The Inside Passage (Ted Higuera Series Book 1) (9 page)

The Straits of Juan de Fuca

Ted watched his
friend slowly self-destruct.

“Goddamn it.”
Chris face turned bright red. “I thought we got all the air out of the lines.”
He slammed his hand into the steering pedestal. “Shit.” He waved his hand in
the air and sucked on his index finger. A trickle of blood dripped from his
lip.

Ted shook his head
at his friend’s childish display of temper and silently climbed back down into
the cabin to begin the process of bleeding the fuel lines again.

Chris cussed
creatively on deck as Ted bled the lines until the engine fired. 

Ted grabbed a
couple of long necks and climbed back up to the cockpit. Chris steered the boat
for about ten minutes before the engine died. Going through the ritual again,
Ted got the engine to turn over. Again, it only ran about ten minutes.

The three sat
motionless in the cockpit for a long minute. Ted finally looked around at the
flat ocean, then looked back at Meagan. He saw impatience in her face.

“
Goddamn
it, I knew I wasn’t ready for this trip.” Chris turned from the steering wheel,
both hands on his hips. “I don’t know why I ever let Dad talk me into it.”

Ted and Meagan
exchanged glances. For the first time, Ted felt that she was on his side.

“Cowboy up, Nancy.
We’re here.” He pointed towards the cockpit floor. “We gotta get there.” He
pointed towards the dim outline of San Juan Island. “We just need to figure out
how we’re gonna do it.”

“I’m giving up,”
Chris threw his hands in the air after two more tries. “We’re going to have to
sail in.”

“How long’s that
going to take?” Meagan asked.

“Fuck, I don’t
know.” Chris looked up at the mast-head wind direction indicator.

Ted read the
despair in his face.

“If the wind
doesn’t pick up,” Chris’s spoke in a low monotone. “We could be out here for
the rest of our lives.”

“We didn’t have
this kind of problems on my Dad’s boat,” Meagan said.

“Hey, the
Defiant’s
an old boat,” Chris snapped. “What can I say? Let’s unfurl the jib.”

The light breeze
was just barely enough to billow out the sails.

“Are we having fun
yet?” Meagan asked.

Chris scowled at
her. “Yeah, this is fun.” He pointed towards at the knot meter on the after
cabin bulkhead.  “We’re doing about two knots.”

This was not a
good time to pick on Chris. Ted could see the steam venting from his ears.

“We’re at slack
tide now.” Chris clung onto the wheel, his lips pursed into a narrow line.

Ted thought that
Chris was going to leave impressions in the stainless steel from his iron grip.

“When the flood
begins,” Chris continued, “we should pick up another couple of knots with the
current.”

“How far do we
hafta go?” Ted asked.

Chris looked
towards the distant San Juan Island. “I’d say about twenty miles.”

“At four knots,
that’s going to take us five hours.”

“Yeah, sounds
right.”

“Jesus, Ted could
swim faster.”

“Let me hold your
shoes for you.” Meagan held out her hand.

Ted wanted to
smack her.

“Maybe we should
call the Coast Guard,” Meagan whined. “Can it get any worse than this?”

“Shit, it
can
get worse.” Chris’ eyes looked up and to the right.

The crazy
hermano
was accessing his photographic memory.

“When we get
there, we still have to pick our way through Cattle Pass.”

“Cattle Pass?”
Meagan looked forward towards the distant islands.

“It’s the opening
between San Juan and Lopez Islands.” Chris’ anger seemed to drain away. “The
current can run up to eight or nine knots through the pass. If we’re going
against the tide, the boat can be going full speed ahead and still be going
backwards over the bottom.” Chris pointed at the far-away island across the
Straits. “If we don’t make Cattle Pass before the tide changes, we’ll have to
sit out here in the Straits for six hours until the tide changes again.” He
wiped a drop of moisture from the corner of his eye. “Damn that engine.”

“Hey, dude, it
could be worse.” Ted placed a hand on Chris’ shoulder. “We got food, we got
cerveza
,
we got tunes.” He cast an icy stare at Meagan. “The only thing we ain’t got is
my hat.”

****

Port McNeil, Canada

This has got to
be the God-forsaken end of the world.
Ahmad sat on a hatch cover looking at
the fishing village clinging to the shoreline as Hani piloted the
Valkyrie
into the harbor.
The small towns along the B.C. coast were all beginning
to look alike. The rock break waters, the small marinas, the ferry landings.
Tiny stores and a cluster of clapboard houses connected to the outside world by
ferry boats and telephone lines. Ahmad had spent his whole life in the city.
These tiny hamlets seemed isolated and dreary.

