I boarded the yacht and went straight down to my cabin, noted the freshly made bed, the subtle smell of lemon disinfectant, and smiled. I was comfortable here; the confined space felt like a cocoon. A really well-designed, expensive cocoon.

I unpacked my bag, happy to not be leaving. For three days, anyway.

I didn’t want to think about leaving. I didn’t want to go back to my old life, my old job. The thought of wearing a suit and even socks and shoes and, God forbid, a damn necktie, made me feel claustrophobic. I considered taking my phone out while we had good reception but decided not to.

I had three days left. I was damn well going to enjoy them.

I found Foster at the stern, doing some fancy thing with the rope. Sorry, tying off the dock line. I doubted I’d ever get used to nautical terminology. I had no need to, I guess.

“You ready to go?” he asked, his grin wide.

“Hell yes. I want to see nothing but sunshine and blue water for the next three days. No other people, if we can manage it.”

Foster laughed. “Well, we’re heading to the Low Isles. There will be people. I can’t avoid that, but we can anchor off the east side where not many people go.”

“Excellent. Can we swim and snorkel there?”

“Yep.” He got in behind the wheel. “Okay, now come stand here with me,” he said. “We have to use engine power, obviously, and you’re going to do it.”

“Me?”

“Yep.”

“But… there are boats.” I gestured broadly to the ocean.

He grinned. “It’s not that busy. You’ll be fine.”

“But—”

“Don’t argue with the captain. A cabin boy must do what he’s told.”

I rolled my eyes and walked over to him. He positioned me at the wheel, his arms around my shoulders so we could both steer. I could feel his entire body at my back. “This isn’t so bad,” I allowed. “Do good cabin boys get rewards?”

He chuckled and nudged the back of my head with his nose. But then he was all business about sailing and teaching me, guiding me how to do it. As soon as we were out in open water, he cut the engine. “Now, go read the chart-plotter and tell me what to do,” he ordered.

Ugh. This again.

I marked in our destination, the Low Isles, as he’d said, and relayed the following information. “Wind direction is nor’easter, at ten knots. Point of sail is… close hauled, I think.”

Foster grinned. “And the VMG?”

“Seven point eight.”

He lifted his face to the wind, his smile serene. “So, mainsail or jib?”

“Um…” I looked up at the mast like it could somehow give me the answer. “Both?”

“You totally guessed that.”

“One hundred per cent.”

He laughed. “Go take the sail cover off like I showed you.”

“Yes, captain.” I stepped along the deck to the sail and did everything he’d shown me. I made my way back to the cockpit and did the line winch like he’d done a dozen times. He made it all look so damn easy.

I couldn’t remember the exact terminology for everything, but I knew what to do. Well, I think I did. I noticed Foster standing idle, smiling at me. “How’d I do?”

He grinned and gave me a thumbs up. “Perfect. Now do the jib.”

He watched as I did what I remembered, wrapping the line around the winch and unfurling the sail. But, with all the patience under the sun, he explained that must always run on top of the spinnaker pole and in front of the topping lift. And I nodded like I was supposed to understand.

He laughed in the sunlight and gave my hand a squeeze. “Get back behind the wheel.”

“Will you stand behind me like you did before?” I asked seriously.

He just laughed, and when I was back behind the wheel, he sat right beside me, his hand touching the inside of my knee. He was the picture of relaxed, feet extended, legs crossed at the ankle, a peaceful smile on his face, the wind in his hair. “I could get used to this,” he said. “Being chauffeured around the Whitsundays every day.”

“Well, don’t get too used to it,” I said. “There’s a boat off the right—”

“Starboard,” he corrected, but he peered around me, his hand now on my waist. “They’re two miles away, Stuart.”

“Yeah, well, don’t expect me to know what the hell I’m doing if they get too close. Can I just yell at them to move?”

He snorted. “Doesn’t exactly work that way.”

“Well, it should. Do you want to drive now?”

“Nope.” He leaned back and slid his hand around my leg again and closed his eyes. “You got this all under control.”

