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“Isaiah Jones versus the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey)” by the African American, poet Joey Cloudy. Isaiah Jones versus the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey)

Chapter 6 pt 1of 2

Days 7-15: Explore Key West, Florida

explore Key West.

First Quarter Moon: Occurs around Day 8.

Day 16: Depart from Key West, Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rico

Approximate Distance: 800 nautical miles

Estimated Sailing Time: 4 to 6 days

Sail southeast from Key West to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Key West to Bahamas; an unplanned trip to Cuba

“Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.”

-Alice Walker

Naomi Galetea Cabala watched the young black boy through the portal as he slept stretched out on a bench below deck midship. The middle-aged woman of Cuban American ancestry expertly sailed the boy’s sloop through the darkness from the comfort of the center cockpit, lines expertly rigged to aft by the boy to control the boat without having to climb out onto the deck. She was accustomed to sailing catamarans; this monohull with the titanium alloy integrated keel and hull being constructed one solid piece of metal was both lighter and tougher than steel, her keel stepped rotating mast ran through the deck all the way down to the fin keel. She was built for stability and durability as well as speed.

The Prototype Monarch Ti-44 was a wave smashing beast in that regard. Knowing the boy intended to leave the Caribbean for a blue water crossing the Atlantic, she was glad that he had chosen this boat. The SS Exodus glided silently over the cool azure waters riding the winds towards Havana. Naomi was two decades older than the kid who slept in the cabin below with the big white puppy now curled up beside him. She wasn’t as old as his mother, but too old to have any romantic interest in the kid.

The tall, deeply tanned brunette gently touched the bandages taped to her left side with her fingertips; when she pressed the wound lightly, she grimaced with pain. “Coño!” She exclaimed in the darkness; the bullet wound was healing, but the blood-soaked bandages would need to be changed soon. Luckily, the slug had passed clean through without hitting bone or any major organs this time. Naomi had seen the news stories interviewing Isaiah’s family and friends on the evening news the previous week. The introspective 16-year-old math prodigy had set sail from Galveston to Ghana with his big white dog following the middle passage in reverse aboard his big black ship on what the western media had now dubbed a ‘Pilgrimage to Africa’. She shook her head as she grinned. “Fucking talking heads.”

The Catholic school girl in her understood this; she smiled now, thinking of Hemingway’s ‘the Old Man and the Sea’. When she read it, she always defaults imagined the boy as being black and looking like Isaiah, she wondered what his story was. What adventures had the boy Manolin? Of course, he is never described as being black, (white readers will assume he is white also, even if a writer makes a character black, white readers will white wash them in their imaginations as they read…see the story of Rue in ‘The Hunger Games’ a character that is described by the author as black in the novel but the majority of white readers race swapped subconsciously in their imaginations.) and the only mention of any black man in Ernesto’s little story is when the old man reminisces about defeating the “Negro of Cienfuegos” in an epic 2-day arm-wrestling match.

Naomi always interpreted the subtext of that passage as being reactionary to the monumental legacy of real-life Black fighters as he witnessed the beginning of the end of Jim Crow era segregation, beginning with Jack Johnsons complete and total dominance of boxing and later the rise of the ‘the Brown Bomber’ Joe Lewis at a time when being the heavyweight champ was the ultimate symbol of manhood, strength, and machismo thus the white fighter subconsciously reinforcing white supremacy. Once the black fighter stepped into the ring the days of the great white hope were over.

Hemingway knew there would be no more white champions. So, he creates a white paper champion who bests the negro in his fiction where none existed in real life. This subtle racism is the subtext of this trope; later, it would be revived when Sylvester Stallone did the same thing with the Rocky movies. Isaiah was no fiction; he was here and real as gravity, alone on his own real-life adventure. Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. God, which is the same as Man vs. Himself.

My god, Naomi thought nostalgically, there is nothing like that first time at sea alone. Every sailor remembers that feeling of purest joy, wonder, and possibility of the endless horizons. It was better than sex; it was better than heroin. She recalled watching the reporters interviewing a pretty light brown girl with afro puffs that lived next door to his family, the girl obviously adored him, and Naomi assumed she was the girlfriend.

