I closed my eyes and turned away, hand over my mouth, throat fighting to hold down the bile. Not even Nick deserved that. I blinked, felt the dampness on my lashes, and struggled for control.
Sirens. I probably should have called someone on the VHF, but the cops would make it here before the Coast Guard. The bridge tender must have called 911 as soon as he realized Nick had been shot. I heard them making their way across the quiet morning city. Police, ambulances, paramedics. Too late for Nick. The Mykonos, his million-dollar play toy, had become a crime scene.
The yacht’s waterline was already several inches underwater, her blue boot stripe completely submerged. She’d come loose from where she’d lodged on the rocks and was starting to drift back out into the river. I could hear the whine of her working pumps, but the water was going in faster than it was going out. I didn’t know how badly she was holed, but one thing was clear: the Mykonos was soon going to be on the bottom of the New River.
I guess you could say that’s how I justified it. Taking her under tow, I mean. The cops wouldn’t get it. Once they got here, they’d just string up their yellow tape and watch her go down. It also occurred to me that the insurance company would be more than a little pleased if I could get this damaged vessel to the boatyard before she sank.
It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes to lash Gorda alongside the big yacht’s aft quarter so I could climb aboard. I grabbed a couple of thick hawsers I’d already set out on deck for towing the ketch, and I tossed them into the yacht’s cockpit. While aboard, I worked swiftly, dragging the lines forward and tying them to the windlass and cleats on the bow. I avoided looking up at the flybridge.
I leaped over the gunwales back into Gorda's cockpit and threw off the lines that bound the two vessels amidships. Back in the wheelhouse, I backed off, then eased ahead slow, so that the towlines wouldn’t drop off my decks until the lines grew tight. I glanced downriver toward the Allied Marine Yard. They had a big seventy-five footer in the slings already. I’d do better heading upriver for boatyard row. Increasing the power slowly, I straightened out the two boats and got us on course for the Seventh Avenue Bridge. I was determined not to slow or stop, so I reached for the mike and called the bridge tender.
“Securité, securité, this is the tug Gorda calling the Seventh Avenue Bridge, requesting an emergency opening.”
Onshore I saw flashing blue lights in front of the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, and a couple of cops trotted across the lawn toward the river, waving their arms at me, stunned looks on their faces as I pulled away from their location. I called the bridge again as I nudged the throttles forward. “Securité, securité, tug Gorda calling the Seventh Avenue Bridge, requesting an emergency opening. My tow is sinking.”
The bridge was about twelve hundred yards off, and I didn’t hear any bells or see any movement in the bridge tender’s tower. I reached for the tug’s horn and blew five short blasts, waited about five seconds, and blew another five.
Gorda had plenty of clearance without a bridge opening, but the Hatteras stood tall. I looked back at her and reckoned that, at worst, she’d lose the hard top over the flybridge, and that was an acceptable loss. If we stopped now, I thought, as I checked Gorda’s gauges, we’d lose the whole vessel.
At last, bells started ringing, the traffic gates went down, and the bridge had just started to open when Gorda slid under. By the time the Hatteras slipped through, she cleared by mere inches. I doubt she would have made it if she hadn’t already been a foot down on her lines.
As we plowed our way up the New River, past Sailboat Bend, under the Davie Bridge, and through the Citrus Isles canals, we were throwing up an atrocious wake. Waterlogged as that fifty-footer was, I was still pulling her at better than six knots, though I’d had to slow her down some as we rounded the hairpin bend at Little Florida. Masts danced and lines groaned as the boats tied up in front of the luxury homes bucked and rolled. One fellow ran out across his pool deck, coffee mug in hand, shaking his fist at me and screaming curses. I knew I’d be responsible for any damage I caused, but I also knew that the Hatteras was sinking fast, and I had only minutes to get her to the slip.
I switched channels and tried to hail River Bend Marine, hoping like hell that someone was in the office at this early hour and had turned on the radio. No luck. After calling three times, I switched to channel 16, the emergency and hailing frequency, and began calling any vessel in River Bend Marine. I finally got an answer from a cruiser, an older fellow who told me after we’d switched frequencies that he’d round up some yard guys and they’d be waiting with the Travel Lift when I got there. I thanked him, and as we ended our conversation, the Fort Lauderdale Marine Patrol broke in, calling Gorda. I glanced back at my tow as she swung to starboard, and I tried to correct. The radio crackled again, the officer’s irritation growing more apparent. I didn’t have time to deal with them. I switched off the VHF and got back to the business of trying to keep my tug and waterlogged tow under control as we steamed upriver at a speed that made control purely an illusion.
As I swung round the bend and headed into boatyard row, it looked like an entire fleet of small vessels was there to greet me. Every yachtie in the area who had been listening in on channel 16 had jumped into his dinghy and come out to assist in getting the sinking yacht into the slipway. Charlie, the boatyard foreman, was in the yard launch, and he pulled alongside the aft port quarter of the wallowing sport fisherman to help slow her down. In the basin off the slipway, out of the current, I shortened up my towlines, got Gorda back off the starboard quarter, and, together, we eased Mykonos into the slings that dangled deep in the slip. The Travel Lift engine blew off a puff of exhaust and the slings tightened under the Hatteras just as the Fort Lauderdale Marine Patrol boat came screaming around the bend, blue lights flashing in the gilded morning light.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christine Kling has spent more than thirty years messing about with boats. Her articles and stories have appeared in many boating publications including Sailing, Cruising World, and Motor Boating & Sailing and her short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. It was her sailing experience that led her to set her first nautical suspense novel, SURFACE TENSION (2002), on the New River in Fort Lauderdale. Featuring Florida female tug and salvage captain, Seychelle Sullivan, the first book was followed by CROSS CURRENT (2004), BITTER END (2005), and WRECKERS’ KEY (2007). Her latest book CIRCLE OF BONES (2011) is Christine’s first stand-alone sailing thriller. Having retired from her job as an English professor at Broward College in Fort Lauderdale, Christine lives aboard her 33-foot boat Talespinner and goes wherever the wind and free wifi may take her.
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ALSO AVAILABLE
In the Seychelle Sullivan Series
Surface Tension
Bitter End
Wreckers’ Key
The Short Story Collection
Sea Bitch: Four Tales of Nautical Noir
Available in both print and ebook format
Circle of Bones: a Caribbean thriller