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Isaiah Jones versus the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey) Key West to the Bahamas; STORM an unplanned trip to Cuba

Chapter 6 pt 2a”

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.

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

Key West to the Bahamas; STORM an unplanned trip to Cuba

Chapter 6 pt 2

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 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 gun metal 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 boon. 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 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, and 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 wheel 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 onboard 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 near bursts 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

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: DETAILED SPEC (To be provided based on finalized design specifications)]

-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, Tx