Aeon had spent the summer with him sleeping on the boat nights and working on it during the day. She left for San Diego at the end of summer to start college. The news reporter commented that she was impressed by Aeon graduating high school two years earlier than her peers. She laughed as she informed the reporter and the audience that Isaiah had already completed college. At the end of the interview, she quickly added the name of a GoFundMe she started to raise money for his fees, repair costs, and supplies.

Of course, Isaiah knew nothing of these things as he sailed only using the internet for work and school. He communicated with other ships using the VHF radio; the only thing he used the internet for other than work and school was to check the weather. He only used his cellphone to message his coordinates to his parents and Aeon each evening before he slept, and in the morning when he awoke, he consulted his charts and maps, then entered the longitude and latitude into the phone’s messaging app. They, in turn, wrote the coordinates on the maps they kept hanging on their walls, tracking his journey’s progress. He focused on the mainsail and jib and the boom, the genoa, the cresting waves, the salty spray, and the speed of the current, the sounds of a well-trimmed mainsail devouring the wind. She smiled; the boy was born with salt water in his veins.

The ship’s name, Exodus, was given to it by the original owner, who aided in its design and build in Galveston, where he lived, rather than in South Africa, where the company that inspired the ship’s design built its ships. The SS Exodus was media gold; oh, how the media mouthpieces adored the obligatory appeal to god with the use of a Bible verse in their story. Immediately, black southern Baptist churches began to take collections for him during services.

They always rehashed the story of him and his mother’s survival and his twin sister’s tragic death at sea 10 years previously. HBCUs held rallies and fundraisers on his behalf even though he had not attended an HBCU. The New York Times published an in-depth think piece with the front-page cover being a picture of a boat in silhouette sailing east across the Atlantic into the rising sun penned by the esteemed author Alice Walker who focused on how the boy’s journey spoke to the deepest unarticulated yearnings secreted in the hearts and souls of black folks all over America throughout the diaspora and even resonated in the hearts of his people in the motherland.

“There is within all peoples a deep desire to know the lands of your peoples, to hear their voice speaking the language of your ancestors as you walk down a street and see nothing but the beautiful faces of your brothers and sisters.” It was not unusual for children of the diaspora to fall to their knees, weeping tears of joy when first visiting Africa. The employees at the international airports across the continent were accustomed to seeing black American men and women kiss the ground on arrival.

This would be the first time they were in a place where their race was welcomed and they could live with no fear of police being called on you, weaponizing your blackness your otherness, because here they are not the other, they are simply people. A paradigm shift in the consciousness of a people is occurring. I hope I live to see the end of his journey through the dark passage into the light. No one ever questioned the heartfelt desire of white European Jews to return to the historical lands of their ancestors. I suspect that this is a common feeling that haunts the souls of all displaced peoples, and yet it is of a unique circumstance in black Americans. Good Lord, the boy even shared a name with a prophet.”

Isaiah knew none of these things; she discovered he only watched the weather, checked into work and school on his computer, and so he knew nothing of his growing newfound fame. The previous evening, they aired an interview with an old white man, a veterinarian in Key West he had befriended while picking up supplies in Florida, and there was more media celebration when they found out he had named the dog he rescued Starbuck. The reporter hit the motherlode when she found the story of how he and his mother survived the 2011 sinking of the SS Horizon Disparu 10 years ago. Losing his twin sister, 5-year-old Emily Elisabeth Jones, along with 27 other passengers and crew, in the 21st century’s greatest maritime catastrophe in the Mediterranean.

Then there were the videos posted by Mara and Beatrix the night of the party in Key West. In the coming years, when the freelance journalist Gail Anne Stevens won the Peabody award for journalism, she would thank all the kids who celebrated with Isaiah Jones the night he spent in Key West. The videos Beatrix and Mara uploaded of Isaiah, Electra, and Carlos singing an acoustic cover of Lil Nas X ‘Old Town Road’ and Isaiah’s hilarious rendition of The Passenger had several millions of views in a few days and would grow to 100 million in the weeks and months to come, kids all over america and the world where already beginning to wear their hair in cornrows, dressing in all white ensembles and riding long boards.

