The Trap
Drogue: a conical sea anchor used to slow a boat down in a storm
It was dark the next morning when William sat and fingered the model sailing dinghy’s hull, from stern to bow, appreciating her fine lines. No thought of hurling it from the window crossed his mind now. He could hear Harley and his grandmother’s nervous chatter in the kitchen. It smelled of pancakes and coffee. It reminded him of his father. It smelled good. After he died, Ferne took to buying her coffee on the way to work. He looked forward to the idea of making coffee for his mother like he’d done for his granddad.
At the door jamb he measured his height and recorded it in pencil as “William, 13 years.” It was still a couple of inches higher than his dad’s at the same age.
Racing with Daniel was something Jack did when he lived in Lunenburg. Last year would have been their first time together in years. Now, a year after his father’s death, William was going to race with his grandfather. Was he up to the task?
He stood with his hands on the two marks on either side of the door, hoping for inspiration before taking his place as a member of Fathom’s crew.
He stopped at his grandfather’s bedroom. Daniel pulled on a warm sweater. Emmett sauntered in, carrying a box of new deck shoes. “I got you these.”
Daniel raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t have to …”
Emmett took the whistle from the bureau and handed it to Daniel. He slipped the lanyard around Daniel’s neck, then reached under his sweater to tuck it into his chest pocket. Emmett took a rigging knife from the bureau, tied it to Daniel’s belt, and then dropped it into the leg pocket of his cargo pants. He handed Daniel his compass. Daniel held it out to the window pointing through the Funnel. He nodded, satisfied that her bearings were true, and slipped it into his other leg pocket. He looked to William like an old gunfighter gearing up for one last, big showdown. He felt proud to be there with him.
They hurried through breakfast before gathering for a moment on the veranda. The ocean was reasonably flat. The wind chimes tinkled the wind’s faint enthusiasm for a race. The moon showed wisps of fog lying around, mostly by the island. It looked to William like an Egyptian mummy had snagged strips of its bandages to the island’s nearside rock face and across the Funnel. From the middle of the island, pines jutted high through the fog like jousting lances warning they’d impale anyone who approached.
It could have been intimidating. But he was with his granddad, the Rock, in his checkered shirt, calm and ready. “Right. Time we were off,” he said patting his granny’s shoulder.
They rowed out in silence. Once aboard Fathom, William cranked the engine to life. It thrub, thrub, thrubbed its presence through the darkness. The pump coughed cooling water out the back in spurts as if the smell of diesel smoke made the boat sick.
Wearing his safety jacket, he helped Harley hoist the jumbo- and foresails that chattered their impatience to move forward in the light winds. They dropped their mooring line through the hawse hole. He secured the tender to it for their return. They headed forward, the engine in readiness should the wind fail them in strength or direction.
They were in the Funnel. The engine missed, caught, missed again, then caught and carried them a few hundred metres in before dying altogether.
A man’s concerned voice, probably Emmett’s, called but failed to reach them clearly.
Daniel tapped the fuel gauge. It continued to read empty. That made no sense. Daniel looked at the compass setting and tethered the wheel spokes on course. He raised the engine’s cowling and wrinkled his nose at the smell of diesel fouling his bilges.
“There’s a leak. There’s … somebody left the bleeding valve open. We’re out of fuel.” His tone was stark but without panic. He dropped the cowling back and looked forward. He slipped the restraints off the helm and took her under his control. He glanced down at the compass in the binnacle and steered by its reckoning.
The island and the sand bank wafted in and out of view as the fog did its best to knit a shroud around them. What moonlight made it through the fog gave the boat soft lines.
“William, head up to the bowsprit and keep an eye, will you?” It was a question that brooked no argument. “Harley, go down and bring me the GPS.” He added “please.”
Harley sprang from the hatchway. “Somebody took the battery. We have no GPS, no cellphone.”
“Probably whoever drained the diesel into the bilges. Possibly someone who didn’t want to lose a bet,” reasoned Daniel.
William glanced back from the bowsprit but forced himself to stay as instructed. Daniel waved Harley to the helm. He stepped up on deck, steadying a hand along the boom.
The ocean squeezed by the Funnel was more tempestuous than by the shore. It sloshed over the freeboard onto the deck. They heard the insistent clanging of the school bell from the veranda. It implied a warning. But what? Emmett was alarmed by something the crew couldn’t see in the low-lying fog.
William toed the wet grit. “Hey, Granddad, there’s sand wash- ing over the deck.”
