Float Plan - Trish Doller Page 0,43

stay.

“This is probably the end of it,” Keane says. “Once this system breaks, we should have decent weather for the rest of the trip. Maybe we should wait it out.”

“But you need to get to Puerto Rico,” I say. “This is slowing you down.”

“I am exactly where I want to be, Anna.”

My face grows warm, but I don’t have the luxury of dwelling on what that means. Not when we have to decide what to do. Not when, really, I already know. He was right about the intimacy that comes with living on a boat. In the past eighteen days, I have learned that he hops to the toilet at 4:00 A.M., especially if he’s had a lot to drink. He eats too fast from years of squeezing in meals aboard racing sailboats. And that he sleeps deepest on his back. We are tuned in to each other’s moods. We share meals, chores, and, now, a dog. Sometimes I catch him looking at me with his feelings, bare and unguarded, flickering across his face. I don’t understand why he would want a messed-up girl like me. Yet in those moments, when his longing calls to mine, thoughts of Ben always interrupt, reminding me of what I lost.

“If we leave now, the crossing is going to be brutal,” Keane continues. “Under the best of circumstances, this is the kind of trip that can wear down your soul. In weather like this, you’ll feel as though you’ve sold it to the devil.”

“Do you have enough money to stay?” I say. “Because if I’m going to make it to Trinidad and get back home, I need to be more careful.”

“I could pay it,” he says. “But it would be dear to me, as well.”

“I’m scared of the weather.”

“Then let’s wait,” Keane says. “We’ll divide the cost and stay until we get a window.”

Queenie jumps up on the cockpit bench and turns her soulful eyes on him. He makes her give him a high five—a work in progress—before giving her a bit of lobster. He looks at me. “What do you think?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Do you think I can handle the crossing?”

He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t even consider. “Yes.”

“So let’s go,” I say. “We’re ready. Let’s go now.”

Like the good surrogate mother she’s become, Corrine tries to talk us out of leaving. Gordon listens to the weather forecast and quietly suggests we wait, but says that if we’re determined to go, we should sail as far as Big Sand Cay and anchor for the night.

“Take it in pieces,” he says. “It’ll be a bumpy sleep, but it will give you a chance to rest.”

Corrine gives us double-bagged loaves of mango bread. Gordon gifts us with a pair of ten-gallon jerricans filled with fuel and warns us to turn back if conditions become unmanageable. The dark green band of precipitation on the TV weather forecast doesn’t look manageable to me, but Keane doesn’t seem worried. He lashes the fuel cans to the deck and deflates the dinghy. With a knot of doubt settled heavy in my stomach, we motor away from Providenciales.

Waves rise and fall behind us, obscuring and revealing the island as it recedes. We are quiet and my stomach churns mutinously. I have never suffered from anything more than minor nausea since I first started sailing with Ben, but now I’m overtaken by seasickness and salty saliva fills my mouth. I white-knuckle the lifeline, hurling the contents of my stomach into the sea. I heave until I’m empty, and heave some more, my throat burning and my nostrils stinging. The thought of spending three more days in these conditions makes me cry.

“Are you okay?” Keane asks when I sit back down in the cockpit.

“No.” My mouth tastes sour with vomit.

“Do you want to go back?”

There is nothing on earth I would like more than to turn this boat around and return to Providenciales, but sailing was what I signed on for when I took Ben’s boat. I struck a bargain with Keane to help me, not do all the work for me. Still, it’s tempting to go back. Skip the crossing entirely. “No.”

We take turns on the tiller, giving each other breaks for food and the bathroom, and to check on Queenie. Keane rigged up a little nest for her in the alcove beneath the V-berth. We don’t talk much and nearly everything I eat comes back up, leaving me hungry and miserable for the eleven hours it takes to reach Big Sand