And so we stayed like that for quite a while: him pretending to rest, looking up every so often, and me pretending to know how to sail. But soon enough, a shimmer on the horizon solidified into land. “Ah, Captain?”

“Hmm?”

“Land ahoy.”

Foster shot to his feet and squeezed in behind me again, and he navigated us around the southern point of the island. It was a few islands, actually, but the biggest, Low Island, was about two hectares in size, or so Foster said. There was an inlet on the northern side, a small harbour that was popular and busy during the day where we could drop anchor if the wind picked up. But for the whole day, we’d sit east of the island where others tended not to go. There were reefs to snorkel, but it wasn’t perfect, he’d said.

But the fact there was no one else there meant it was perfect for us.

We anchored, swam and snorkelled, sunbaked, and made out, kissing on the deck like teenagers. I was on my back, and he was on his front, our lips locked in lazy, tender kisses. When Foster palmed my erection, he smiled against my mouth. “You’re obviously feeling a lot better.”

“Much.”

He bit his lip. “How much better?”

I caught his intention. That heated look in his eyes was a dead giveaway. “Well, I could feel a whole lot better,” I said with a smirk.

“Yeah, how so?”

“Pretty sure a thorough fucking would fix me, good and proper.”

He laughed and pushed up onto his feet, but my eyes went to his dick as he gave himself a squeeze. He held out his hand. “Then let’s not keep you waiting.”

He led me down into his room this time, and something was different. He was different. It wasn’t fraught grabbing, desperate pushing and pulling. It was slow and measured, his touch soft and tender. He laid me on his bed, stretching me with gentle fingers, kissing me, languid and lovely, until I was putty in his hands.

He moulded me, pliable and wanting, and when he was finally inside me, there was no fucking me into the mattress. I was on my back, my knees pressed up near my chest, and he was so far inside me, holding my face, kissing me so deeply, devouring me, while he filled me so completely.

This was slow and deep, reaching places inside me no one had ever dared.

He was making love to me.

Every thrust was for my pleasure. Every caress was to make me feel good, every kiss to show me how much he wanted me.

He wrung my orgasm out of me, like a tortured bliss bomb, then he held me while I unravelled underneath him. And he thrust in so, so deep one last time, flexing every muscle as he came, his face contorted in the most beautiful way.

He collapsed on me, and we lay there for the longest time. Neither one of us wanted to move. I traced circles on his back, and he sighed before pulling back so he could kiss me.

Oh, yeah. This was definitely different.

Something had changed between us. Kind of scary and amazing. Something I couldn’t name; something I didn’t want to examine too closely. I just wanted to hold him and have him hold me and kiss me like he was right now.

I thought he might get up and go check upstairs that everything was as it should be. But he didn’t. Not right then, anyway. We stayed in bed. We ate lunch in bed. We kissed and laughed and made love again.

By the time it was late afternoon, we swam again. Then we sat on the bench seat in the cockpit, me between his legs, my back to his chest. Instead of sailing into the inlet, we stayed right where we were, and with his arms strong around me, we watched the sunset.

When the last of the light turned the orange sky to purple, he kissed the side of my head. “Today has been perfect.”

I turned in his arms. “Yes, it has. I don’t want it to end.” I probably didn’t mean to admit so much, but he’d unlocked something in me.

“Then let me take you back to bed,” he replied, kissing me with a passion, a tenderness that surprised me. “And we’ll make it last all night.”

The next day we woke up early with plans to sail around to the inlet and walk the beach while no one else was around. But we sat in the cockpit and ate our breakfast, and we saw dolphins in the distance, stingrays and turtles off the reef. It was so beautiful, so secluded—there were no other boats around this side of the island. There was no beach, as such, just rocky outcrops, so tourists generally had no reason to stop here. We ended up swimming off the back of the yacht, snorkelling with tropical fish and it was so beautiful, we decided to stay put. The fact that no one else was around made it perfect. There was no one to burst our private bubble. The sun was belting us though, and the humidity thick, so we spent the morning alternating between swimming and drying off in the cockpit.

“Shit, it’s hot,” I complained, sweating in the shade of the cockpit. We’d been diving in the water just to cool off and were almost sweating again before we could reach for a towel when we got out.

