Wild Fiction

The boat had made the turn and James straightened her out and gunned the engines forward. The current was still pulling them quickly to the side and they hit the coral head with a loud crunching noise. The boat juddered and shook but did not stop. The hull slid along the coral with a loud scratching noise.
Rebecca was hanging onto the port stay and staring down into the water. She could see streaks of blue bottom paint on the green and red coral as the boat slid against it. The water behind the port transom was churning wildly as James revved the port engine full forward and the starboard engine full reverse to try and pull them away from the reef. Just as quickly as they had struck the reef the scraping stopped and the boat surged away and back into the open part of the channel.
As soon as they were away from that perilous corner, the sea became smoother and the current that had been pushing them into the reef disappeared, blocked by the reef they were now behind.
‘Damn,’ Conrad said coming back to the cockpit. ‘That hurt.’
‘What happened?’ Rebecca asked with large round eyes. ‘Did you hurt yourself?’
‘No, the boat. That must have hurt her.’
‘I hope she’s not holed,’ James’s face was ashen.
‘We’ll check her as soon as we’ve dropped the anchor. Let’s get into that river mouth and into the lagoon.’
‘That must be the entrance,’ James said pointing at two large trees hanging over the water. ‘It looks like those trees are obscuring the view to the river mouth.’
‘The entrance is much bigger than that on the chart,’ Conrad said. ‘I’ll get a bearing on it. Rebecca, can you stand on top of the saloon? Hold onto the boom and keep an eye out for any coral heads or shallow spots and tell James as soon as you see anything dangerous.’
The sun had come out and the clouds were clearing. She took off her raincoat and threw it onto the bench before climbing onto the roof and straddling the boom. ‘I can’t see anything,’ she yelled down to James.
‘What do you mean? You can’t see anything at all or you can’t see any danger?’
‘No danger.’
Conrad came back out and focussed the binoculars on the two trees that James had pointed to. ‘You’re right, that’s the entrance according to the map bearing. It must have grown over. Let’s go in slowly.’
‘You can see it now,’ James said. ‘Look, there’s a waterway between the trees. I’m going to motor straight up it.’