The Drift Read online

  “And, hey, you’ll never guess what.”

  “What, Papa?”

  “One time Sir Francis was playing a game of bowls – you know, like the bowling we play at home sometimes.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, he was playing a game of bowling right up there on the grass” – Hans pointed to the long flat stretch of Plymouth Hoe – “and a messenger ran up to him and said, ‘Sir Francis, quick, quick, the Spanish fleet is coming to attack us. You must take our ships to sea and stop them!’ And do you know what he said?”

  She shook her head, eyes fixed on her father.

  “He said, ‘Okay, I will stop them. But first I’m going to finish my game’!”

  “And will people shoot guns at us, Papa?” She looked at him in earnest.

  “No! Don’t worry, sweet pea. I’d never let that happen.”

  Guarding the entrance to Plymouth’s harbor stood a mile-long breakwater, built by French prisoners captured during the Napoleonic Wars. Four million tons of locally quarried limestone ferried out and dropped to the seafloor. Standing ten feet proud of the water at high tide and capped with dovetailed granite, it was an impressive sight – remarkable still that some of its five-hundred-ton blocks simply disappeared when Neptune threw a tantrum.

  Leading up to the bulwark the sea was calm, but no sooner had they passed its protective lee then the swell angered. No problem for Future, though. She sliced stoically on through with hardly a roll.

  “What’s the most important rule at sea, First Mate?”

  “Life jacket and safety line, Pap— er, skippa.”

  She’d put on both and G-clipped herself to the guardrail without prompting.

  “Well done!”

  Seeing Jessica take responsibility for her welfare reassured Hans. Even for experienced crews it was nigh on impossible to rescue someone who fell overboard in heavy seas. Hans intended to avoid such an emergency and would drum the drill home at every opportunity.

  They circuited the bay with Jessica at the helm, Hans giving systematic instruction in the art of yachting. Despite her short years, she caught on fast. Hans beamed with pride.

  “You up for a challenge, froggy face?”

  “Yes!” Jessica nodded enthusiastically but kept her eyes dead ahead.

  “It’s called the keelhaul challenge.”

  “What is it?”

  “In the olden days, when Sir Francis was a captain, if one of his men was naughty – like he stole something or didn’t do his job properly – the ship’s crew would tie a rope around his waist, throw him in the sea and then haul him under the keel – that’s the bottom of the boat.”

  “Why, Papa?”

  “It was a type of punishment. The boats were big, so it was a long time to be underwater and very frightening, and the keels were covered in sharp barnacles, so if the sailor got pulled really fast he would get badly cut and wouldn’t be naughty again. But don’t worry: we won’t use a rope, and Future hasn’t got any barnacles. We’ll just swim under her for a bit of fun, right?”

  “You go first, froggy!”

  “Ooh, you’re definitely gonna get a keelhaul!”

  With Future drifting under bare poles, Hans stripped to his shorts, and Jessica put on her wetsuit.

  “Monster backflip?” he suggested.

  “Heeeee!”

  Jessica was the master of the monster backflip – or any other execution involving her father lobbing her into a body of water with flagrant disregard for health and safety protocol.

  Standing on the upper deck, Hans cupped his hands around her foot. “Okay . . . seven . . . three . . . eight . . . four . . . two . . . go!” He launched her into the air, his protégée rotating one and a half times before piercing the surface with hardly a splash.

  “Ha-ha! Nice dive, Jess!” Hans passed her a mask and snorkel and a set of fins. “Best dive of the century from Daddy?”

  “No, you’re stupid!”

  “Oh, stupid, am I?” His mouth fell open as he looked to the sky. “I suppose you think I’m not even the best diver in the whole wide world and I look like a big hairy elephant.”

  “No, stupid froggy. Hee-hee!”

  “We’ll see about that then, won’t we? I’m gonna do a forward somersault, then I’m gonna do a back somersault. Then I’m gonna fly around the boat three times, and then I’m gonna hit the water perfect like . . . like an angel, and then I’m gonna eat you all up like a big ugly shark!”