Foster looked up, then toward the north. “Might rain later. The humidity has to be in the nineties.”

I wiped my brow and grabbed us a bottle of water each. “Here, keep your fluids up.”

He gulped half it down, and even he looked a little frazzled. “You know, we could spend the day in the cabin, shut the door and turn the air conditioning on.”

I stared at him. “You have air conditioning?”

He chuckled. “Of course I do.”

“Then what the hell are we doing sweating our arses off up here?”

“When I could be making you sweat below deck.”

I grinned. “Exactly. Sweating in the air-conditioned below deck is way more my cup of tea.”

Foster shut everything down, made sure everything was good, followed me below deck, and closed the door behind us. “I should just check the weather,” he said, pulling up some screen. It was a radar map and there was a band of green moving down the coast of Queensland. “Yeah, between ten and fifteen millimetres expected this afternoon. That explains the humidity. It’s at eighty-nine.”

“What does that mean for us?” I asked. “We’ve had nothing but sunshine and gentle breezes. What does rain mean out here?”

“That if you stand in it, you get wet.” He smirked. “No, nothing. Fifteen mil is nothing. As long as the wind doesn’t pick up, we’re good. If it does, we’ll just sail around to the inlet. It’s nothing to worry about. And anyway, if it does rain, it just means we’ll have to find something to do for a few hours down here.”

“Hmm,” I hummed, smiling at him. “Any suggestions? Cards, crosswords, sudoku perhaps?”

He strode over to me and pushed me against the galley cabinet, pinning me with his hips. His smile was devilish. “Oh, I have much better plans for you.”

His words, his tone, the lust in his eyes, set my blood on fire. How was it possible that I wanted more? We’d had so much sex, we should be chaffed and aching. My arse should be sore, but it wasn’t. I wanted more. Everything he could give me, I’d take. Willingly. Hell, I’d even beg for it. My balls drew up at the thought of him taking me again, sliding inside me, trying to become one with me.

My body wanted him like he was oxygen.

This time, he had me on the table. I was on my back, my arse at his hips, his cock buried inside me. He kissed me, stroked me, held me, making me see fireworks behind my eyelids as my orgasm ripped through me. He gripped my hips hard when he came, and I could feel him swell and pulse deep, so deep as he filled the condom.

When we could both move and our senses had returned, we were both exhausted and he dragged me into his bed for a nap. “I thought yesterday was perfect,” I said as he wrapped me up in his arms. “But today might win.”

He nuzzled into me, giving the back of my head sleepy kisses. “It’s a tie,” he mumbled. “But today is far from over. The best might be yet to come.”

I woke before Foster, so I decided to surprise him with a late lunch. I made a quick chicken salad, tore up some bread, and added a small bowl of olive oil and balsamic, and added some fruit on the side. I poured us some juice and noticed he’d bought some oysters. I wasn’t a fan, but he wanted them last time we went grocery shopping but decided against them. He clearly decided in their favour this time because there was a dozen, already shucked. So, I added them to the tray.

I slid the tray on the bed, rousing him from sleep. And we sat there in the cool air conditioning feeding each other forkfuls of salad and dunking bread in oil and vinegar. “I didn’t know what to do with the oysters,” I said. “So I just left them plain.”

“Perfect. That’s how I love them.” He took one, tipped the shell, and let the oyster slide down his throat.

I shook my head. “You can keep them. Not that you need them,” I laughed. “Well, not the aphrodisiac aspect. You don’t need any help in that department.”

He laughed and downed one more. “Have you ever had them before?”

“Only with vodka and chilli.”

“Ah, that’s where you went wrong.”

“They weren’t that bad,” I admitted. “Just not my favourite. I’ll stick to carbs and fats.” I dunked another chunk of bread and ate it, licking the oil off my finger.

“I know the view outside is absolutely priceless, but the air conditioning in here was a much better idea,” I said. We stayed like that, leaning against the headboard, half sitting up, half lying down, the blankets pulled to our waists. It was so much more comfortable than the stifling humidity outside. “I could get used to this.”