Daniel skimmed his hand over the water running by the coaming and felt the sand for himself. “Port your helm, we’re too close to the sand bank,” he called back to Harley, who threw the wheel to port. The bell stopped its warning.
His granddad hustled back to the cockpit. He compared his hand-held compass to the one on the binnacle. “Straighten her out and resume your previous course, here.” He tomahawked the air with his hand to show Harley her new course. He unclipped the small compass and gave it to her for reference. They checked port and starboard for any glimpse that they were too close to rock or sand.
Fathom was now well into the Funnel. “William, come back here.” When he hustled back to the cockpit Daniel summarized their predicament. “The fog’s scheduled to burn or blow off in a bit. I was counting on the motor, the GPS, and the compass to get us through. But someone doesn’t want that to happen.” Daniel opened the banquette and wordlessly handed Harley a life jacket and shouldered one himself. A chill deeper than the one carried by the fog descended on the boat. They were at risk, and one didn’t tow a tender in a race.
He put his big hand on William’s shoulder. He lowered his voice so it sounded personal but irrefutable. “I don’t want to alarm you, but if we hit a rock we may have to jump for it and swim for the island. Your safety rope could tie you to Fathom so tightly you won’t be able to undo the bowline. I can’t sail her if I have to worry about you too. I need a man I can count on to handle himself.”
“I’m your man, Granddad.” The big hand gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. William undid his hook from the safety line and coiled it onto one of the mast’s belaying pins.
“We’ll turn back, sail around the island. I’ll take the helm. Harley, I want you up in the bosun’s chair to tell us when we’re in the Bowl. That’s the widest part of the Funnel and we can come about.” He secured the wheel’s spokes to lock her on course.
Harley looked stunned. “We don’t have enough leeway to turn her safely. We could side-slide onto the island’s rocks, we could —”
“I know,” Daniel said matter-of-factly as he pulled the bosun’s chair from the locker along with the lead and measuring rope they’d used the day before. “It’s low-lying fog so you should be able to see better from up there.”
They cranked her up. She called down, “This is good. I can pretty well make out the island and the sand bank. The edge of the Bowl is about three hundred metres ahead … we’re pretty much dead in the middle.” She tsked at her unfortunate choice of words.
The light winds, checked by the island, blew softly abeam from the port side. With only two small sails up, the boat didn’t race forward or heel far over. They’d be a few minutes before they got to the Bowl. Daniel handed William the sounding lead and rope and tapped his shoulder to follow him forward.
“Sound away,” he directed. William swung the lead the way Harley had shown him and counted out the depth. Three times he took measurements from twenty-four to thirty feet of depth. Daniel looped his index finger in the air for William to coil the rope.
Daniel pulled a measured amount of anchor rope that ran longer than the deepest sounding. He secured it to the bollard behind the bowsprit while he got William to tie the other end to the spade anchor with a bowline knot.
“Can you throw this over the side when I tell you? A good few feet out so as not to scrape the hull?” William spread his feet, bent his knees, and hefted the brutish steel with a grunt. That Daniel was worried about scratching the hull was reassuring.
“You have your rigging knife?”
William patted the lanyard from his belt loop to hip pocket.
“We’re almost there, maybe fifty metres,” called Harley.
Daniel scrambled back to the cockpit and lowered Harley. They scuttled to where William knelt at the bow.
“Okay, we’re going to club haul her. When I tell you to, toss the anchor over the lee side. I’ll wait till the wind spills out of her. When she catches it’ll bring her head ’round right quick without slippage. As soon as she catches and spins I’ll yell ‘cut her’ and you use your knife right here.”
Daniel drew his index finger across the strands of anchor rope, six inches from where she was knotted to the bollard. “This is the only way to bring her around in such a narrow body of water without ripping the bottom out of her. Don’t pull your knife out or open the blade till you’ve tossed the anchor. We don’t need any accidents right now.”
Nervousness bubbled a laugh out of William. Was there a good time to cut yourself with a knife?
William studied the anchor and rope. Could it spin the tons of sailing schooner and her momentum around safely? Harley’s expression spelled doubt.
“It’s very old school, hard on the rigging, but under the circumstances …” Daniel left the thought unfinished and clambered back to the cockpit. Harley jumped after him.
The wind picked up and lifted the ribbons of fog to show they were right in the middle.
“Ready about, helm’s down,” Daniel called out in a voice strong and sure to reach his crew. Just as the wind eddied out of the sails he ordered, “Drop anchor.”