  “Froggy shark!” Jessica giggled, having gotten used to her papa’s idiocy.

  “Okay, coming in . . .” Hans concentrated intently, ready to pull off the stunt of all stunts. “You better tell everyone we’re gonna make history here!”

  “There’s no one else here, stupid froggy.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a whole lotta fish, and they probably wanna know there’s an amazing thing about to happen.”

  “Little fish, Papa is a stupid froggy face, and he’s just gonna fall in like he always does.”

  “Oh, that is so cruel! You don’t believe this is the dive of the century?”

  “Ut-uhh.” She gave a definitive shake of her head.

  “Well, watch this . . . Yeeee-hah!”

  Hans leapt high in the air . . . to land with the worst belly flop Plymouth had ever seen.

  “Did you see that!” he shrieked, his chest turning red.

  “Terrible! Daddy’s very terrible!”

  “I’ll give you terrible!”

  Hans sunk below the surface. Jessica screamed and tried to make a break for it, but even wearing fins she was no match for her father’s powerful strokes. Hans zeroed in from below like a great white shark targeting a seal and lifted her clear out of the water.

  “Arrrrrh! Gonna eat you all up!”

  Jessica squealed in a mixture of torture and delight, Hans smothering her with kisses. Since Mom’s and JJ’s death, the bond between them had reached a new level, and now, holding her tight, Hans felt something special again, something inexplicable. He started to cry silently, the water masking his tears.

  Jessica wasn’t blind to these episodes, though, her mind ascribing them to the “thing” that happened to her mother and brother, too young to understand her father’s outpouring of emotion was an expression of the love he felt for her.

  “Right, time to swim under the boat.” Hans rallied himself. “Who’s going first?”

  “You are.” Jessica prodded him in the chest.

  “No, I think you should.”

  “No, silly froggy goes first.”

  “How about handsome froggy and monkey butt go together?”

  “O-kay.”

  They duck-dove and swam down. With the late-spring sunshine penetrating the surface at slack tide, visibility wasn’t too bad, but the water was by no means warm. Hans held the family record for holding a breath – four and a half minutes – Jessica once managing an impressive two minutes twenty.

  Future’s draft was deeper than Hans had imagined, but fortunately they were able to swim around her bulbous T-shaped keel instead of under it. He was pleased to see the agent was good to his word and the hull was free from algae and other gunk. He felt a pang of pride: their new boat looked as smart below the waterline as she did above it.

  Surfacing on the port side, Jessica had plenty of breath left.

  “Reckon you can do it without fins, sweet pea?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Pass them here then.”

  Jessica pulled the rubber flippers off one at a time and handed them to her father, who threw them on deck. On the count of three they ducked under once more, Jessica’s feet kicking ten to the dozen as Hans followed close behind. The little girl would quite happily have gone for it again, only Future had drifted too near the rocks for comfort. Hans congratulated Jessica on passing the keelhaul challenge, and they climbed the stern ladder.

  On the return journey the yacht’s engine decided not to play, so Hans entered the marina under sail, to the delight
and applause of the Saturday and Sunday brigade, who sat sipping Sundowners while waiting for barbecues to heat. Hans aimed Future at the pontoon at quite some speed, furling in the remaining sailcloth at the last moment and sluing her around to step onto the dock, mooring line in hand, as if it were the order of the day.

  “Whey-hey!” came a voice, English and female.

  Hans looked over to see a young woman, late twenties, reading a book on the adjacent yacht.

  “Good read?”

  “A Manual of Yacht and Boat Sailing,” she replied, scrambling up to help him. “It’s a reprint of Kemp’s original 1923 text.”

  “Oh!” said Hans, marveling at the speed with which she secured Future’s front line.

  - 6 -

  In the morning Hans and Jessica set about getting Future “shipshape and Bristol fashion,” as the Brits liked to say. She was already well equipped to cross the Atlantic, but Hans always erred on the side of caution, a trait carried over from his military service. For repairs at sea, Future carried spares of all essential items, along with an ample tool kit and materials for constructing a jury rig and shoring a damaged hull.