A few minutes of what I thought was an easy silence, Foster looked a little uncomfortable. Like he was trying to figure out how to ask me something. “You can just say it, you know.”

He frowned. “Say what?”

“Whatever it is you want to ask me or tell me.”

He swallowed hard. “No, I just…”

“Wanted to ask me if I was really going to go back to my old life?”

He shot me a look.

“I have to,” I answered without him saying anything. “I have responsibilities. I can’t just walk away, as much as I might want to.”

He didn’t say anything, so I distracted myself by eating a few grapes. “I mean, this break has been the best thing that I can remember, if I’m being honest. And I’m sure I’ll go back to Brisbane in a better frame of mind than when I got here. I don’t really want to go back; I’d love to stay right here forever. But I have to. Actually, when I get back, I’m heading straight to Sydney. If my associates haven’t fucked up the final paperwork of the biggest contract I ever worked on.”

Foster hadn’t said a word, and when I looked at him, I expected to see sadness or even anger, but his face was twisted in something else. “Fine,” I joked. “I’ll try an oyster. It’s for your benefit if either of us needs an aphrodisiac.”

I picked up an oyster, readying myself, but he reached out, and with a hand on my arm, he stopped me. “Don’t eat it.”

I looked at his face and realised it was discomfort.

He wasn’t just pale. He was green.

Oh no.

He bolted off the bed and ran for the bathroom. I heard him vomit into the toilet, and I knew, it was common knowledge, that food poisoning from oysters wasn’t good. I followed him in. “Holy shit. Are you okay?”

He was bent over the bowl, still naked, heaving into the toilet. He put his hand up like he was telling me to leave him be. I grabbed a hand towel and ran it under cold water, and when he stopped being sick and leaned back, I handed him the towel and he wiped his face. He looked god-awful. “Hop back into bed,” I suggested.

I helped him to his feet. He was shaky, clammy, but I held his elbow, and when we got back into his room, I sat him down, then cleared the bed of the food I’d brought in.

By the time I’d put the tray on the galley counter, he was back in the bathroom being sick in the toilet again.

I gave him a minute, then followed him in. “Hey.”

He was now sitting on the floor, his back against the wall. He was kind of slumped, still naked, and still a shade of green I’d never seen on a human before. He raised his hand again, then let it fall to his lap. “Ugh,” he groaned. “Not good.” He groaned again, then launched up to vomit again.

He wasn’t leaving the bathroom any time soon. He was ill and I needed to look after him, take charge. I rinsed out the towel again, wringing it, and gave it back to him when he sat back.

He really wasn’t leaving the bathroom any time soon. I went back to his room, grabbed a pillow and pulled a sheet off the bed, and took them back to him. He was more slumped than before. “Here,” I said gently. “Lie down. I’ll be back.” I put the sheet over him, not that he probably cared at that point, but my concern was for him, not to ogle him while he was sick.

I threw all the food on the tray into the bin and cleaned everything I could. I heard Foster be sick a few more times, and I had no clue what else to do. I didn’t know what to expect, what to give him, or just how bad it could get. I took Foster’s tablet, which I’d seen him use before to look up weather reports, so I knew it had an internet connection. I found the Google icon and quickly searched food poisoning and oysters, looking for ailments and whatever I could do to help him and what to expect. Just how sick was he going to get, and how long would it last?

Four Google searches later, and according to Dr Google, he’d either be fine in a few hours or die a painful death. Fuck. I should know better than to Google anything medical, but at least I knew what to do. Fluids, check temperature, and call for medical help if things got worse; common sense, really. Given the fact he’d vomited so quickly, and so thoroughly, after eating them was a blessing.

The yacht was moving a lot more than I was used to. Maybe him being sick was making things seem worse than they were. Maybe my equilibrium was off because I was worried. The machines near the radio were beeping more than usual. Or did they always beep like that and I didn’t notice? I’d never paid attention to them before because I’d never had to.

Goddammit. Stop panicking, Stuart.

I found some Lucozade in the fridge and took it into the bathroom. He was curled up on the floor, his eyes closed, his head on the pillow, the sheet half pulled over him. He would have looked kind of peaceful if he wasn’t green.

