Molokai Reef (32 page)

“
Yeah,
OK. First thing when I get back to
Ferrity
, I’ll dump
the erotica DVDs and erase the Internet cookies. Now, what did you
find on THEIR computers?”

Flyn
chuckled, Kara stared at Gybe.

“
First,
Ray was a regular visitor to at least seven chat rooms where the
topic was sex and I don’t mean the on-top, in the dark, done in
a minute, missionary method. Some of the sites were pretty hinky –
even by your norms, Gybe.”

Gybe
glared at the ‘goose.

He
took the hint and continued. “I found a trail of e-mails
between Ray and another woman – or at least she represented
herself as a woman in the e-mails. Couldn’t find evidence of a
face-to-face meeting, so I assume they met on-line.”

“
How
serious was it?” Gybe asked. “After all, I suspect Dear
Gabby spends most of her time responding to letters from spouses
distraught over their husbands web-amours.”

“
Abby,
not Gabby. And besides, I think she’s dead.” Kara
corrected.

“
Whatever.
How many women are you courting on-line ‘goose?”

Mongoose
assumed it was a rhetorical question. “Anyway, Ray and this
woman were getting pretty serious. They had planned to meet in Cabo
San Lucas in the spring.”

“
Was
it Jean?”

Mongoose
shook his head sideways. “Ray had a separate folder of
correspondence with Jean.”

Gybe
wondered if Ray’s widow, the one who put the house up for sale
and left town so abruptly, could have found out about his Internet
hobby. But if the on-line affair wasn’t with Jean, then how
did Jean end up sharing the underwater death condo with Ray?

“
What
else?”

Mongoose
waited while another party of diners walked past their table. He
explained that the common link between Jean and Ray was a project
called ‘caramel corn.’ Beyond the e-mails, he could find
no reference to the caramel corn project in other documents on their
computers.

“
As
you recall, I’m getting a daily copy of Les’s files.
There is no reference to the caramel corn project in his files.”

“
Do
you think that Ray and Jean were working on the project outside of
their work at SynCorn and GeNesRus?” Flyn surmised.

“
Looks
that way. I’ve arranged a return to GeNesRus’s computers
later today. If I don’t find anything about caramel corn and
there is nothing at SynCorn, then what else could it be?”

Keali‘i
returned with their lunches. The four ate in silence as each one
processed the new information.

Gybe
spoke first. “Did you find out anything about the project?
What was it about?”

“
There
were a lot of technical notes. I’ve sent them to a friend on
the mainland – I think I told you about him the other day.”

Gybe
nodded.

“
My
friend on the mainland did a quick scan of the notes. He promised a
layman’s translation by tomorrow.”

After
lunch at the hotel, they returned to the harbor. Each sailor headed
for his or her boat. Kara landed aboard
Ferrity
with Gybe.

She
sat on the bow and read while Gybe worked at his laptop under the
awning in the cockpit. The awning, a sheet of fabric spanning from
the mast to the stern and from port to starboard, shaded the cockpit
and cooled the saloon. The persistent ocean breeze provided air
conditioning. He was searching the Internet when he espied a boat
entering the harbor. The middle-aged couple anchored their sloop
mauka of the existing boats. Her draft must be shallow, Gybe
thought.

Gybe
had entered five hundred words against his daily goal of at least one
thousand when he glimpsed a dinghy depart the new vessel and head
towards
Makani
. When a new vessel enters an anchorage, it is
common for the newcomers to visit the other vessels. Courtesy
dictated that you only approach a vessel when people were visible on
deck.

Less
than two minutes later, the dinghy motored away from
Makani
and set a course for
Ferrity
. Gybe glanced forward and noted
that Kara was topless. It wasn’t his job to warn her of the
incoming guests.

In
the dinghy, the man cut the engine, allowing the small boat to glide
towards
Ferrity
.

“
Hello,”
said the woman.

“
Ahoy.”
Gybe responded. “Toss me your painter.”

Gybe
snubbed the line around a cleat, but didn’t invite them aboard.
From experience, he had learned to evaluate callers before welcoming
them into his home.

Hearing
the exchange, Kara donned a T-shirt and joined Gybe at the stern
where he made introductions.

Discussing
the name of one’s boat was always an icebreaker when meeting
new cruisers. The terrestrial ‘where do you work?’ or
‘what do you do?’ had little meaning in a remote
anchorage.

Mikanele
was the name of the sloop that brought the couple. They said it
meant ‘missionary.’ They were from Utah and had
purchased the boat three weeks ago on O‘ahu where the boat had
been moored at La Mariana Sailing Club near the top of Ke‘ehi
Lagoon. Crossing Kaiwi Channel between O‘ahu and Moloka‘i
had been their first sail in open water. “Took us three
tries,” said the man. “We turned back the first two
times because it was too rough.”

“
Where
are you off to next?” Kara asked.

“
We
plan to sail to the Big Island for a few days. We’ll check in
with the church in Kailua.” The woman answered.

“
From
there,” the man continued, “we want to sail to Christmas
Island. In one of our storage lockers, we have more than three
hundred bibles that we need to distribute.”

“
So,
you plan to convert the heathens?” Gybe tried to balance the
sarcasm with the politeness but failed miserably.

“
Well,
I wouldn’t put it that way. But, we are bound to spread the
word of the Gospel.” The man said as the woman nodded.

“
Hate
to run, but I have a deadline to meet.” Gybe picked up the
laptop. “Maybe we’ll see you around town.” His
eyes signaled Kara to release the painter.

Once
the couple was out of earshot, Kara spoke first. “That wasn’t
very polite, Gybe.”

“
Hah,
polite, those people and people like them are worse than PCB’s,
nuclear waste, and greenhouse gases combined.”

“
You
seem a bit ambivalent?”

