Chapter Text
The docks were busy; it was a weekend and early in the morning – prime time really for all sorts of boat enthusiasts to be rushing to launch to push a full day of sailing. I missed the days of lazy drifting with the little flat bottomed, aluminum Jon boat my grandpa had for duck hunting when I was a kid. There was never this sort of crowd or noise, even during the height of summers at our little concrete boat ramp up in the mountains where he liked to hunt, the most activity was maybe passing a park ranger with a nod when they came out to check permits. The ramp was always clear at any time of day when we went out or came in after a long day on the water, yes it was always early launch with him too (even more than Penny) because the man rose at four am religiously pretending to follow some sort of military schedule even if he had never served but being so young it was different.
I could nap in that boat, the water calm and the tiny tiller quiet in relative terms as we drifted up river to the hunting grounds. Sometimes with the dogs, always a lab because what other sort of hunting companion could you have in his eyes, so I had something to cuddle which was really great once the weather cooled down towards November when he would hunt. The world was quiet, the worst that would disturb me under the sun was rolling over if I got too hot since the Jon boat had no cover or if there were too many dragonflies landing on my legs. If I was really good and asked nicely, he’d let me set up my tiny fishing pole while he waited for mallards and wood ducks to appear. But only if I threaded my own hook and took responsibility for the fish I caught.
There was nothing casual like those lazy days with Penny and her boat, there was no laying out on a bed of life jackets and catch a nap in the soft afternoon sun. With Penny it was a lot of work and little play, that was until we made it out to sea and I could cast my plankton nets. Her boat was a 41-foot J/125 sailboat, meaning this boat was a beast and required a minimum of two people to sail successfully which limited my peace. It was pretty cool to have a designated area inside though to settle if the weather got bad or if we wanted to stay out for more than a quick little jaunt to sea. More than quick really, this boat flew past even the smaller ones without the engine, the wind if it was good could hit 8 knots which was fast for what I was used to. Not a racing boat by any means but I was thankful for that.
Today, like every other time we went out, Penny was leading me towards her mooring spot. My pre-packed bag in hand with my extra supplies including everything I would need to do a plankton tow. It was pretty heavy at this point, more than forty pounds between spare clothes, sunscreen, food, water, mini first aid, net, collection jars, and the other miscellaneous items that I had collected over time that came to rest in my bag. It never got lighter, the second I removed something from it was the second I needed it. I remembered the time I took my tabis out because I hadn’t used them in months and suddenly, I had one of my damn buoys float off course and get stuck along a rocky bank.
I just decided it was a jinx to remove anything and I would just have to lift weights to keep up.
The first step for any day out on the water with Penny was the pre-sail checklist. “Check the fuel would ya kid?” She called out as she went to check the fresh water and preserved food in case of problems out at sea. This boat had a 20-gallon fuel tank, more than enough that she only needed to refuel once or twice a season, but it was routine just in case we sprung a leak or god forbid someone siphoned off our diesel.
Next was making sure we had enough life jackets, throw rings, working fire extinguishers, first aid kits, sunscreen stocks, working flashlights, and all the rest of the safety gear for when something went wrong – because Penny always assumed something would go wrong. A check of the flairs and smoke launches to make sure they were in good condition plus the extras the coast guard required if they ever did a check, the bell and whistle since the boat was long, navigation lights, buckets in case we took on water, oars, the different anchors in case we were stopping somewhere new, and the tool kit in case we needed to make repairs on the water.
Moving on was the physical inspection, not just the supplies. There was checking extra rope, if our radio, GPS, and radar were in working order, the hull deck was clear and everything was secured. Penny was a very by the book sailor, something I appreciated because I always felt safe with her taking me out. She had a read out of the weather, a copy saved on her phone in case we couldn’t get service off shore. There was a check of the motor and batteries to ensure they were operational, the bilge check to make sure that it wasn’t wet or dirty, and that the wheel was unlocked.
I felt excited that Penny was pointing me to use the radio, I had been practicing my hailing. Our marina didn’t use channel thirteen but instead its own working frequency on two to inform about launch and enters since it was a high traffic area. It kept the rest of the channels open for communication and cut out the original hail on channel 16. I went to the radio and turned it until I heard static, moving one notch up so that it would help filter the weaker signals before I pressed down on the transmitter button a few inches from my face so I wasn’t garbled on the radio. “San Pedro Marina… San Pedro Marina… San Pedro Marina… This is Rufless… on figures 02… over.”