“Foster?” I spoke quietly.

He groaned.

I took a step in and held up the plastic tumbler. “I need you to drink this.”

He groaned his dissent.

“It will help.”

He opened his eyes, so I knelt beside him and held the cup to his lips. He sipped a little and made a face, and after a long, undecided moment, he sat up so he could vomit again into the toilet.

Then a crack of thunder boomed overhead like it had reached out and shook the mast. “Fuck!” I cried, running through the cabin. I pushed on the door and burst outside to a dark and stormy sky, low rumbling clouds, and the rear flag was flapping in the wind.

Fuck!

I went up into the cockpit, noticing the movement of the yacht so much more up there. I had to hold on as we bobbed in the water. I looked out across the water. There were no other boats in sight, the trees on the island swayed heavily, and because things weren’t bad enough right now, the clouds opened and dumped a deluge of rain.

I grabbed what I could and threw the stuff into the under-seat storage. Anything that was movable or not bolted down went in there, and by the time I went back downstairs, I was drenched right through and the swell was worse. The yacht now rocked like a cork in the ocean.

And it dawned on me, like the clouds a minute ago, like a fucking torrential downpour: I was on a yacht in the middle of the fucking ocean with an incapacitated skipper, and I had no clue, absolutely none, of what to do.

I raced to the bathroom to ask Foster, but he was leaning over the toilet, dry retching into the bowl. His whole body heaved, the muscles in his back stretched and slid under his skin. I hated noticing this about him in a time like this. “Uh, Foster?”

He slid back to the floor and groaned.

“There’s a storm,” I added.

His eyes closed and he moaned. The green-grey pallor of his skin wasn’t a good sign. I took the face washer, rinsed it again and wiped his forehead, the rest of his face, just as more thunder boomed and lightning split the sky outside. We were rocking solidly now, a sensation I doubted Foster could even feel. But there was no rhythm to it; it was jagged and jostling.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Okay, so I was doing this by myself.

I realised then that Foster’s machines were beeping and flashing, but I had no clue what to make of it. He’d tried to explain it to me briefly, and I remembered him talking about communications and weather updates, but I hadn’t paid enough attention. I wasn’t expecting to have to know this…

I grabbed the navigation screen and searched the weather radar. And holy shit. There was a huge band of red, yellow, and white coming in from the east. And we were sitting on the east side of the island, on the east side of the reef.

I didn’t know much about sailing, but I knew that wasn’t good.

We were right in its path.

What could I do? Just sit here, helpless, bobbing around like a toy boat in a turbulent bathtub? What if the seas got so rough we capsized? Was that even possible on a reef? I recalled Foster saying the water was deeper on this side of the island, but we’d stayed here because I’d wanted to avoid human interaction. Jesus. We were around here, on the wrong side of the island, because of me. And Foster was deathly ill.

It wasn’t like I could do anything. Could I?

The yacht was now swaying. Things in cupboards were starting to move, slide. I braced myself behind the table so I wouldn’t fall over, or be injured should something fall on me.

I clicked on Google, not knowing what the hell to even search, and started with the basics. It would have been almost laughable if I wasn’t so damn scared.

Sailing in a storm.

Did I pull up anchor? Did I set the sails and hope to blow out of the path of it? Did I sit tight and leave it in the hands of the gods?

I read the first few posts, and surprisingly enough, found a few actual ‘what to do’ sites and what they said kind of made sense…

I checked the weather map again. The worst of the storm wasn’t even close, and from what I could tell, we were in the worst possible spot for impact.

I had to do something.

Then a crackling noise scared the crap out of me. “This is QF10 Coast Guard, Port Douglas. White Knight, please respond. White Knight, White Knight, please respond.”

White Knight. That’s us! The two-way radio thing! There was someone speaking to us! I managed to get to the radio despite the movement of the boat, grabbed the mouthpiece, and pressed the button. I had no clue about nautical or naval radio protocol. “Hello?”

“White Knight, please respond. Over.”

“This is White Knight.”

Silence.

Oh. “Over,” I added.