Viewership of the movie ‘Tombstone’ spiked as millions speculated in internet chat rooms and in the comments sections about the love-hate relationship between Isaiah and Electra. Beatrix and Mara made more in tips, and the café was busier than ever despite the pandemic. Even though they were both vaccinated, they maintained social distance with strangers they served at work and wore bedazzled masks adorned with smiley faces, hearts, stars, and rainbows around the restaurant’s customers.

The videos of the Key West party onboard the SS Exodus posted by Beatrix, Mara, and their friends gained social media traction, going viral overnight. The neo nazi propagandist Faux News sent one of their reporters to do a hit piece on the Key West kids. The bigots’ network was offended by the very idea of a black boy on a yacht with what looked like white girls. The reporter only interviewed one old white man who was moored a few boats down from the party aboard the Exodus.

The old man started by complaining about all the goddamned noise the kids were making that night. “I was gonna call the police, but then I heard the kid say he could sing the chorus to the Passenger in any language, and I dang near fell overboard I was laughing so hard. Russian La, la, la la la la la la!” The old MAGA-hatted skipper got a case of the giggles, and they had to end the interview. The Faux News reporter was not happy.

Naomi would make certain Isaiah was well supplied when they reached her slip in Havana. When Isaiah finally awoke, he found the strange white woman topside in the cockpit. She adjusted their course a few degrees leeward, luffing the bow into more wind. The excess flapping of the main ceased as the wind filled sail grew silent and the ship picked up a half knots speed.

“What’s your name?” the gangly green-eyed kid asked as he opened the first aid kit, preparing to tend to her injuries. Turn around he ordered as he kneeled between her legs, examining the gunshot wound in the strange woman’s right side. The bandages he had applied while she was unconscious after he found her adrift in a dinghy were ready to be removed.

“This is going to hurt,” he warned as he quickly pulled the tape off of her blood-soaked gauze and bandages.

“ICaron!” she exclaimed.

“Told ya,” he said as he continued cleaning and disinfecting the wound before he applied fresh gauze and bandages.

“Thanks, kid,” the dark-haired woman growled with a grimace, my name is Naomi, Naomi Galatea Caballa.”

“I am Isaiah, Isaiah Jones, my friends call me Izzy.”

“Nice to meet cha, where are you from Captain Jones?” she asked, flashing a broad smile, pretending not to recognize him as she pushed a lock of windblown hair from her face.

“I’m from Dallas, but we set sail out of the port of Galveston 2 weeks ago.”

“Well, Skip, I’m curious what makes a kid from a totally landlocked city like Dallas, Texas, want to live on anchor?”

“Freedom,” Isaiah replied with a grin, as he continued to bandage her wounds. “When I was 5 years old, I heard a story on the BBC about a 14-year-old girl from Holland who sued the government to be able to sail around the world alone. Laura Dekker’s story never left my mind and cemented one idea in my tiny five-year-old skull: sailing equals freedom. I read her book ‘One Girl, One Dream,’ and I fell in love.”

“That’s understandable; she’s a very pretty girl.”

“I fell even more deeply in love with sailing, specifically the idea of solo sailing, he laughed. “I’m not attracted to her, he laughed, personally, I find blondes repellent.”

“Ah, I had no idea. I guess I just assumed since your mother is a white woman.”

“My momma’s hair is red, but naturally curly like yours,” he smiled, “she’s a good looking woman, but she ain’t as pretty as you.”

Naomi smiled. Was he hitting on her, she wondered? No, he just says what he thinks; it was just an observation; he wasn’t trying to put the moves on her.

“You know how some things make a person beautiful, like a great singing voice or being an accomplished musician or exceptional athlete? It makes some people more attractive?” he asked curiously.

“Yeah, that is true,” Naomi agreed, “I fell in love with Tracy Chapman because I love her music, and I know she is not an attractive woman by any standard. But just the sight of her makes my heart go pitter-patter. I’m not into Butch Dyk@s, but I’d do Tracy Chapman, she laughed.”