It took the cell
three days to make their way the two-hundred and fifty miles north from Vancouver. As the sun began to sink low over the hills to the west, the
Valkyrie
slowly inched her way around the breakwater and into the marina. 

Ahmad stood on the
foredeck with the bow line as Hani brought them up to the float. The short,
dark Mohammed waited on the dock to receive their lines.

“I have the
truck,” Mohammed told Yasim as they tied up.

“It is good one?”

“It’s not much to
look at, but it runs well and will serve our purposes.”

“And the Sea
Loader?” Ahmad knew that this was central to their plan.

“That was a little
harder to find. It cost much more than we planned.”

“No matter, as
long as you got it,” Yasim said to Mohammed as they tidied up the dock lines.

“We’ll stick out
like sore thumbs here.” Ahmad looked around the docks at the other fishing
boats. “But at least we’re far away from the authorities.”

“If we go about
our business quietly,” Mohammed replied, “no one should pay much attention to
us.”

“We buy the
materials we need, then move to unoccupied island as planned,” Yasim
interrupted in heavily accented English. “Qayyum, join us later.” 

****

Around two the
next morning, Ahmad heard shouting on the dock.

“Hey, rag heads,
you in there?”

Ahmad, whose bunk
was in the deck house, looked out the darkened window. Three roughly dressed
men stumbled up the dock.

“We’re talkin’ to
you, you lousy terrorist sons a bitches,” shouted the small one.

There was the
clang of beer cans flying against the deck house. The three ripped fresh cans
from a six pack and began downing them noisily.

“You Allah worshipers
in there? C’mon out. We want to have a little talk with ya.”

“I feared that
this would happen.” Mohammed was at Ahmad’s side. “Kalil, keep down.” Kalil
appeared with a gaff hook in his hands. Mohammed pulled his K-bar fighting
knife from its sheath.

“We must remember
mission.” Yasim said as he and Hani joined the group. “Call no attention to
ourselves.”

“We call attention
to ourselves just by being here” Kalil looked out the window. “We don’t have to
put up with this.”

“Hey, you bloody
A-rabs, c’mon out an’ fight.”

Ahmad felt the
movement of someone boarding the boat. His heart stopped. Would they have to
defend themselves? The small, loud one was standing on their rail.

“Here’s what I
think of you,” he shouted as he unzipped his pants and sprayed the deck.

“These are
Americans.” Ahmad sweat heavily, despite the cool night air. “I saw them on a
boat from Salmon Bay when I went up to the harbor master’s office.”

“Whatsa matter?
You camel-fuckers chicken? Gowan back to Iraq where ya came from.”

“They’ll pay for
this.” Mohammed brandished his knife. “Allah be praised, they’ll pay. . .”

The Straits of Juan de Fuca

The
Defiant
crept towards Cattle Pass as Ted watched the sun sink in the west. They were
going to miss their chance to negotiate the pass with the tide. 

“OK, guys.” Chris’
voice was full of frustration. “We need to try firing up the engine again. We
have to make it through before the tide turns.”

Ted went below to
bleed the fuel lines. Chris pushed the starter button and the engine fired. As
they came opposite the gong buoy marking the Salmon Banks, the engine petered
out again.

“Jesus Christ.”
Chris ran his hands through his long blonde hair. “We can’t just sit here. It’s
too dangerous. When the tide changes, it’ll run us up on the rocks.”

“We gotta bleed
the engine again, dude.” Ted began to lose his normal unshakeable demeanor. “If
we can only get it to run ten minutes at a time, we can still creep forward.”
He dropped down into the cabin again. “OK, turn her over,” he shouted up to
Chris.

The engine fired.
Ted washed his hands and climbed back up to the cockpit.

“I think that’s Long Island over there.” Meagan, holding the chart in one hand, pointed to a small island
off the end of the much larger Lopez Island.

“Yeah.” Chris
replied. “There’s a bunch of rocks between Long Island and King’s Point. We’ve
got to stay out of that bay.”

With the engine
running, they made seven knots as they moved northward into the pass.

The engine died
again as Cattle Point loomed to their port side and Davis Point was close to
starboard.

“Christ!” Chris
spat.

Ted started to
head below to bleed the fuel lines again, then felt a slight movement of air
against his face.

“Wind!”

“It’s the Venturi effect.”
Chris brightened up

“The
whaty-whoosy?” Ted looked at him like he lost his mind.

