was clearly well sailed by its unknown crew, and Artie could see that if they didn’t do something different, they would be cut off soon. He handed the binoculars back to Larry and went below to get the gun as his brother had asked. When he came back on deck with it, Larry was grinning as he studied the chart while Scully steered. His new excitement had nothing to do with the gun being on deck.
“You look too happy for a captain about to be run down by pirates, little brother.”
“I’ve got a plan now, Doc. I’m about to show you why catamarans rule. Then you’ll know why I spent so much time building one.”
“Aren’t we already going about as fast as she will go?”
“I’ve got more tricks than speed up my sleeve,” Larry said. “Hang on. Just another quarter of a mile and we’ll be home free.”
“Dat boat full of Cuban, mon.” Scully had the binoculars now while Artie took the helm and kept them on course. “Must be ten, maybe twelve on de rail. Probably got dem AK too. I hope you got a good plan, Copt’n.”
“Just pray to Jah the wind holds, Scully. We’re almost there.”
Artie couldn’t see what “there” was. There was nothing ahead but more of the same pale green water and white sandy bottom clearly visible beneath it, while to their starboard side there were occasional rocks and crashing breakers where the open Atlantic was separated from the bank by reefs. He looked at the schooner again and was shocked to see how close it appeared. Just as it seemed hopeless to try and outrun it, he found out what Larry had in mind as his brother took the helm with his one good hand.
“Okay, Scully, get ready. Just past those two rocks ahead I’m going to put her hard over to starboard. We’ll jibe and run off to the northeast straight outside. Artie! I need you on the forward deck. Help me look for coral heads. The chart shows an area with about two feet of water over the reef at low tide, but that’s still six hours away. We should be able to slide over as long as we don’t hit something sticking up where it’s not supposed to be.”
Artie scrambled forward and crouched low on the deck as Larry brought the stern through the wind and Scully sheeted the genoa on the other tack. For a moment, the boat slowed dramatically, and seemed to be coming to a stop, but as soon as the wind filled the sails from the other side, it surged forward as only a light multihull could, and was quickly up to at least 10 knots again. Artie stood and hung onto the forestay where he could look around the luff of the sail and study the waters ahead. There were breaking waves outside the reef and dark patches of brown under the clear water all around them. He held his breath as they passed over rocks that looked like they would tear the bottoms out of the hulls, but depth was deceptive in the clear water and they never touched bottom, despite the appearance that it was only inches below the surface.
He heard a series of loud cracks that had to be rifle shots from the schooner, but didn’t dare take his eyes off the course ahead to look back. Pointing with his free hand, he motioned for Larry to adjust course to dodge a rock just close enough to the surface to hit, and when they skimmed past it, he saw that he had been right to do so. It was a near miss, but now the water color had changed to sapphire blue and the reefs were astern. The bows pitched as they sliced into a four-foot swell, and Artie hung on to the forestay with both hands to keep his balance. At this point, he could relax and look back.
The schooner was dead astern and coming right at them, having altered course to follow the catamaran off the banks. Artie wondered if such a big vessel could possibly clear the reefs over the route they took, then he began to understand why his brother had been grinning. If the crew of the schooner were not familiar with the area and did not have proper charts on board, they might have assumed that if their prey was able to sail off the banks at that point, they could too. He rushed back to the cockpit where Scully and Larry were also watching to see what would happen next. Someone on board was still shooting in their direction, but Larry said the range was still too great for ordinary rifles.
“Come on, baby!” Larry said as they sailed east. “That’s right, just keep on coming and try to catch us!”
“Dat copt’n is a fool!” Scully said. “Got no chart and no common sense too!”
“He’s still coming,” Artie said. “How much does a boat like that draw? It’s got to be more than Pete and Maryanne’s
“Actually, no. These fishing schooners were designed to work the banks and are considered shallow-draft vessels at four feet. That’s a lot more than us, though, and they’re about to get a surprise!” And soon after he said it, when the
“Yes!” Larry shouted, shaking his fist in the direction of the wreck. “Serves you right, you stupid son of a bitch!”
“Damn! They hit the rocks at full speed.”
“Dat boat is finished, mon. Nevah gonna get dat hull off de reef again!”
“I love it, Doc! See what I told you about Wharram catamarans? Fast under sail, seaworthy, and shallow draft too! What’s not to like?”
“That was scary, though. They almost got within rifle range before we crossed that reef.”
“Almost, but almost doesn’t count, does it, Doc? We’re home free, for now at least. Let’s point this vessel to Florida and get out of here.”
“Sounds good to me. I never wanted to stop, anyway, but I guess it was worth it to get all this fish.”
Larry gave Artie the course to steer while Scully moved the drying fish from the forward decks to the netting stretched between the sterns behind the cockpit. There it would be safe from getting washed overboard by the occasional large wave and be out of the spray from the bows. To avoid the reefs and the possibility of running into other aggressors on the banks, Larry wanted to head nearly due north for another 20 miles before setting a northwest course directly for Marathon, in the middle of the chain of islands making up the Florida Keys.
“It’s nearly noon now. That’s good and bad at the same time,” Larry said. “It’s nearly 90 miles to Sombrero Key light, which is where I want to make landfall. The good news is that we’ll get there after dark. The bad news is also that we’ll get there after dark.”
“I don’t understand, the logic, but go ahead.”
“Well, we need to cut through the Keys just west of Marathon to get to the Gulf for two reasons: one, it’s a more direct route than sailing all the way around Key West, which is another 70 miles west, and two, we have to cross the Gulf Stream between here and the Keys, and its current will be setting us to the east of our rhumb line. Trying to sail directly to Key West or points west of there would be even more difficult. Anyway, going through the Keys at night might be a good thing because we won’t likely be noticed and it will give us a look at how things are in U.S. waters, and whether everything is totally blacked out or not.”
“And the bad?”
“It’s a treacherous area to be sailing through at night—especially with no working channel markers or other aids to navigation, and no GPS. I wouldn’t even attempt it in any kind of deeper-draft sailboat. And I also wouldn’t attempt it if I weren’t intimately familiar with that area. There are reefs, rocks, wrecks, derelict boats, and no telling what else on the Atlantic side of the chain, and about a million crab traps with their floating buoys scattered all over the Gulf side for miles and miles. But the good thing is, I’ve been in and out of Boot Key Harbor in Marathon in more conditions than I can count: day, night, squalls, approaching hurricanes, you name it. So considering all the pros and cons, I’m willing to risk it, especially since we’ll have nearly a full moon tonight.”
By mid-afternoon, Cay Sal Bank was far astern and they were once again sailing off-soundings through an inky-blue sea with empty horizons for a full 360 degrees. Larry had plotted a course that would compensate for the lateral drift they would experience crossing the Gulf Stream, and he calculated they would reach the outlying reefs of the Florida Keys by 1800 hours, considering they were still averaging 10 knots throughout the afternoon. By the time the sun was approaching the horizon to one side of their course, the almost-round moon, just two days from full, rose from the sea on the other, and with only a few scattered cumulus clouds in the sky, promised to light their way through the night.
All three of them were still wound up from the encounter with the schooner, and with another landfall approaching fast, no one wanted to leave the deck to take a turn off watch. Sleep could come later, once they were clear of the Keys in the wide-open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. As the last hint of twilight disappeared, the moon lit a silvery path across the waves and a pod of dolphins joined them, leaping and broaching ahead on both sides of the boat and between the bows, seemingly delighted to lead them home to U.S. waters. As the distance to land had