It took less than a minute after I took my finger off the call button for the radio to crackle to life with a man’s voice, “San Pedro Marina go ahead, over.”
“Rufless here, this is a 41-foot sailboat checking traffic conditions for launch from mooring spot figure 24, over,” I repeated clearly really focusing on annunciation. Penny shot me a look, analyzing my call in of course. It was her vessel I was representing on the marina’s airways.
“San Pedro Marina to Rufless, you are affirmative for launch, no traffic on the north end, over,” buzzed that same man.
“Rufless here, wilco, launching, out,” I was grinning as I heard the radio beep as a confirmation from the marina that they had gotten our launch. I grinned at Penny who gave me a thumbs up as she finished removing our mooring lines. I flipped to channel 16 immediately after confirming our launch and we were ready to go.
I felt my heart rate increase as we moved off from the dock, setting out to do our sailing with Penny at the helm. The sun was barely cresting in the sky, it was still nice and cool as we moved towards the open sea, “Stay on the starboard side, keep an eye out as I back us out. Watch for traffic,” Yelled Penny as she used the small engine to get us going at a more controlled pace inside the marina, the hum a backdrop against her voice.
I gave a quick nod and moved into position, gripping the rail, the stanchion she had called it, for balance. I was grateful that she was always so clear with her directions while we sailed, even if I stumbled or forgot one of her technical jargon things she would talk me through it. She had a little “P” and “S” sticker still on the sides of her boat cabin from where I had put them when we had first started sailing because I couldn’t remember which was which while she was directing me from the wheel. The other problem was trying to figure out the damn degrees for the wind, thankfully Penny would correct until I hit the angle she was looking for.
Penny nudged the throttle into reverse to get us out of our parking spot, the propeller churning softly beneath the stern leaving the boat vibrating, something I wasn’t sure if it was from the water or the motor. The rudder resisted the turn, the waves not choppy but still turning such a large boat would end up with some force to get it on track before it caught the motion. Slowly, deliberately, the boat began easing backward out of its spot, clearing the narrow space between neighboring hulls.
The wheel turned under his hand, angled slightly to starboard to swing the bow to port so that the fiberglass hulls wouldn’t knock together. We didn’t have our dock bumpers out; she had shown me how to walk with them when coming in but I always worried about crashing going out too. Thankfully Penny knew what she was doing, we glided past the other boats that sat in their own spots, mooring lines taught to keep them from swaying too far from the dock in high waves. People waved from their boats as we moved out, Penny always polite raising her hand in greeting as we passed.
“Okie doke kid,” she called out, easing into neutral again once we were clear of the other boats, “now forward.”
The engine tone changed, a more stuttered churn that left us rocking a bit as the boat nudged ahead. The marina channel opened a straight lane of calm water flanked by ship’s slips, pilings, and water breaking rocks at the mouth of the marina to keep the waters inside calmer. Beyond that, the heave of the open ocean waved at us with a promise of a decent day of sailing.
“Go up to the mast,” Penny instructed, steady as ever. “You need to get ready to raise the mainsail but you need to wait to haul on the halyard until I tell you.” I winced at the memory, my overeager first time sailing I had grabbed at the rope to get ready to raise the mainsail and accidentally untied the rope, whipping the sheet open too quick at the wrong angle which sent us shoving towards the break rocks. Thankfully Penny had been ready, but it was still a lighter touch this time in case, I tried to learn as much as I could while I was out on the water including how my fuckups could be prevented again.
I moved from my little vantage point clinging to the rails to climb to the base of the mast, clutching the halyard and used the winch drum for leverage rather than just trusting my brute strength like the first time. Penny threw me a thumbs up, still even years later of sailing together I could tell she was proud of me for not killing us. With that Penny turned the boat into the wind, the bow facing directly seaward as the channel widened with the engine in idle. Without the rocks and other boats to break up the wind, it dropped like ten degrees and I was no longer sweating my ass off in my long sleeve sun shirt.
“Now!” she called. “Raise it!”
I pulled hard, hand-over-hand to make sure I didn’t catch my hands again and yank them out of the sockets (once again a learning moment when the wind caught and almost took me with the sail while I tried to open it), the sail climbing with a wave before it snaped loudly as it caught the wind. That first snap always made me wince, loud like a crack of a whip and just as powerful as I used the winch drum again to keep me from flying away with the sail. Penny watched the boom rise, trimming the helm slightly to keep the wind dead ahead keeping us on track with the right of way on the starboard side.