“
Religious
nut is redundant. How can anyone support a corporation whose logo is
some dead guy stapled to a tree?” Gybe was on a rant. “Do
you know that these islands may very well have been paradise before
the arrival of the pious con-men? Picture this. Native Hawaiians
raised their own food and they needed no imports. According to the
journals of Captain Cook and other early explorers, the women freely
gave sex. It was their culture. But, the good church wants you to
have sex in the dark and not too often. The women must cover their
breasts. Hogwash! Today’s Hawaiians and South Pacific
cultures now think western religion is part of THEIR culture. They,
the missionaries, have done more damage around the world than all the
wars combined.”

He
paused before adding, “Remember when Bush the Bumbler
identified the axis of evil? He listed Korea, Iraq, and some other
countries. Well, in my opinion, the axis of evil runs through Mecca,
Jerusalem, the Vatican, and Salt Lake City.”

Kara
handed Gybe a cold beer, watched him perform a high-speed download,
and then offered him the second bottle. “Feel better?”

60

The
skipper of a boat at anchor sleeps lightly. Gybe awoke with Kara
nestled into his left shoulder. Something was different. The boat’s
motion was wrong. The tickle of waves against the hull had changed.
He slid his arm from beneath Kara and shimmied from the berth.

A
ten-knot breeze chilled his bare skin as he stepped into the cockpit.
A few days before the new moon, a crescent sliver hung in the
eastern sky. Bright stars peppered the remainder of the celestial
sphere. Aries dropped through the western sky. Triangulating from
the pier and a light in the canoe hale ashore, Gybe determined that
Ferrity
was drifting.

He
hurried forward to check the anchor chain. The chain was slack.
When the wind pushed
Ferrity
against her anchor, the chain
should tighten. If the anchor were dragging Gybe should be able to
feel a vibration in the chain. He felt nothing but the slack chain.
The reef was approaching and the boat was too close to explore the
anchor problem.

Gybe
jogged back to the cockpit, grazing a toe on a chainplate, and
started the engine. Kara had awakened to his loud footsteps on the
foredeck and the cursing about his toe. She stood in the
companionway, her hair stuck straight out on the left side of her
head. “What’s wrong?”

Ignoring
her, Gybe shifted the transmission into forward. The rattling sound
beneath the boat startled him. He shifted the transmission back into
neutral. The reef was less than twenty yards away and approaching
fast. The dinghy trailed several feet astern at the end of her
painter.

In
one fluid motion, he jerked the painter to bring the dinghy toward
the stern and leapt over the lifelines. Balanced against the
inflatable tubes, he grabbed the starter rope and pulled the outboard
motor to life. He slammed the shift lever into reverse and twisted
the throttle. Only the painter held the dinghy to the stern of
Ferrity
. Gradually,
Ferrity
slowed her forward motion
and started backing as the nearly ten horsepower outboard struggled
against the twelve-ton
Ferrity
.

Gybe
knew that this was not the way to tow
Ferrity
, but his home
was too close to the reef to rig a proper tow.

Confident
that he had the immediate problem under control and with
Ferrity
well back from the reef, he told Kara to go forward and release the
other anchor. She ran to the foredeck and studied how to release the
anchor. Gybe was too far away and the noise from the outboard
precluded any questions.

She
pulled the stowing pin from the bow roller and pushed the anchor
over. Holding onto the chain, she fed out forty feet of chain before
coming to the chain/rope splice. From then on, the anchor rode was
three quarter inch nylon rope.
Ferrity
continued to move
backwards.

Gybe
signaled her to stop so Kara wrapped the rode around a cleat and
walked to the stern.

He
moved the dink forward and tied it securely to the starboard quarter
– starboard side near the stern. This was the preferred
maneuvering position. The outboard idled as Gybe watched
Ferrity
swing around and face the wind. When he was satisfied that the
second anchor was holding, he killed the engine and climbed aboard.
He walked forward and checked Kara’s work.

“
Good
job,” he hugged Kara, “thanks.”

As
the adrenaline ebbed and the sweat dried, their unclothed bodies
cooled. Kara and Gybe dropped back into the cabin. Gybe offered her
one of his sweatshirts before slipping into another one. In the
galley, he sat a pot of water on the stove and lit the burner.

“
What
the hell was that all about?” Kara asked.

Gybe
explained the best that he could, but until he recovered the first
anchor chain, he wouldn’t know what had happened. In the
cockpit, they sat quietly, drank the hot coffee, and watched the
incoming light of dawn wash across the harbor.

Using
the electric windlass, Gybe retrieved the errant anchor. Or, at
least he tried. The chain ground around the gypsy head and fell into
the chain locker. He heard the chain bang against the hull just
before he heard the windlass strain under load. Immediately, he
raised his foot from the windlass’s UP button.

Peering
over the side, he saw the chain lead back under the boat, tight
against the hull. Nothing made any sense. Angry, he pulled off the
sweatshirt and dove over the side.

Amidships,
he surfaced for air, then disappeared again. The splash had brought
Kara on deck. She studied the water as Gybe surfaced for air then
dove back beneath the boat.

Near
the stern, a sputter of water was followed by a curse involving the
sexual union of men and swine. Kara watched as a mumbling Gybe
returned to the cockpit.

Kara
tried to say something, but the fixation of anger on his face quieted
her comments. He pulled scuba gear from the starboard cockpit locker
and returned to the water.

Mongoose
cut the outboard and Flyn shipped the oars several yards away from
Ferrity
. They knew Gybe was in the water with his scuba gear.
Kara invited them aboard.

“
We
heard something about pigs?” Mongoose puzzled. “And
Flyn says you guys were making a lot of noise before sunup. Did your
diaphragm fall over the side?”

Kara
glared.