“Foster Knight? Confirm. Over.”

“No. My name is Stuart Jenner. I’m a passenger on board the White Knight. Foster is sick. He has food poisoning.” Then silence. Shit. “Over.”

“Is it life threatening? Do you require a rescue helicopter? Over.”

“No, I don’t think so…” He ate some bad oysters but a rescue helicopter like in the movies was a little drastic, wasn’t it?

“Do you know your location. Over.”

He probably wanted GPS coordinates, but that was information I couldn’t give him. “We were on the east coast of some island. Um, the Low Islands or something, I can’t remember. Over.”

“Is your vessel secure? Over.”

“I don’t know what you mean by secure. I’ve put everything on the deck into storage, but it’s getting kinda rough. We’re moving around a lot. I was just wondering if I should haul the anchor in? Or try to sail around to the inlet Foster mentioned.” Silence. “Oh, over.”

“Are you capable of sailing the vessel? Is there probable risk to life? Over.”

Fuck. “I don’t know…” I scrubbed my hand over my face as real fear began to claw at my insides. I could hear Foster trying to be sick again, but his stomach was well past empty.

“White Knight, please respond.”

“Oh. Shit. Sorry. Over. I don’t know how this is supposed to work.”

“We can have a Coast Guard boat to you in seventy-five minutes. Please confirm. Over.”

And it struck me—be it stupidity and a flawed bravado or belief in myself—but in seventy-five minutes, it could all be over. I couldn’t just sit on my hands and wait for a wave to drive us to smithereens. I had to do something. “No. I’ll sail us into the inlet. Over.”

“Please repeat. Over.”

“I’ll sail us into the inlet. We’ll be safer there. Over.” And this time when I said it, it came out with more conviction. I hung up the receiver and remembered Foster harping on about safety protocol and where the floatation device belts were. I pulled up the seating cushion and, still swaying with the rough seas, pulled out two of those stupid waist belt floatation things. I clipped mine on easy, but I knew Foster’s would be a different story. I made my way into the bathroom, bracing myself against the doorway. Foster was curled into a ball on the floor, almost curling around the toilet. Jesus. He was also more grey than green now and I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing, and he was also naked but the sheet was tangled around him.

“Okay, I need you to put this on,” I said, stepping into the room, holding the shower wall and basin for support from the rocking of the yacht. I bent over him, trying to brace myself between the walls with my feet, and tried sliding one end underneath him, but I couldn’t get it. “Foster, baby, I need you to try and sit up.”

He opened his eyes and groaned.

“Can you sit up a bit?”

He tried to move, so I helped by heaving him up by the shoulder. He was dead weight and moaning like the movement made him sick. I pulled on his arm, probably rougher than I should have, and quickly clipped the belt on around his waist but at least he now had it on. Foster went back to the floor and I lifted his head, more gently than I’d afforded his arm, and shoved the pillow under him, and he fought to curl up again. I finally got him settled before he rolled back up onto his knees and was sick in the toilet. He was now down to green bile, and I knew from far too much cheap wine in my uni days how horrible that was.

When he was done and curled back up on the floor, I took the washer and wiped his face. “Thank you,” he mumbled.

I pounced on his moment of clarity. “Foster, I’m going to try and sail us around through the inlet.” Thunder cracked overhead. “The storm’ll hit us too hard here.”

He looked at me with bleary eyes and sank back to the floor. I covered him again with the sheet and looked around. He was actually quite well insulated in the bathroom. He couldn’t really hurt himself too much from the floor, but I went back out and grabbed the seat cushions and wedged them around him for good measure.

The boat was rocking steadily now and we seemed to be rocking side to side, not bow to stern, which told me the boat was kinda facing the wrong way. I pushed the door to the cockpit open, though it tried to hold in the wind. I shoved it hard and made my way up, only to kind of wish I hadn’t.

The sky was darker than I remembered. The wind was stronger, the waves were bigger, rain hammered in on a slant. I couldn’t see past the edge of the yacht.

Fuck.

