Float Plan - Trish Doller Page 0,76
Keane doesn’t change that.
The harbor is lively with yachts, fishermen, and ferries from other islands, and a white woman from the nearest sailboat calls across the distance. She introduces herself as Joyce Fields from Port Huron, Michigan, and after I call my name back, she invites me to come have a drink. I put Queenie in the dinghy, and barely a minute later a glass of rum punch is pushed into my hand.
“Come, sit.” Joyce is an apple-shaped woman wearing a strapless bathing suit that seems perpetually on the verge of falling down. Her tan is leather dark, and I wonder if my skin looks the same as hers. I don’t know if it’s because of the rum, the island, or a combination, but she is shiny-happy. “Where are you from, Anna?”
It’s a simple question, but my home is right here, right now. “Florida, I guess.”
She laughs. “You guess?”
“I’m kind of a nomad at the moment, but I started this trip in Fort Lauderdale.”
“Goodness, you’re so young.” Joyce sounds like a concerned mom and it’s very touching. “Did you come all this way by yourself?”
“I’ve done some of it alone, but I had company for most of the trip.”
“We came up from Grenada,” she says. “We took a couple of years to sail through the Caribbean, but we like the Grenadines and Grenada the best, so we’ve been going back and forth between the two for the past six months. What about you?”
“South to Trinidad, but I may keep going. Not right away because I need to save up some money, but—” I take a sip of punch, surprised at myself. Sailing to the Panama Canal would be incredibly difficult by myself, and I don’t know that I want to cross the entire Pacific Ocean, but nothing is off the table. “Yeah. I can go anywhere.”
I eat dinner with Joyce and her husband, Mike, who dinghies out from shore with a bucket of lobsters. The orange-shelled monsters send a pang of longing for Keane through me. I snap a photo and text it to him: What the poor folks are eating right now. I miss your face and the rest of you too. The three of us compare notes about islands we have in common, and I laugh at myself as the crazy screaming white woman of Wallilabou Bay.
“It’s hard to choose a favorite,” Joyce says. “But I think mine is Mayreau, just down the chain from here. Gorgeous beach, fun bars, and the national park at Tobago Cays is spectacular. Turtles everywhere. You can even swim with them.”
I’m glad I’ve had enough rum to disguise the flush in my cheeks when I tell her Martinique is my favorite. It’s not completely a lie when I tell her it’s because of the slave memorial and the beach at Les Anses d’Arlet.
Before I go, Joyce takes my picture for her sailing blog and suggests we have lunch tomorrow. A warm buzz sits in my head, in my body, as I motor Queenie ashore for a quick bit of doggie business. I fall asleep with the hatch open to let in the stars, and dream about sea turtles.
* * *
Alexander from Daffodil’s place shows up at dawn, bearing a bag of clean laundry and a replacement shackle for my halyard. I’m still trying to fully awaken when he scrambles up the mast and pulls the errant halyard back down to the deck. Within minutes the new shackle is installed. Alexander takes away my trash. I listen to the weather to make sure I have a window.
Joyce comes out on deck wearing her droopy bathing suit and holding a huge travel mug of coffee as I’m pulling up the anchor.
“You’re leaving?”
“I need to swim with those turtles.”
Her laugh drifts over to me. “Have fun. Be safe.”
“You too. And thank you for dinner.”
Before I’m out of range of the island’s cell service, I check my phone to see if Keane texted back while I was sleeping, but there are no new messages.
The mainsail at full capacity, the boat powers through the water. I sail past Canouan and into the passage above Mayreau. I consider sailing to Salt Whistle Bay to see why Joyce loves it, but I want to swim with the turtles more. The ocean winds strengthen, so I put a reef in the mainsail until I get into the lee of the Tobago Cays. I lower the sails early and motor carefully, watching for the navigational markers that guide me through the