'd tap into my savings until I was getting enough charters to make the payments on The Southern Belle.

I still had one problem though. It was easy to take calls when I was docked. Out on the open water though, I'd quickly lose my cell phone signal. The Southern Belle had a marine radio so I could communicate with any port and the US Coast Guard, but not with potential customers. I needed a land base and somebody to stay there to take reservations anytime I was out.

The office I found was on the second floor over a hairdresser and a boutique, but it was affordable at less than four hundred a month. A cheap desk and four chairs mostly filled the hundred and twenty square feet, so I didn't need much more than a person. After interviewing several applicants, I hired Rita Mayweather.

I hired Rita over the other applicants for several reasons. It was my experience in financial planning that most people will trust someone in their thirties or forties more than someone much younger or much older. Rita was thirty-five according to her application. She was also really easy to talk to. There are some people like that -- you sit down with them and it's like you've known them all your life. That's how Rita was.

Rita was also pretty nice to look at, but not absolutely gorgeous. That was important too. At the three financial businesses I'd worked at, women who were pretty plain had some trouble retaining clients. Women who looked like they'd just stepped off the cover of some fashion magazine had problems retaining clients too. Women like Rita were the most successful and I knew the reason why because Marsha had explained it to me.

"Mark, when you see a woman who doesn't look like she cares how she looks, what do you think?"

I said she probably wouldn't care about my investments either and Marsha nodded.

"Now, when you see a woman like Tiffany, what do you think?"

Tiffany was a tall blonde with fairly large breasts and legs that went on forever. She didn't mind displaying either. She always wore blouses open enough you could see her bra part of the time, and her skirts were so short when she sat down, you'd know she had to be wearing panty hose.

I grinned at Marsha.

"Well, I'd think she was fishing for a guy and wondering if I had a chance."

"Exactly", and that's what most other guys would think too. They wouldn't want a financial advisor who wanted to show them her boobs and legs instead of explaining how to better their investments. Women would consider her to be a threat and wouldn't want to talk to her much less let their husbands talk to her."

Marsha was one of those women you look at and wonder how she'd be, but you wouldn't really try to do anything with her because she was married. She was doing very well, so I figured she knew what she was talking about. That's why I hired Rita.

Rita had long brown hair that cascaded over her shoulders and she had pretty eyes and a very sensuous mouth. The pants and blouse she'd worn for the interview fit well enough to make it obvious she was a desirable woman, but conservative enough it didn't look like she was advertising that fact.

Rita also seemed to have a sense of adventure. She'd divorced her husband because he'd found a woman like Tiffany and thought she fit him better than Rita. To leave that life behind her, Rita had driven from Michigan to Fort Lauderdale to take a job as a bartender in one of the bigger restaurants there. Once in Florida, she'd learned to scuba dive and had taken a few diving charters. She'd also taken a cruise to the Virgin Islands and said she loved being on the water. I figured she'd be able to convince people The Southern Belle was an experience they'd remember for a long, long time.

Once I hired her, I took her on a day cruise so she'd be able to tell potential customers how comfortable The Southern Belle was and how nice her captain was. It was a nice cruise. Rita spent the time in shorts and a T-shirt and seemed to really like it.

I liked seeing Rita in shorts and a T-shirt too. She had better legs than I'd figured because she'd been wearing pants for the interview. She also had bigger breasts than I figured too, and after an hour on the water with the wind blowing through her hair, she looked sexier than my ex had after she'd spent half a day at her hairdresser.

Everything started to click after I hired Rita. Right after Thanksgiving, I started getting day cruises every other day, and about once a month, an overnight cruise. The overnight cruises weren't something I'd planned on doing, but Rita said when she took her cruise to the Virgin Islands, the nights were the best part.

"I sat on deck every night and looked up at the stars. It was so romantic, well, it would have been if I'd been with a guy, but it was still great. I'd bet if you advertised for a romantic night at sea, you'd attract a lot of couples. Women like romantic settings. Just take a few bottles of wine along, and then set the autopilot and leave them alone on deck. They'll have the time of their lives and they'll tell other people."

I took Rita out a few more times that winter, mostly to get some pictures of Southern Bell under sail. Rita would wear a bathing suit and I'd pick a calm day so I could keep up with the dinghy. I got several pictures of her standing on the bow or standing in the cockpit at the wheel. After I had them enlarged to poster size, I put them in her office.

Business slacked off after New Year's day, but I'd expected that. I was still getting a couple day charters a week from older people, but I had some free time to think about what else I could offer customers.

One of the things several customers had asked in the after-cruise survey I sent them in the mail was if I offered longer cruises and specifically, if I would consider taking them on a cruise to one or more of the islands in the Caribbean. I'd thought about doing that. The Southern Belle was equipped for an open ocean cruise so she wouldn't have any problems, but I'd never sailed there so I wasn't sure about port facilities and the safest way to navigate the waters.

After the third survey had posed the same question, I decided to make the trip to the islands during the off-season and find out what I needed to know. When I told Rita what I planned to do, she said I'd love the islands. Then, she asked if she could go along.

"You'll need a woman along to find things a woman wants to see and do, won't you?"