Isaiah laughed, “While all my friends were into superhero movies, Star Wars, and the Pirates of the Caribbean, I never cared much for fiction about sailing; only the real thing satisfied my hunger for adventures at sea. After I finished Dekker, I read Tania Aebi’s ‘Maiden Voyage’. Then, Teddy Seymour, the first black man to solo circumnavigate the globe. He used the Panama Canal, but Bill Pickney, that salty dog, sailed the Horn. They reminded me a lot of my dad, grandfather, and uncles, who all served in the United States Marine Corps. Black veterans are a different breed.

I graduated from university last spring and landed a job right away consulting for an outfit in Galveston. The guy who built this boat was an old internet sailing friend for years. Beaumont was planning on circumnavigating in this ship before he had a stroke and lost too much mobility to sail her. So, he sold her to me for a small fraction of her actual retail price. He just wanted her to have a good home with someone who understood her and would fall in love with her and put her to good use. Old sailors are funny like that.” He said wistfully.

Naomi smiled at the gangly, green-eyed black boy. “People who are driven by their passions are often generous when it comes to sharing that passion with others.”

“I used the money I made working to help get her ready for the long blue-water voyage across the Atlantic to Africa. Worked on her until I was ready to collapse most nights after work. Last summer, my best friend Aeon and her girlfriend Penny flew down to Galveston the week after my parents left for Mexico, after driving me down to the coast and inspecting the ship personally while she was still in dry dock. My mom is a sailor, and dad’s an engineer, so if those two approve of a ship, then she’s seaworthy in the worst.

I met Penelope when I was a freshman on my first day at SMU. We graduated the same year; we studied together and ate lunch together. My parents took a liking to her and invited her to travel with us on our annual summer sailing trip. Most times we island hopped around the Caribbean, but last year we went to Mexico, Puerto Vallarta. I think the place they normally kept the boat in the Bahamas was still on lockdown.

I had no idea that Penny and Aeon were together until I saw them over the summer break; they both lived with me and Starbuck on the boat. With those two around, working on the boat didn’t feel like work at all. They kept themselves busy being the ultimate tourists during the day and walked Starbuck while I was working. The week before they left, Penny insisted I watch this old 80s movie, ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, then afterward they took me out for a night on the town. They had reserved a suite at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in the middle of downtown Houston. After three months living on the boat with me, the girls wanted to soak in bubble baths and go to museums and dine in fine restaurants, and take in a show, ‘Tenet’. So, for the weekend, I got to be their Cameron, they were my Sloane and Ferris.

Aeon and Penney were both good at making sure I took breaks to do fun stuff instead of obsessively working on the boat. The two of them took off for San Diego in time for Aeon to start school, while I kept working on the boat in my spare time.”

“Wait,” Naomi said, derailing his train of thought, “Aeon was dating both of you at the same time?”

“Yeah.”

“So, they were like your little harem,” she laughed. “Big Pimping.”

“No,” he laughed nervously, suddenly embarrassed, “it wasn’t like that. I never had sex with Penelope. We’re just study buddies. We all slept together in the same bed on my boat all summer, but I never had sex with Penny; sex was one on one with me and Aeon. Growing up, I had seen her with girls before, so I knew when she was into a girl, and they were into each other. Penny was more like an au pair as far as our families were concerned. They worried I would have trouble making friends at college, and Penny made sure I had an escort to social events on campus.”

“After I mentioned that I was preparing to sail across the Atlantic to my coworkers during a Zoom conference, I discovered that several of the engineers were sailors as well. A few even owned their own boats, a company full of engineers in a port city; it’s logical, most of them had speedboats and motorized fishing boats, they were all knowledgeable seamen, and in general, they were just good folks. And like me, they enjoyed building stuff. They would show up at the docks with coolers full of ice-cold beer after work or on the weekends to help me work on the Exodus.

Occasionally, we lost track of time and ended up pulling all-nighters. Aeon and Penny would fire up the grill and cook burgers and knockwurst to serve our guests for supper. Other nights, we would just call Grubhub and have dinner delivered. The girls enjoyed entertaining our guests. Aeon and Penelope both liked having company and were overjoyed that I managed to make friends with the old-timers at the job.”