William used his thigh muscles to propel the heavy chunk of anchor a few feet out. It hit with a splash that sprayed his face. The rope uncurled at a dizzying rate. The anchor bit into the rocky bottom. Her rope scudded against the brass hawse hole as momentum and inertia strained anchor, rope, and ship into a tight curl. Fathom skipped a bit, and it was hard to tell whether she was fighting the rope or she’d brushed her keel against a rock.
“Now!” bellowed Daniel. “Cut her now!”
William’s blade made quick work of the three strands of nylon. The end still tied to the anchor shook away like a white snake diving deep. Harley sheeted the sails in.
They filled. Fathom heeled back over so she pierced her own wake back out into the wider part of the Funnel where she had come from. The wind picked up and bundled the fog away. The ocean was tidying her nasty toys for another day, another opponent less skilled than his grandfather.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Harley jubilated. “Holy crap, Uncle Daniel, you … that …” But nothing could have said the current danger had passed more effectively than Daniel waving for Harley to drop her life jacket into a bench locker with his.
“Hold her on her present course, Harley,” Daniel interrupted. His tone was sober. It reminded them there was a lot of ocean to negotiate. They were running parallel to the island, the long way to the ocean. Harley and William hoisted the main- and foresails.
Daniel turned the wheel this way and that. “Something’s not right.”
Harley agreed. “Yeah, she’s sluggish. We damage the keel when we club hauled?”
“Maybe. It’s in the stern.”
Harley saw something flutter in their wake. “Someone’s tied a bucket to the keel!”
William thought back to the Cape Islander and flipper splash he’d seen the day before. “I bet you it was Trenton!”
Daniel turned the schooner into the wind. “I’ll have to dive and check it out. Get me the waterproof flashlight, will you please?”
“I’ve got my bathing suit on,” Harley said as she sprang from the hatchway, light in hand, peeling off her sweater and jeans and slipping her feet into a pair of flippers.
“William, tie the other end of this line to that stern cleat,” directed Daniel. Clutching the line, Harley held her mask and scissor-kicked into the cold Atlantic.
Daniel paced. Harley surfaced. She gulped air then dove again. Then she came back up with a bucket tied to a rope. Harley climbed the ladder clamped to the gunwale. Daniel comforted her. “Let’s get you some warm clothes and something warm to drink.”
“There’s a Thermos of hot chocolate in the hamper, Grand- dad,” explained William.
“Keep an eye out, will you, William?” said Daniel, closing the hatch behind them.
William grabbed the wheel in the waning darkness. The excitement of the impending race had delayed his sleep and the adrenalin rush he’d felt in the Funnel was wearing off. He leaned his tired head on the mast. McCoy appeared behind the sail and startled him.
“Why didn’t you help us?” challenged William in a hoarse whisper.
“I won’t always be here. Think back to the crash, William. Who helped you then?”
William forced his memory back to the submerged truck that haunted him.
“I remember hacking Dad’s seatbelt to get him out. Then having to float up to the air pocket and taking a last breath. I yelled, ‘Dad, you’re too big. I can’t get you out.’ When he didn’t move, I slid out the window. His eyes were open. I pulled myself onto the roof, pounding and yelling, ‘Dad! Dad! Get out, please. Dad!’ The waves knocked me off … and the tide pushed me to shore.”
The Real McCoy nodded. “You saved yourself, William.”
“I just left him there.”
“Your dad’s heart gave out before the crash. Nothing you could do. Nothing at all.”
“When I see his eyes open like that, I wonder … did he suffer much?”
“Not nearly as much as you.”
“But the water …”
“Dead before he hit it.”
Dawn’s light tore at the dark fabric. The Real McCoy faded.
“Granddad should see you. Settle your —”
McCoy held up his hand to stop him. “Concentrate on the race. I’ll see you on the boat tonight afterwards. Concentrate!” McCoy faded as quickly as he had appeared.
The faint light played off his father’s signature blue and red stitching. The hatchway slid open and Daniel emerged on deck followed by Harley, now dressed in warm clothes.
He started to take the helm but stopped long enough to run his hands under the edge of the binnacle that housed both the wheel and the compass. He found it. There was a magnet stuck in a piece of gum. “This is what threw off our compass.” He tossed it below deck.
Daniel spread his legs for balance. “If we’re done with Trenton’s games, let’s race.”
Daniel turned the helm. Sea hungry, Fathom shook her sails loose, grabbed a belly full of wind, heeled over, and ran with poise for deep water.