Wild Fiction

‘What do you think I’m going to do with it? Send it back to England on the plane we’ve just arrived on?’ she was shaking her head at him, her mouth slightly open.
He smiled at her and said nothing as the boot was loaded and then wired shut with a rusty coat hanger. Julius took them to the marina and pointed at the yacht. She stretched out in the water, fifty-five feet of sleek white fibreglass with blue trim. Waves from a passing motor boat made her hulls bob gently in the water. Printed in large red capital letters along the side of the hull was the name SENGA NA LENGA. Her deck sparkled in the afternoon sun, supporting a tall mast, the sails tied.
‘She do twenty knots on a good day,’ Julius said.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Rebecca said.
‘She a cat,’ Julius said. ‘You take her in shallow water. She good in shallow water. She good for sail in Caribbean.’
Conrad and James were already on board examining the boat. James had thrown himself onto the netted trampoline that stretched between the two hulls at the bow of the boat. Lying there, he stared up at the mast. ‘Hey, she even has radar,’ he shouted pointing at a round black box attached half way up the mast.
‘You leave now to make sandbank,’ Julius said. ‘Tide high now and plenty water over sandbank. You leave too late and get stuck on sandbank. You go now.’
‘Okay,’ Conrad said putting out his arm to take a bag from Julius. ‘Are all the charts we need on the computer?’
‘Everything you need in there. Computer hook up to GPS and everything,’ Julius said. ‘I even get port clearance for you.’
‘Marvellous,’ Conrad replied.
Conrad took control and made short work of departure procedures. In under half an hour they had cast off from their slip and were heading for the port’s narrow entrance and the buoys that marked the channel. Conrad called the port captain on the VHF radio and discovered that Julius had cleared everything for them as he had said. Perhaps I underestimated him, Conrad thought to himself.
James took the helm and gunned the large twin engines at full speed once they had cleared the mouth of the river that formed the harbour. Conrad turned on the computer and brought up the navigation software. A course had already been plotted for them but he nevertheless confirmed each way point and hazard and the estimated time to arrival. Rebecca did not waste any time putting on a bikini and making herself comfortable on an oversized towel in the netting at the front of the boat.