Just how old were these gearheads? Naomi asked.

I think the youngest were in their mid-30s, the oldest was in his late 60s, but most were 50ish.

Carone, I’m only 36, do you think I’m an old timer?

I think you’re beautiful. He said with a grin.

You are a silver tongue devil, mi Nene.

I wasn’t going to fall for that old trap. Isaiah grinned. I was born at night, but I wasn’t born last night.

“So, this girlfriend, what does she look like?” she asked, still not telling him about what she learned about him from the news story.

“Her name is Aeon Gabriella Zavala; her dad’s Filipino, and her mom is Afro-Dominican. Aeon’s got jet-black curly hair, caramel-colored skin, and dark-brown eyes that look almost black. About five six, 130 pounds, and she wears vintage cat eyeglasses for her stigmatism. We grew up being homeschooled together, mostly by our parents. But we never even so much as kissed until my birthday party last May; that was 8 months ago. Before then, she was more like a play cousin or sister, just the goofy kid next door with a pool in their backyard. We always got along well enough and liked each other; we were best friends, and we told each other everything growing up.”

“Before me, she dated mostly girls. I don’t know why, but she decided to sleep with me that night, and it just felt right. We make sense together; she knew it before I did because, well, she’s smarter than me.”

Naomi laughed, “I can see why she chose you.”

“What about you, soldier? How did you end up on a raft in the middle of the sea with a bullet hole in your gut?” Isaiah asked, still on his knees between her thighs, his as he completed taping her fresh bandages. “You were in the army; that tattoo is special forces, not a lot of y’all around. My parents are both lifers, retired Navy and Marine Corps veterans. They got a friend, who lives on his catamaran in Puerto Vallarta; we visited him a few times when I was a kid; he has a similar skull and dagger with the same caption, ‘death before dishonor.’ I noticed you have half a dozen old scars that are long healed, gunshot wounds. The healed-over laceration might be shrapnel, but with that ranger tatt, my guess would be a knife.” He said speculatively as he eyed the tattoo above her left bicep.

Her eyes followed his to where they rested on the tattoo; “That was a long time ago, M’hijo.”

“Ah,” he said with a mock sage-like visage, “I see, so you’re a merc now? They call you military contractors these days,” he chuckled.

“Miraa, I am not a contractor; I am a freebooter, Jefe.”

A freelancer?

Naomi grinned, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. I am a freelancer, but I said FREEBOOTER: buccaneer, privateer, corsair, raider, marauder, plunderer, rover, looter, robber, a pirate.

Isaiah suddenly erupted with laughter. “You’re the Pirate of the Caribbean,” he said, rolling with laughter.

“Miraa, there are not a lot of options for someone with my skill sets. After my discharge, I could have hooked up with Halliburton or Blackwater or whoever, but I was never going to be a cop for anyone, and while the cartels may pay top dollar for ex-soldiers like me, they are too unpredictable.”

“Why did they kick you out of the army?”

Only the sound of the bow cleaving through the blue water, the song of the waves and the chorus of the wake, and the wind filled the darkness under the sails could be heard in the night air.

Naomi sighed, then continued, carefully dodging his question about her time as a Delta Force Operative. “As far as how I got shot goes, that’s a long story. Normally, we are in and out, gone with no one the wiser, but things went sideways on the last job.” He stared at her face as she spoke, staring into the darkness beyond the bow. “We were sneaking onto a 40-foot catamaran that night. We had our eyes on the ship all day, and only saw the white 50 something white couple. We waited until they headed to shore in their dinghy, about an hour before sunset; both were on the dinghy when they headed to shore. We boarded their boat, but there was someone else on board, someone we hadn’t seen on the deck.”

“When the two of us entered the cabin, a man opened fire with a handgun, a 9 mm. The first round struck Milo in the chest at point-blank range. Milo returned fire with his Israeli-made machine pistol, and as he and the sailor both began shooting wildly. For a moment, within the humid confines of the small space, it was as if the air was made of lead. Then, the explosion! A stray bullet struck a fuel tank, and the ship’s cabin burst into flames.