“Haul out the
jib.” Chris barked out orders. “We’re going to be able to tack through the pass.”
The return of the wind seemed to rejuvenate him. “The Venturi effect. As the
breeze moves down San Juan Channel, it gets bottled up where the two islands
come together. It has to speed up to get through the pass. We’ll have enough
air to sail through.”

The breeze
freshened. Chris held the
Defiant
as close to the wind as she would
sail.

“Chris, we’re
heading straight for the island,” Meagan’s voice wavered.

****

Port McNeil, Canada

The next morning
Ahmad saw no traces of the three drunken Americans. After morning prayers, he
rolled up his
prayer rug
and went about his
day. Resentment seethed in him as he hosed and scrubbed down the deck that the
small American had violated.
How could these men behave like swine, worse
than swine?

The others went to
work removing the seine net from the after deck. Next they removed the huge
drum and hydraulic equipment used to haul in the net. They dumped the net and
drum in an open field with piles of fishing gear from other boats. Ahmad hoped
it would go unnoticed. Many boats stored their gear there as they changed from
one fishery to another.

With the deck
cleared, Ahmad began ripping the bin boards out of the fish hold under Hani’s
direction, leaving a vast, empty space below decks.

When the hold was
empty, Ahmad took the battered old Ford pickup up the street to the sheet metal
shop. Praise be to Allah, they had what he needed. By late morning the crew was
stowing long rails of extruded aluminum, sheets of steel, hydraulic pumps and
hoses and various mechanical parts in the hold next to the boxes of electronic
parts that had come aboard in Horseshoe Bay.

Ahmad couldn’t
find an acetylene torch and welding gear in Port McNeil, so Yasim sent Mohammed
to Nanaimo to finish their purchases. After several days of hard work, Ahmad
and his friends began bringing aboard groceries and stores for their mission.
Their final acts before leaving were to hoist barrels of diesel oil into the
hold and lash the pickup down on the afterdeck.

“This boat is old,
but very strong. I believe that it will hold together for our purposes,” Hani
said, a grin of satisfaction spreading across his face.

“Where’ll we be
going?” Ahmad asked Yasim, looking through Hani’s pile of charts on the chart
table.

“I cannot say at
this time,” Yasim replied. “Only that will be required to go far out to sea.”

Cattle Pass, San Juan Island

“Chris, we’re
going to run into that island.” Megan grabbed Chris’ arm.

Chris held his
course for one of the biggest, rockiest island’s Ted had ever seen.

“Don’t worry.”
Chris smiled. “We’ll never get that far. We’d pile up on Whale Rocks long
before we got to the island.”

Ted swallowed and
kept his calm. “That makes me feel better, smart ass.”

“Prepare to come
about.” Chris switched to command mode. The
Defiant
charged along at six
knots, directly towards Whale Rocks. “I’ll get as close to the rocks as I can,
then we’ll tack and head back across the wind.”

“I don’t suppose
it’d hurt if we had three-sixteenths of an inch to spare?” Ted watched the
distance between them and the rocks rapidly diminish. They were close enough
that he could see the fronds of kelp floating on the surface, the wavelets
crashing against the shore.

“Shouldn’t we tack
now?” Meagan’s voice quivered. “We’re getting awfully close.”

“Hold on, we still
have plenty of water.” Chris held his course.

“You’re going to
have to make this sharp,” Chris warned.

Ted counted in his
head.
Uno, dos, tres . . .
When he reached
diez
, Chris said
“Ready about . . . helm’s a lee.” Chris spun the wheel and the
Defiant
responded instantly, wheeling into the wind.

Ted started to
haul in on the port jib sheet.

“Hold on! Not yet.
Hold it . . . hold it . . .” Chris’ voice had an edge to it.

The sails
fluttered wildly. Ted thought that the boat was going to shake herself apart.
The bow came into the wind, then crossed the wind’s eye.

“Now! Let go and
haul!”

Meagan flipped her
jib sheet off of the starboard winch. Ted hauled like a mad man on the port
sheet. The huge Genoa jib began to fill on the port side of the boat. It
billowed out like a great parachute.

Ted hauled with
all of his strength. Finally, the power of the wind was too strong for him to
overcome. He grabbed the double-handed winch handle and began to crank.

“Keep her coming,”
Chris advised. “Bring her in as much as you can. There, that’s good.”

Ted looked astern.
Already the vicious looking rocks were fifty yards behind them. The whole
episode had taken less than thirty seconds. The
Defiant
settled down on
her new course and charged along towards Goose Island.

They repeated the
maneuver three more times until Chris brought the
Defiant
opposite Cape San Juan.
Santa Maria
, they were through the pass. As they entered the
protected waters of San Juan channel high islands blanketed them. The wind all
but died.

