Float Plan - Trish Doller Page 0,5

I hate sailing into an unfamiliar harbor in the dark, but I have no one to blame but myself. Nosing the boat to the wind, I roll up the jib and lower the mainsail. After thirteen hours at sea, my body is sore. My face feels as if it’s been stretched, burned by both sun and wind. And after taking down my shorts twice in the middle of the ocean to pee into the scupper drain, I’m ready for a hot shower.

Using Ben’s spotlight, I scan the water for navigational markers as I approach the channel that cuts between North and South Bimini. It’s hard to see anything in the dark and there is very little ambient light coming off the islands. The Alberg stutters when the keel drags along the bottom and my heart stutters along with it.

“No!” I throw the tiller over, trying to steer in the direction of what I hope is the middle of the channel, but the boat comes to a complete stop. “I am not running aground right now!”

I shift the engine into reverse, hoping to back myself out of this mess, but nothing happens. The sound that escapes me is a cross between hysterical laughter and sobbing. I am so close to land that I could jump out of the boat and wade ashore.

“Fuck.”

I burrow around the lazarette for my phone to look up the tide table, but there’s no signal. Likely for the best—I don’t want to know how many texts and calls I’ve missed. I drop the useless phone back into the locker and pray the tide is incoming. Otherwise, this will be a long, long night.

Since the boat isn’t going anywhere for a while, I climb down into the galley and make a turkey sandwich—the closest I’m going to get to Thanksgiving dinner. My mom is probably hurt that I won’t be there, and I think again about giving up this impulsive plan. Once I come unstuck, I could return to Florida. Beg for my job back. Live on the boat. Fake it till I make it. That would be fine, wouldn’t it? Except Ben wasn’t content with fine; he wanted extraordinary. Shouldn’t I want the same?

If he were here, he would laugh at my embarrassment over running aground and say, “If no one saw you do it, did it really happen?” He’d hang a solar lamp from the boom, crack open a cold beer, and cue up a playlist of his favorite sailing music. He’d turn the moment into a party. When I finish eating my sandwich, I do all of those things, performing them like a summoning ritual that might bring him back.

They never do.

Without Ben, it’s too much. I switch off the music after a handful of songs and listen to the quiet, rhythmic shh-shh-shh of waves lapping against the shore. Except thinking about him makes me restless. I stand up and move from one side of the cockpit to the other, rocking the boat, hoping the seafloor will loosen its grip. I feel ridiculous, but suddenly the boat shifts. It begins to drift, pushed forward on the current. I quickly start the engine and steer back into the deeper part of the channel, where I stay until I reach the anchorage.

There aren’t many boats as I stand on the bow to throw the anchor into the water, a relief because I don’t know how much line to let out, and even when it feels secure, I don’t have the expertise to tell when the anchor is holding fast. I turn on the anchor light at the top of the mast and hoist the yellow quarantine flag so customs officials will know I haven’t cleared into the Bahamas yet.

The last thing I do as I crawl into the V-berth—still wearing my clothes—is say a prayer to God, Ben, and the universe that the anchor won’t drag in the night, that when I wake tomorrow morning, the boat won’t be smashed against the shore.

drunken kaleidoscope (3)

The sky is a faded blue when I wake, one that could mean dawn or dusk. The travel clock on the shelf beside my head reads 6:09. No help at all. It seems impossible that I could have slept all night and through most of another day, but when I climb out into the cockpit, the leading edge of the sun has met the horizon. The sunset sky is slashed with red and purple, like the work of a painter with an angry