I was behind Milo; his body protected me from the fireball, but the concussive force of the blast knocked me back out of the hatch to the cabin onto the steps of the companionway. I made my way topside and got off the catamaran and back into our dinghy. As I climbed into the boat, I felt the pain in my side and realized I had been shot. As I motored away, I saw the catamaran going down, devoured in flames, the fire dancing in the darkness before I blacked out. When I woke up, I was below deck, on your bed, naked, with my wounds bandaged. You were sound asleep, but your dogo kept me company, so I got dressed in the clothes you left out for me and came up here to the cockpit.” “And Thanks, I am grateful, but I’m curious, why didn’t you call the coast guard or turn me in to the authorities?”

“I got my own reasons for not talking to cops. If you were going to pull any shit with me, you would have done it by now. Since you didn’t kill me or my dog while we slept, I figure now we’re cool. I might hate pirates,” Isaiah said with a toothy grin, “but I ain’t no snitch.”

They both laughed.

“Ouch, it hurts when I laugh,” Naomi said, her wide smile shining in the glow of the starlight.

“Get something to eat,” he drawled. “I’ll take the helm and then get some rest, ma’am. Take one of the antibiotics in the pill bottle on the table in the galley.”

They changed seats, and Starbuck decided she was now obsessed with Naomi’s bare feet. The puppy sat at her feet, nibbling on the dark-haired woman’s perfectly manicured toes with nails painted the same neon pink as her fingernails.

“What’s her name?” Naomi asked as she reached down to scratch behind the pup’s ears.

“That is my first mate, Starbuck,” he said, smiling as the puppy continued to nibble at Naomi’s toes.

“She’s adorable, but maybe you should have named her Quintin; she is obsessed with women’s feet.”

They both laughed.

“Ouch,” she grimaced, “still hurts to laugh.” She said, smiling through the pain. “Good night, skipper; wake me if you see the lights of Havana.”

“Good night, ma’am,” he said, trimming the main a bit, picking up about a half knot as the sails tightened. She was impressed. Naomi disappeared into the cabins below deck for the evening, the puppy at her heels.

“¡Buen trabajo, nene!” she whispered, “Good job, baby boy!”

“Isaiah Jones versus the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey)”

Chapter 7

Key West, Florida to Cuba (Havana Nights)

Brotherhood:

(Homage to Claudius Ptolemy)

I am a man: little do I last

and the night is enormous.

But I look up:

the stars write.

Unknowing I understand:

I too am written,

and at this very moment

someone spells me out.

-Octavio Paz

As the sun began to rise over the eastern horizon, Isaiah sailed the SS Exodus towards Havana. Naomi had insisted on taking the first watch after their late-night conversation. She had reheated some of the leftover mutton snapper Isaiah had caught, cleaned, and cooked the day before for breakfast. She sat in the cockpit, sipping a cup of gourmet coffee. Starbuck, lay curled up at her feet, exhausted from patrolling the deck from bow to stern during the night.

Isaiah had gone below deck to get some much-needed sleep. Despite his youth, the past few weeks had taken their toll on him. Sailing solo always leaves you sleep-deprived. The kid lay in his bunk, the gentle rocking of the boat lulling him into a deep slumber. He almost blushed when she asked if he had undressed her while she was unconscious, since she woke up without her bikini, dressed only in the expertly applied bandages now covering the gunshot wound on her side, covered only by the bed’s sheets. He stammered, attempting to explain that her clothes were soaked with blood, so he had cut them off and hosed her down before he brought her below deck to prevent blood from getting all over the bed or his sheets. He had a clean bathing suit set out for her to wear along with a pair of cargo shorts, one of Penelope’s Hello Kitty tee-shirts, and a pair of flip-flops. She dressed in the floral bikini top and pulled on the cargo shorts over the bikini bottoms.

As the boat sailed onward, Naomi kept a sharp eye on the western horizon. She had more experience navigating the Florida Straits, and she knew better than he did that while the Florida Keys might seem like a paradise, they could also be treacherous. The coral reefs that surrounded the islands had claimed many a ship. Then there was the fact that the coast guard patrolled the waters between Cuba and Florida with a heavy presence, and their satellites and radar were sure to have taken notice when they changed course and stopped going south towards the Bahamas and took a western heading straight towards Havana.