I said that would probably work out best, but I didn't know a woman who'd want to make that first trip.

Rita smiled.

"I would."

By July, my business had almost dried up, but I'd expected that to happen. People come to Florida in the summer to visit Disney World and Universal Studios with their kids, not to take charter cruises. It's also usually hot as hell. It looked like The Southern Belle was going to sit in her slip for at least the next two weeks, and that gave me the opportunity. I bought charts for the Virgin Islands and plotted a course. Rita and I motored through the Big Carlos Pass Bridge on a Monday morning, and once clear, I set the sails.

An hour later, we were the only boat in sight. Rita said it was too hot for shorts and a T-shirt so she was going to change into a bathing suit.

It was hot. My thermometer was hovering around ninety-eight and even with the breeze that was pushing Southern Bell along I was sweating. While she was below in her cabin, I pulled off my shirt and that felt better.

When Rita came back on deck, she wasn't wearing the same bathing suit she'd worn for my pictures. She was wearing a little black bikini that didn't leave much of her figure to the imagination.

She saw me staring and grinned.

"Is this too much? I thought you might like it."

"No, it's fine. I just never imagined you for a bikini."

She smiled, but it was a wicked little smile.

"There's probably a few other things about me you never imagined."

I'd have asked her what those things were if she hadn't plopped down on the seat opposite my chair and started putting on suntan lotion.

Rita was more than distracting when she started smoothing that lotion on her chest. The bikini covered her breasts, but just, and as she moved her fingers around, I was watching her breasts sort of flow away and then raise back up. Thankfully, that didn't take all that long. She did her stomach then, and that wasn't particularly erotic. She got erotic again when she spread her legs and began working the lotion into her legs and thighs. I hadn't seen it when she was standing up, but when she spread her thighs, there it was -- the indent where her bikini bottoms had pulled in between her lips.

By the time Rita got done with her thighs, my cock was at half-mast and rising. She stood up then and asked if I'd do her back for her.

I hadn't seen her from the back up until that moment, and it took me a few seconds to answer her. The bikini bottoms were pretty small in front. In back, they were just a narrow strap that ran up between her butt cheeks, and those were some really fine butt cheeks. They weren't fat, and they were round, smooth, and sensuous. My cock made it to three-quarter mast then.

I started on her back, and that wasn't too bad. Rita had soft shoulders that felt really nice under my hands. Evidently she liked my hands too, because I'd only just started when she murmured, "Mmm...that feels great."

I got down to the swell of her hips and decided it would be better if I did her legs instead. Well, it would have been better if she hadn't been so close and she hadn't spread her legs. Her calves felt pretty nice. It was when I started on the back of her thighs my cock started taking notice again. Rita was so soft and so smooth, and by the time I got to the crease between her thighs and ass cheeks, I was looking at the indent in her bikini bottoms again. This time though, I could see part of one soft, rippled lip peeking out around the strap that went up between her butt cheeks.

I stopped then, and Rita turned around.

"Aren't you gonna do my butt too?"

"Well, I thought you'd probably rather do that."

Rita shook her head.

"Uh-uh. I can't see what I'm doing and I'll miss a spot or two. I don't want a case of blotchy butt."

It was a good thing my pants were pretty loose. If they'd been any tighter, I wouldn't have been able to push my cock up when she turned back around. If I hadn't done that, my cock would have started to hurt because as soon as I put my hands on her tight ass cheek, Rita shivered and that made my fingers accidentally slip into her crack. That made her shiver again. She didn't say anything, but she didn't have to. I saw how she spread her legs a little more and that made my cock even harder.

I finished both butt cheeks and said I was done. When Rita turned around, she looked a little flushed, but she just smiled, said "Thanks", and walked up to the bow. For the next two hours, I looked around the cabin about every two minutes. When she was lying on her back, she had her thighs spread and I could still see that indentation in her bikini bottoms. Her breasts sort of flattened out against her chest, but they were big enough they still made two soft mounds under her bikini bra.

When she was rolled over on her stomach, all I could see was her butt cheeks, but that was enough to keep my cock rigid. I was glad when she came back to the cockpit and asked if I was ready for lunch. My cock went back down while she was in the galley.

When she came back up with a plate of two sandwiches and two cans of soda, it wasn't quite as bad because I'd almost gotten used to her by then. We also talked about what we were going to do once we got to the first island and talking took my mind off what I was seeing.

After lunch, Rita went back on the bow and this time she took her suntan lotion with here. I didn't understand why she'd do that until she reached behind her and unhooked the band on the bra. She was facing away from me when she put lotion on her breasts, but when she bent down to lay on her stomach, I saw her right breast sway sideways under her arm. That was enough I had to straighten my cock out again.

I didn't look around the cabin after that. It wasn't because I didn't want to because I did. It was just that Rita was technically my employee and I'd learned long ago that there were limits to what an employer should do with an employee.

The sun was almost on the horizon when she stood up, put her bra back on, and then walked back to the cockpit.

"Mark, is it alright if I take a shower? After that, if you'll show me how to work the stove, I'll fix dinner for us. Anything in particular you'd like tonight?"

After seeing her half-naked all day, I felt like saying "just you", but I didn't.