“Keep going kid, watch for the battens catching!” She called. The battens, that she had to keep parallel to the direction of the wind to keep its shape. I watched the fabric and wasn’t seeing any sort of abnormalities but I was hoping that Penny would really yell if there was a problem my untrained eye couldn’t catch.
The sail jumped a few times which had me furrowing my brows but ultimately it filled and swung the boom a bit as it did. I tried to move fast before the boom swung out of position. I tightened the line on the winch to create more tension.
“Lock it!” Penny shouted. So, it had been getting ready to flop around like a dead fish, I thought to myself grinning at the fact I was able to anticipate that. Locking was always one of the harder tasks keeping the tension on the line, my shoulders burned slightly from the wind fighting me but I still was grinning like a fool.
“Get the jib out,” Penny yelled over the wind and the noise of the sail catching. I scooted a bit to open up the front sail, the bow. I knew I needed to hold on, the jib always made us zoom and I had to be sure that I was holding on to something when it did, still scared even to this day of going overboard. I tugged the furling line, it sliding through and the jib made that same snapping sound that had me on edge until it caught fully. And like that the hum of the engine was gone as Penny killed it, no longer needing the extra boost.
The boat surged jumped forward under sail alone, slicing cleanly through the marina mouth. Penny had me adjust the jib a few degrees to catch a bit more of the wind, her eyes watching for the directionality. “Boom to starboard 25 degrees,” she instructed again, my own approximation wasn’t quite what she wanted so she waved her hand until I was on target. “Straighten the clew, I don’t want luffing,” she added as I reached for the ropes to adjust.
I relaxed a bit more once we were on the open ocean, now it was minor adjustments with Penny’s direction to get us out to where we needed to be. She preferred to sail along the coast, she never took us more than three miles out on days like this, a short jaunt really. If we were going further, she was prepping harder than what we did today. Extra food, water, and diesel storages. Technically her boat could go longer distances but she tended to not push it with me still being so green on the water sailing.
I had the GPS on, guiding us to my routine sample locations. Penny, ever the patient woman, let me hit all ten of them to do casts off the stern, dragging the net at five knots for fifteen minutes gave me roughly a 1.25 nautical mile drag for each point. Every time I was pulling out glass containers to dump my sweet little plankton into, finding that the plastic tended to make any Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus unhappy.
I had filtered, sterile seawater to hold my precious hauls until we got back to shore. I kept them in the cabin, out of the direct sun so they didn’t bake while we finished out the day sailing. Something about being on the ocean always left Penny and I in higher spirits. It was heading into summer so we caught sight of a small pod of dolphins and even sea lions rushing through a school of fish. I was having a great time, using my small camera to capture what I could, including goofy pictures of Penny at the wheel.
She’d had me grab snacks, both of us forgoing stopping to eat a full meal while we sailed. The conditions were perfect and we didn’t want to waste time cruising up and down the coast, it wasn’t until the sun was low on the horizon that she had us pulling back in to dock, the inverse of the process getting out. Radioing in our arrival, tucking the sails in, tying them down, and her navigating with me holding the bumpers to get into our spot.
She had me tie off the boat, while she went through covering and closing off what was needed. By the time my feet hit the pavement and I was drug down by my bag filled with samples, I was crawling. It was well over twelve hours of being awake and moving, somehow these outings took more out of me than a cruise.
I was setting my shit in the back of her car, making sure my carefully labeled jars of plankton were labeled and out of the sun. Penny started the car and I sat in the passenger seat, eyes barely open. She was buzzing, somehow Penny was the kind of woman that got more energy the older she got rather than burning out.
“I know you have a strict schedule with those critters or I’d make you get dinner with me,” Penny said shooting me a smile as I slouched.
“Yeah, they tend to start dying pretty quick,” I muttered. “If you wanted you could come over to my place and take a little look at them,” I offered shooting her a grin knowing full well Penny didn’t care much for them. She entertained me while I chattered on but outside of that and sitting through some pictures, she couldn’t care less about my plankton. She took me out to give me company and out of the kindness of her own heart.
“As inviting as that sounds, I have a… meeting,” she finished quickly not daring to cast me a look.