Hours passed, and the sun climbed higher into the azure sky. A large grey pectoral fin broke the surface of the water leeward as the huge bottlenose dolphin raced alongside the Exodus. The first one was 12 or 13 feet long, and soon the rest of the pod joined their matron, swimming alongside the boat. Their sleek gunmetal grey bodies flew through the water effortlessly. She smiled; the sea had a way of centering her and reminding her that beauty still existed, even in the midst of a ever maddening world.

As the morning wore on, Naomi noticed a change in the wind. Dark clouds congregated on the western horizon, and the sea began to churn. She checked the weather report on the boat’s radio, confirming her suspicions. A storm was approaching from the west, directly in their path to Havana, Cuba. “Ei Cabrón!” she cursed, locking the wheel before hurrying below deck to wake Isaiah. “Dallas, wake up! We’ve got a storm heading our way,” she called out.

Isaiah groggily opened his eyes and sat up on the edge of the bunk. “What? A storm? How bad?”

Barefoot, Naomi quickly explained the situation. “It looks like a summer squall line moving in fast. We need to reef the sails and batten down the hatches. I can manage the helm without tearing my guts back open, but we’re going to need you to get ready to help with the sails.”

Isaiah nodded, his sleepiness evaporating in the face of the impending storm. He quickly pulled on his wetsuit, gloves, and diving booties with non-slip, grippy soles and an amber colored pair of round diving goggles. The black scuba suits space-age material, short sleeved with legs that ended mid-thigh, looked like an old-timey turn of the century bathing suit with neon yellow racing trim, but it doubled as a flotation device, and unlike his life jacket, it had no straps or exposed buckles to get tangled or caught on anything while he took care of the sails and riggings. He strapped a diving knife to his right thigh and slid the rigging knife into the built-in holster under his left arm. Under the starboard side bench at the rear of the cabin in front of the companionway, he raised the seat of the bench and grabbed the bag with the storm sails.

“Heave to, prepare to reef!” Naomi shouted once Isaiah was standing just forward of the mast opposite the boom, he replied, shouting over the wind and waves, “Ready to reef!”

They worked quickly and efficiently, reducing the sail area to prevent the wind from capsizing the Exodus, specifically quickly changing the jib, Genua, and securing a preventer to the boom so that should you catch a gust from a sudden shifting wind, you don’t get swatted overboard. Getting the carbon fiber sails swapped out for the shortened storm sail, before tying a reef into the mainsail.

Depowering the jib in a blow is second only in importance to reefing the main; letting out the mainsheet to spill. She watched fascinated as Isaiah moved as if he were born on deck. Occasional flashes of lightning on the horizon moved closer with the thunder as the rains came down, the winds howled the seas began to roll all around them.

The storm hit like a colossus’ fist as the waves smashed against the hull of the ship. Isaiah thought that she could sail through the storm, but Naomi was taking the same precautions she would if she were on a catamaran instead of a blue-water, heavy-duty titanium alloy sloop like the Exodus. Still, he listened to the more experienced sailor and double checked the tether to be sure it was secured to the jib line with the D ring before he released his main line and moved from the spinnaker to the mainsail.

Before he could return aft or make his way more than halfway across the main deck to get back to the cockpit, the waves struck from every direction at once, with the full force of the storm’s fury. A rogue wave a 30-foot wall of water caught her broadside and lifting her high the great mass windward tilting her to nearly 90 degrees leeward, he bearhugged the mast as ship slid up the great wave sideways his legs dangling below him over the ocean now 40 feet below him, for a moment, before she slides back down, and gravity returns to normal on the deck.

The dark waters of the gigantic wave collapsed onto the deck with the force of an avalanche, knocking him to his knees as he continued to hold onto the mast with both arms. The winds screamed through the riggings as the big drops of rain came down in heavy sheets, and the winds and waves lashed the boat. The SS Exodus pitched and rolled on the tumultuous waters. Naomi gripped the wheel tightly, feeling the flesh in her side tear open as the blood soaked through the wet bandages. Her eyes remained fixed on the compass. She had faced bigger storms on lesser vessels, but each storm was a little different, and the blue water tossed them with each wave, threatening to turn them up, side, down, beneath her greater power.

