Wild Fiction

Half an hour later Conrad started the engines and Rebecca pointed the boat into the wind while they dropped the sails. ‘Okay, your bearing is eighty magnetic,’ Conrad said once the sails were down.
‘Can anyone see a break in the whitecaps?’ James asked. He had taken over the steering wheel and was squinting pensively ahead of the boat. ‘According to the electronic maps it’s a straight line to the leftmost point from here.’
‘Straight ahead,’ Rebecca said. ‘You can see that the waves aren’t forming if you look straight ahead.’
‘That looks very narrow,’ James said. ‘And beyond that I can see more whitecaps.’
‘We have to do a zigzag in front of that. A ninety-degree turn to starboard and then a ninety-degree turn to port a short while later. It’s going to be a little tricky,’ Conrad came back. He had the binoculars to his eyes and was sweeping them across the water in front of him. ‘Can you slow down a bit James?’ He asked.
‘I can but it looks like we have a few knots of current pushing us sideways so we’re going to have to be careful we don’t get pushed too far off course by going too slowly.’
Conrad glanced at the depth gauge. ‘Golly, it’s only fifty feet. I’m going to go up on the fore-deck to look out for hidden obstacles.’ He ran up to the bow and stood in the netting holding onto the fore-stay and staring straight ahead.
Pulling the wheel from side to side James aimed the boat at the clear patch of water that marked the first sharp turn into the reef. ‘Our GPS speed has suddenly picked up to seventeen knots,’ he shouted forward to Conrad. ‘Our speed log is only reading five knots which means we have a twelve knot tail current pushing us through this channel. There’s no way out of this now.’
‘Okay,’ Conrad shouted back. ‘When I give the signal, turn ninety degrees to starboard. We’re going to make the turn about fifty yards before that reef ahead.’
‘Depth is now twenty feet,’ James shouted back. ‘Eighteen feet, fifteen, twelve.’
‘Now,’ Conrad shouted waving his right arm as he did so.
James threw the wheel all the way to the right and put the starboard engine into full reverse. Slowly the bow swung around.
‘Turn, turn, turn,’ Conrad yelled from the front of the boat.
‘I have it all the way,’ James shouted back. ‘The current’s pushing us.’
‘We’re going to hit that coral head. Brace yourselves.’