  On the next trip to Old Bill’s chandlery, they bought additional fire extinguishers, a fire blanket and a heat shield that Hans fitted behind the stove in the galley. To secure the life raft to the deck, Hans opted for a hydrostatic release unit and a weak-link painter. Should Future sink, water pressure would activate the HRU, allowing the capsule to float free, the weak-link painter triggering a carbon dioxide inflation cylinder before snapping under tension to prevent the yacht dragging the raft into the deep. Hans did not want to be preoccupied with launching the inflatable should his daughter be struggling to escape a flooded cabin.

  Foul-weather gear was also on the list, Jessie looking so cute parading up and down the store in hers that both men chuckled.

  Having figured out why the engine would not fire, Hans replaced the brushes in the starter motor. He also gave the backup generator a thorough check over. In the event of further engine trouble, the machine would supply onboard electricity and, in conjunction with solar panels and a wind turbine, charge Future’s batteries. It ran on regular gas, so Hans filled up eight two-gallon plastic cans at the pump on the marina. He then hired a specialist to test all the electrical equipment. Their final purchase from Old Bill was a high-power flare gun and twenty cartridges to send a distress signal in an emergency.

  Just as they were about to leave the cramped store, the door burst open. It was the young woman who had helped Hans tie up the yacht the previous day.

  “Hey, Bill! Mind if I stick this in the window?” She held up a postcard note.

  “The finest skipper on the ’igh seas don’t need Old Bill’s permission to do that, Cap’n Penny.” Bill grinned. “You put it where you want, my girl. So you be looking for a new command?”

  “Yeah. I just got in from the Med, crewing for a local family. So this job ends here unfortunately. I’m looking to reach Cape Verde before—”

  “Cape Verde?” Hans interrupted.

  “Oh! Hello again!” The woman’s face lit up. “Yeah, I need to reach there by autumn.”

  “Cape Verde’s on our route,” Hans tendered, turning to Old Bill, seeking guidance.

  “Listen,” said Bill, “if you need an extra pair of hands, then you can’t go wrong with Penny Masters. She’ll see you around the Cape, Antarctica and back again.” He winked.

  “And where are you guys heading from there?” asked Penny.

  “Across to the Caribbean and up the East Coast home to Maine.”

  “Excellent! When are you leaving?”

  “As soon as possible,” said Hans. “If you’ve got time later, I can show you our plans . . . over a bite to eat perhaps.”

  “Sure! That’ll be great!”

  - 7 -

  Penny was delightful, a real free spirit. She and Jessica hit it off immediately, the little girl insisting her new friend tuck her into bed with a story that evening.

  Sitting in Future’s cockpit enjoying red wine and a takeout in the warm air, Penny listened intently to Hans as he explained the reasoning behind taking his daughter to sea.

  “My parents had a few issues – kinda strict too – so I’ve always given Jessica and J—” Hans stopped abruptly and reached for the second bottle of Merlot.

  “I’ve always given Jessica free rein. Tried to treat her as an equal and support her to make her own choices. I thought the trip would be good for both of us.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” Penny passed the corkscrew. “I was born into the sailing community. My parents are what you might call bohemian.”

  “So you’ve crossed the Atlantic a few times.”

  “The Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian . . .” She smiled. “All the Seven Seas, and most of them more than I can remember.”

  Hans filled two coffee mugs to brimming with the fruity Californian tipple, making a mental note to put wineglasses on the shopping list.

  “And what’s happening in Cape Verde in fall?”

  “All being well, I’m skippering a Parisian millionaire and his wife across to French Guiana.”

  Penny reached in her bag and handed Hans an impressive résumé with a gold-lettered business card clipped to the front.

  “Perfect!” said Hans, having heard enough. “Cape Verde’s on our route – if we can employ your services, that is.”

  “Sounds like a deal!”

  “Arrhk-arrhk.”

  The noise startled them.

  Leaning over the coaming, they spotted the sea lion Hans and Jessica saw earlier. Swimming on its back and clapping its flippers, the pinniped looked to be applauding Penny’s decision.