Isaiah held onto the mast, his heart pounding with a twisted mixture of fear and exhilaration. He made it back to the cockpit, the sails secured. The boat heaved and bucked beneath him, but he trusted Naomi’s experience. Together, they weathered the roaring tempest.

Hours passed, with the storm showing no signs of abating. Isaiah took a turn at the helm to give Naomi a break. They communicated with brief shouts over the roar of the wet wind, working in tandem to keep the boat on course.

“Get below deck, take your meds, change your bandages before you infect the wound,” he shouted. I’ll take the helm!”

“Aye, Aye, sir!” she said reflexively before making her way down the companionway to the cabin below deck. Starbuck, their captain’s first-mate, had wisely taken refuge in her black wire cage with her blanket. Naomi took another dose of the antibiotics, washing the pill down with a sip of bottled water, before she changed her wounds’ dressings. Through great pain, she pulled on the Hello Kitty tee-shirt he had taken out for her the other day, as well as the neon green and red striped windbreaker his girlfriend had left on board in the storage beneath the bunk. She double checked the tape on her bandages, then grabbed the bottle of water on her way topside, where she passed it to Isaiah as she sat on the seat beside him, her eyes scanning the darkened horizon.

As the afternoon turned into evening, the storm finally began to abate its fury. Gradually, the wind began to die down, and the rain tapered off. Exhausted but relieved, Isaiah and Naomi looked at each other, wide grins spread across their faces simultaneously. A sense of euphoria washed over them both as they realized they had survived. They had faced Poseidon’s herald and triumphed.

“We did it,” Isaiah said, still grinning.

Naomi smiled; her eyes filled with the sacred ecstasy known only to sailors who had conquered the sea. “We did, Izzy. You’re turning into one hell of a sailor.”

Isaiah’s smile beamed. As he looked over the Exodus, this was her first storm, and he had no words for how proud he was of his ship.

“Do you plan on doing it?” Naomi asked.

Doing what?

“You said this ship was built for one reason: that she has a purpose, a mission to sail around this world. I’ve never seen a ship like her before. Even when the company gets them into production, they won’t be a match for this one. So, M’jiho, will you sail her around the world?”

“I don’t know, he said with a wry smile, ask me on my way back from Africa”. The Exodus had held it together, and his heart nearly burst with joy.

They sailed on through the night, the worst of the storm behind them. The sea, once tumultuous and angry, began to calm as stars crowned the night sky. It was a clear, moonless night, and the dark waters stretched out before them, seemingly endless ebony highlighted beneath the white capped waves shrouded in darkness. Now the sea knelt before them, a genuflecting monk prostrated in prayer.

Isaiah stared into the spectral darkness, contemplating the cobalt blue depths of the watery void all around them.

As he stood at the helm, guiding the SS Exodus through the night, Isaiah absentmindedly fingered the sterling silver medallion that hung from a short leather cord around his neck. It was a gift from his recovering Catholic devout atheist mother on his sixteenth birthday; Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors.

[Note 1:] [Monarch 44 ft 6 inches; Design Specification

[Length Overall:

44 ft 6 inches

Waterline Length:

39.74 ft

Beam Overall:

12.95 ft

Beam Waterline:

11.03 ft

Draft:

4.98 ft

Air Draft:

68.52 ft

Displacement:

30,844 lbs

Ballast Weight:

10,542 lbs

Ballast Ratio:

34.2%

Sail Area:

To be recalculated based on new dimensions

Sail Area Displacement Ratio:

To be recalculated based on new dimensions

Dual Rudder

Keel stepped mast.

Center cockpit

Engine Power:

To be recalculated based on requirements

Fuel Tanks (3 tanks):

To be recalculated based on requirements

Water Tanks (2 tanks):

To be recalculated based on requirements

CE Certification:

To be reassessed based on modifications

For a full, detailed specification of the Monarch 44: DETAIL]

-About the author

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals; Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, TxDallas, Tx