Wild Fiction

James let out a large guffaw and then tried to suppress his smile as he spoke. ‘There was no difference between them at all. I honestly thought that I was having sex with Juliet. Everything she did, each moan, each movement, each shudder was exactly the same. Only afterwards when it was over and she called me Sebastian did I realise the mistake. By then it was too late.’
Conrad laughed. ‘In some ways I’m sorry that Don’t Sleep with your Brother’s Girlfriend was never published. I would love to relive those wild carefree days.’
James nodded, a smile still stretched across his face.
Conrad disappeared into the cabin and came back out a few minutes later. ‘Change the bearing to zero four five, drop the speed to five knots and give me the apparent wind direction.’
James corrected to starboard by twenty-five degrees to make the bearing forty-five magnetic and eased off the throttles until they were doing five knots. Pressing the scroll button on the instrumentation he found the apparent wind direction and speed and gave it to Conrad.
‘Right you are,’ Conrad said. ‘I think it’s time for a little bit of spinnaker action. Let’s get Rebecca behind the wheel while we put it up.’
James pulled the halyard down and wound it around the drum winch while Conrad fed the long white spinnaker sock from the fore-locker. Once the guy and spinnaker sheets were secure he ran the sock to the head of the mast and the blue and red spinnaker puffed out in front of the boat like an oversized parachute. The boat surged forward under the power of the spinnaker and they raced down the following swell.
Conrad and James rushed back to the cockpit and flicked through the figures on the instruments.
‘Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen knots,’ Conrad said as the figures kept changing with the increase in speed.
‘We’re flying,’ James shouted and as the hulls started to hum in a speed vibration. He pulled back the throttles and killed the engines.
Rebecca was fighting with the steering wheel as the following waves pushed the bow from side to side. ‘It’s difficult to keep her on forty-five,’ she said raising her voice above the sound of the waves and wind.
‘Within twenty degrees on either side is fine,’ James said. ‘If you get too tired let one of us know and we’ll take over.’
‘I’m okay right now,’ she said with an exhilarated smile on her face.