  “Hee-hee!” Her face lit up. “That’s Guz.”

  “Guz?”

  “Yeah, Golf Uniform Zulu – Plymouth’s call sign during the war. He’s kind of been adopted by the yachties and fishermen around here. Tame as anything. Look.” She picked a king prawn from her stir-fry and tossed it over the side. Guz plucked it from the water with ease.

  Hans smiled. There was something about this girl.

  - 8 -

  While Penny moved her belongings aboard Future and took care of last-minute business, Hans, Jessica and Bear explored the city, starting with the old town district surrounding the marina. This was the historic Barbican Quay, where Tudor buildings framed in oaken timbers flanked tiny cobbled streets, many of them former Elizabethan merchant houses now trading in cream teas.

  Below the high-water mark, seaweed tendrils lagged the basin’s block-stone walls, its edge stones polished smooth by centuries of mooring lines. Hefty iron cleats the size of blacksmiths’ anvils studded the quayside, interspersed with bollards made from antique cannons cut in half, upended and sunk into the stonework.

  Along with pleasure craft, the picturesque port sheltered a large number of commercial vessels. Scuba enthusiasts busied themselves aboard dive boats, setting up regulators and buoyancy vests and zipping each other into dry suits. Trawlers reeking of sea fare off-loaded plastic tubs brimming with catch onto the wharf, from which excited youngsters dangled crab lines. With so many tourists buzzing around, sightseeing and visiting souvenir stores and restaurants, and locals going about their business, the place was a hive of activity. Ambling along the dock, Hans could just imagine Sir Francis spending an evening of debauchery in one of the Barbican’s raucous taverns before staggering back aboard the Golden Hind.

  “Look, sweet pea!”

  Hans sighted the legendary Mayflower Steps leading down to the water’s edge. A pompous Greek portico marked the spot where in 1620 the Pilgrim Fathers boarded the Mayflower and sailed for the New World in search of religious freedom and civil liberty. They reached North America in sixty-six days and laid the foundations of the New England States. Hans’ lineage was Swedish, but his late wife’s ancestors were English.

  “You see these steps, Jessie?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She e
yed the chiseled granite slabs descending through a flotilla of seaweed, beer and soda cans, bottles and candy wrappers into the murky green water.

  “This is where your great-great-great-grandparents got on a big ship and sailed all the way to America.”

  “Why, Papa?”

  “Because back then they were very poor, and people were horrible to them. So they said, ‘Hey, let’s sail to America and build a house and a church and have a new life.’”

  “We’re sailing to America, Papa.”

  “We are, sweet pea.”

  Hans neglected to mention that, according to a chuckling Old Bill, no one actually knew the exact location the pilgrims set sail from. However, the portico, with its ludicrous Doric columns and commemorative plaques, kept the tourists happy.

  From the doorway of a takeout, a blast of warm air flavored with battered fish and vinegar blindsided them. Hans went inside and ordered cod and fries at Jessica’s request and a traditional Cornish pasty for himself. They sat on the harbor’s edge enjoying their lunch and spotting fish swimming beneath the flotsam on the water below.

  “What’s a pasty, Papa?” Jessica eyed his half-moon-shaped meat-and-potato pie, the recipe for which dated back centuries.

  “Pasties were the staple diet of local miners who lived two hundred years ago, Jessie. You know about mining, right?”

  “We did it in school. It’s called a gold rush.”

  “Good girl! Well, here in Devon they mined a metal called tin. On Sunday evenings the men would walk twenty miles from Plymouth up to their mine workings in the Dartmoor highlands—”

  “Where the little horses are.” Jessica remembered seeing postcards in the tourist office depicting the rugged landscape and its wild roaming ponies.

  “That’s right. The miners’ wives would cook their husbands enough pasties to last them the week, before they walked all the way home again. And you see this thick crimped piece?”

  “The crust?”

  “Well done. The miners would throw this bit away, so if any poisons from the rocks in the mine, like arsenic, got on their fingers they wouldn’t get sick. Do you wanna try a bit?”