****

The wind barely
billowed out the sails. Sometimes, the tide carried them backwards, sometimes
Chris managed to find enough wind or little eddies in the current to inch
forward.

Ted didn’t have
the patience for this. He sat on the cockpit coaming watching the sun paint the
western sky brilliant orange. In his present mood, he didn’t appreciate the
magnificence of the scenery. Then a slight puff ruffled the surface.

“It’s finally
here.” Chris looked up at the sails. “We’re going to catch the evening breeze.”

Gracias a Dios.
The wind picked up until the
Defiant
surged along at seven knots.
They charged around Brown Island and entered Friday Harbor like they were
headed to a four-alarm fire.

“Let’s get the
main in,” Chris shouted over the wind. “We have to sail into the dock, and it’s
easier to douse the jib.”

Ted followed Chris
unto the cabin roof and helped furled the sail while Meagan took the helm. Once
done, Chris descended into the cabin and spoke into the VHF radio.

 “Port of Friday Harbor, Port of Friday Harbor, this is
Defiant
.” Chris’ voice came up
through the open companionway.

“
Defiant
,
Friday Harbor. Let’s switch to channel 65.”

Chris turned the
radio dial to channel 65 and broadcast again.

‘”We’re a forty-foot
sailboat drawing seven feet of water. We have a slip reserved for tonight.”

“Roger that
Defiant
.
You’re in D-36.”

“We’re coming in
under sail. Our engine is out. Can we sail into D-36”

“Negative. Why
don’t you tie up to the Customs dock and we’ll figure out how to hand line you
over.”

“Roger, Friday Harbor.
Defiant
back to one-six.”

With the sun gone,
the lights in the marina produced more than enough light to illuminate their
path. Chris brought the
Defiant
into the harbor and rounded up opposite
the Customs dock.

“Ted, get the jib
in,” Chris roared. “Meagan, stand by with the spring line.”

The boat’s
momentum carried them up alongside the float as Ted hauled in the jib. Meagan
took the spring line and leapt over a four-foot expanse of water.
Damn, she
looks like an Olympic broad jumper.
She looped her line around a cleat and
brought the heavy boat to a stop. Chris grabbed the stern line and jumped for
the dock. Ted tossed the bow line to Meagan.

“Well done,
Laddie.” A stooped old man, with a Meerschaum pipe clinched between his teeth,
clapped his hands. “Yez made that look easy.”

He looks like
some character out of an old movie.
Ted studied the old man up and down. He
sported a full white beard and a Tam O’Shanter covered his white hair. In spite
of the warm weather, he wore jeans and a thread-bare blue sweater. A gray
bearded Scotty terrier sat at his feet.

“Thank you.” Chris
coiled down the dock line. “Now I have to get her around the float and onto D
dock.”

“That’s no
problem,” the old man said in his heavy Scottish brogue. “We c’n hand line her
around. Do yez have a hundred-foot line aboard?”

Chris paused for a
moment. “Let’s see, we have a six-hundred-foot line we use to tie to a tree
when we’re anchored in a tight spot.”

“Good-oh. I have
me skiff in the water. I c’n take the free end across to D dock for yez, then
we’ll haul yez over. Come along, Robby.” The aged Scotty slowly dragged itself
to its feet and followed the old man with pained, arthritic steps. Ted wasn’t
sure who looked worse, the man or the dog. Oscar, who had come on deck to
supervise the landing, hissed at the elderly dog.

With the help of
the diminutive Scotsman, they managed to get the
Defiant
first over to D
dock, then to her allotted slip.

“It looks like y’
young ‘uns have had a hard day of it.” The old Scotsman leaned against a
piling. “What happened to yer engine?”

“We keep getting
air in the fuel lines.” Ted pointed down the companionway hatch. “It’ll only
run for ten minutes or so at a time.”

“That sounds like
a problem. Have y’ three had dinner yet?”

“No,” Chris said.
“We’ve been too busy trying to get the boat into port.”

“Are yez hungry
then?” Jack asked.

“I’m starving.”
Meagan perked up.

“Come wi’ me. I’m
in the
Nessie
over there.” He pointed to an old salmon troller. “I’ve
made a fine pot o’ oyster stew and was gettin’ ready to sit down when y’ lot
came sailin’ in.”

‘I don’t know. We
don’t want to eat your dinner,” Chris said.

“I’ve plenty for
all of yez. I made a big pot.”

“OK.” Meagan was
not going to let the opportunity to not cook dinner slip by. “We’ll be right
over.”