I looked over the coach housing toward the bow. The sails were down, thankfully. I’d hate to imagine where we’d be if they were still up. But Foster had dropped anchor when we got here, and I knew I should pull it in so I hit the button to pull the anchor up, but the whir of the line hauling in sounded wrong, strung and fraught.

Fuck!

From the way the water was pushing against us, the anchor line must be stuck, holding us so we were going against the waves.

Hammered by rain, and holding on to the railing line as tight as I could, I made it to the anchor. I tried looking over the side of the yacht to see if I could see anything obvious, and yeah, it was pulled tight against the boat.

Fuck.

The last thing I needed to happen was to snap it or for it to snag and pull the side of the yacht down. I went to the wheel and turned us into the anchor line, trying to give it more room. The wind pushed, the waves pulled, the rain bucketed down, but shifting our angle had swung us back a little. Just enough. The line yanked and began to retract, free from whatever had held it.

Then I remembered Foster telling me he’d once hit a Category 2 storm. Was that what this was? A Category 2?

I tried not to think of that.

But he hadn’t gone into specifics, and I didn’t think to ask. It was information I shouldn’t need to have known!

Okay, take a breath, Stuart.

I needed to keep my head on. And I needed to get my bearings.

Every time lightning lit the sky, I could see the island to my left, but it was more at seven o’clock and I needed it at nine. North was twelve o’clock and I needed to go north to the top of the island. I swung the wheel, trying to bring us around, but it was against the waves. We were hitting the swells side-on, but if I turned the bow into the storm, we’d go nowhere. If I turned the bow away from the storm, we’d run aground into the island. I needed to keep the wind on my starboard side, as wrong as it felt.

I had no clue what I was doing.

The wind drove rain into my face, and I was soaked through to the bone. My hands shook. My whole body shook. It wasn’t cold, I was scared out of my mind. But I turned the key, and as water, rain, and waves pelted the dashboard, I saw the gauges crank to life.

I didn’t realise I’d half expected the engine not to work. I couldn’t hear the quiet hum of the engine over the storm, but the gauges told me it was running. Shit! Wasn’t I supposed to pull the anchor in after I turned the engine over? Too late now! Thunder boomed, sheets of lightning lit up the darkening sky, scaring the shit out of me. But it somehow made me focus, and I pretended, like I’d always pretended, that I knew how to sail.

The truth was, I had no clue how to sail.

I’d held onto the wheel when Foster was in charge, like how a kid might hold the steering wheel of a car, perched up on their dad’s lap.

I had no clue how fast I was going, no clue how fast I was supposed to go. I pushed on the throttle, not all the way. As much as I wanted to floor it and speed to escape this nightmare, I knew safe and steady was best.

We lurched up on a wave, and I thought the other side was gone. We seemed to fall forever, but we landed with a thud, carving into rough water at the wrong angle.

Jesus. Was I going to get us smashed to pieces?

Then we lurched forward, and all I could do was keep the darkness of the island on my left. Not too close, not too far. I didn’t know how far away the reef was to my right. I didn’t know how far north I had to go. All I could do was stumble forward and try to hold the yacht steady. The wind and the water were pushing, shoving, screaming us into the island, but it was rocky outcrops, it was reefs and coral, shallows, and I had to force the bow northward, holding and fighting the wheel.

Oh God, what if I snapped the rudder?

I pushed the throttle down a little harder just as a wave threatened us, and we surged up the wall of it, sprays of water—be they rain or ocean, I couldn’t tell—pummelled me from the east. Not just water. Every self-doubt, every uncertainty swept over me, drenching me to the bone, and a cold, cold realisation that I was way out of my depth here, a sinking feeling of what have I done dropped on me from the clouds above.

It was different from any anxiety I’d experienced before. There were no walls closing in on me, there was no pressure on my chest, there was no struggle to breathe.

This wasn’t a storm of my own doing.

I couldn’t negotiate my way out of this. I couldn’t sweet-talk or bluff; there was no deal to be made; there was nothing. I couldn’t hold my stare across a boardroom desk and wait for the other man to fold first.

I had to hold my nerve as we went up a swell sideways, and I had to hold onto hope as the crest of a wave threatened to crash over us. Only the white tip was visible in the rain-soaked sky to my right.