My brow quirked and suddenly the exhaustion was draining off of me, I could smell blood this time. “Dinner… meeting? Who’s the guy?” I asked already invested.
“C’mon, I just said dinner because it’s late,” she said defensively.
“No, you were going to try and heard me into something so you didn’t have to call it a date to Amelia,” I said bluntly. It was rare that Penny even gave someone a second look, she was a woman focused on her family and her bar. Something I admired because she knew where her priorities were. “Was it that old guy from the bar?” I asked trying to remember what she called him.
Penny gasped and smacked me with her free hand not on the wheel. “He’s only four years older than me!” She said shooting me a nasty glare.
“I never said you were old; you look like you aren’t a day over 45,” I said smacking her back softly on her leg. “I swear it’s like fucking witchcraft, I’ve been half expecting you to hit me over the head and drain my blood for some sort of youth spell since you started hanging out with me,” I snickered. “What was his name… Paul… Patrick… Pete! Pete like the moss!” I said finally piecing together the fragments from the previous night. I had only been half paying attention, more caught up in Bob than anyone else that night.
Penny grimaced as I guessed his name. “Oh my god, Pete and Penny, you guys have matching names!” I cooed making a kissy face at her as I laughed at the thought. “He knew you, you let him flirt, so tell me about Pete,” I said leaning on the center console to gaze at her.
“You want to play this game? Because I have Bob’s number and the ability to text him right now to meddle,” she threatened glancing at me with another grin. “Hell, I know his friends he was with too, just try me,” she warned with a threatening undertone.
That was the problem knowing the bartender, she knew everyone else too. “What do you mean you know his friends?” I asked narrowing my eyes at her, no longer feeling like I had the upper hand. I remembered some of the people I had seen with Bob, that cocky asshole, crisp cut man, the aloha shirt guy, the gorgeous woman, her pretty boy friend, and the mustache guy all were around Bob that night. No one besides that pretty woman paid attention to him, but that cocky asshole had come up and ordered beers after he noticed for the group.
“I’m a bartender in a military town, I see some of these guys all the time during a deployment and they rotate through often. Plus, some of them are legacy kids so I know them and their family, take Bradley for example,” she pointed out like I was supposed to know who the hell that was.
“I need more to go on than a name, I don’t talk to these people Pen, I observe,” I reminded her.
“The cute one with the goofy shirts and mustache,” she said like it was obvious.
“Aloha shirt guy, got it,” I muttered trying to tack on his name to the description so that if god forbid, I ever ran into him, I wouldn’t call him Aloha Shirt Guy.
“Exactly, him and Bob were in that group by the pool table,” she tapped her temple with a smirk. “I know many people, you would be wise to remember that,” she warned.
I groaned and flipped her off, “I just was asking about Pete, I wanted to know what the story was with that guy,” I huffed at her.
“You can pry when you stop being such a chickenshit,” she countered. It was true, I was often times hugging the wall because being around people in large social situations was stressful. I never quite knew how to act or what to say, worried it would be the wrong thing. It was easier when there were reasons for interacting, say a symposium or convention. Having a reason to gather with similar interests always made for easier conversation. You could ask about someone’s research and have a three-hour long conversation.
Outside of that? I was useless, I really struggled out in the wild and not in the confines of academia. It was a miracle that Penny even kept me around, she had been the one to adopt me though it felt like. Seeing a lost kid all alone in a new city, she could smell the loneliness on me and alcohol always made it easier to forget to think through all possible conversation combinations to try and socialize like a normal human.
I considered for a moment, especially with the looming prospect of tomorrow where she would be throwing Bob and I together like a puppeteer. I knew that I couldn’t get out of it and it helped that I would be there for the specific reason of helping Amelia’s friends with their biology final study session and proofreading their reports, but it wouldn’t completely keep me out of the line of fire because Bob would be there and I would be sober… with Penny running her wingman interference.
“If I talk to Bob, will you tell me about Pete?” I bargained looking at her side profile while she drove.
“You need to get his number yourself, and then I’ll answer any questions you want about Pete,” Penny challenged. Now that was a bet, I couldn’t resist that sort of information. I already had to pry pretty hard to get anything about her ex-husband, most of it was from Amelia who loved to snitch on her mom. I was naturally curious and I hated that Penny knew exactly how to work me.
“You’re on,” I said after a moment of weighing my options. I could do this; he worked on base. I could work it in like a professional connection.
I just prayed I could pull it off as a bold faced lie.