But it didn’t crash over us, it gave way underneath us, and we swung with the weight of gravity into the water, only to surge up again as the next swell rose.

I wondered if I could be too scared to be seasick.

I steered and backed off the speed as we lulled low in the valley of a wave, then sped up the oncoming wall of the next. And I’d been so busy watching the water on my right that I forgot to keep an eye on the island on the left until with the next flash of lightning, I realised it wasn’t there.

Fuck!

Had I oversteered? Was I heading too far east? Into the reef, or worse still, had I taken us off the continental shelf into open water?

Panic struck me hard like a blow between the ribs, and I swung us port side. I gave no thought to timing or to the oncoming wave, and I thought for one heart-stopping second we were about to nosedive into the water. Whether it was the right thing to do, or the keel, or just good luck, the yacht righted and we lifted on the water. A discernible rise again, then we glided, smoother, with the wind and water, and pushed west.

Lightning boomed above, sheeting across the horizon, showing the sky was darkened, stormy. The rain was a deluge, just sheets of water. I had the feeling of being turned around so many times, I didn’t know which direction was which.

I couldn’t leave the wheel to check the navigation tablet. God, would it even work? Given how wet the entire deck and cockpit was?

The rain was now at my back, and the wind and water took us, so we must have been heading west. Or west enough, I guessed. And how long could we do that until we ran into something? The island, a reef? Coral could rip a hole through the hull, and in a flurry of panic that was becoming something close to abject terror, I began to swing the wheel to take us starboard.

And then lightning lit the sky again, and I saw it.

Some distance, maybe sixty metres away to the port side, barely visible in the grey squall of the storm, was the sway and slant of palm trees.

The island.

I’d reached the top of the island.

I turned us inward, closer to shore, and with the rain and wind at my back, I knew I was still heading due west. No longer fighting the waves, we were flying in the wind. I had no idea how close the inlet was, but I veered us further inward, and the waves tried to correct my course, but I needed to turn, turn, turn. I needed to go into the inlet, not past it. The wind blew hard, the swell tried to dump us, and just as we rounded out of the squall, into the protection of this small harbour, we jolted, jerking in the water, yanking like a toy boat on a string.

Had I run us aground? Had I hit coral? Had I hit anything at all? Or was this just what yachts did? Did I turn too fast?

Then, like someone flipped a switch, without force, without fury, we glided along gentler waters. The rain still pelted and the wind roared above us, but the water was nowhere near as rough.

Back at the wheel, I slowed the throttle and killed the engine. The rain still fell, and the wind roared through the trees, and it was choppy, but nothing like what we’d just been through. We were protected here.

Against all the odds, against everything mother nature threw at me, I’d done it.

I’d got us to the inlet.

God knew what damage I’d done to the yacht, and I was sure Foster would kill me when he was feeling better… Shit! Foster. I dropped the anchor again, this time until it hit the sandy bottom, yanked the door open, and almost fell down the stairs. I closed the door behind me and the silence was almost deafening.

No wind, no rain, no water.

I ran straight to the bathroom and opened the door. Foster was still on the floor, around the other side of the toilet, his back to the seat cushion I’d put there. Whether he moved there of his volition or if he’d crashed and slid there with the rough sailing, I had no way of knowing. I knelt beside him and touched his face. He was still warm, and a bit of colour had returned, but his eyes fluttered open from sleep. He took a second to focus on me, then the slightest smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Hey,” I said, suddenly emotional. “You okay?”

“Tired,” he mumbled. He closed his eyes again and didn’t open them. Sleep was good. It meant he was getting better.

I stood up and covered him again with the sheet and came back with the opened bottle of Lucozade. I made him have a few sips. Though he protested at first, I explained he needed to replace his electrolytes and it would make him better. He sipped what he could, then soon passed out again.

Figuring he was best left where he was, I walked out and closed the door behind me. Standing in the middle of the cabin, water pooling around my feet, the adrenaline I’d been running on crashed all around me, and the reality of what I’d done seeped into me. I gripped the table, let my head fall forward, and cried.