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Okay, so I was more excited about the engines than the kitchen. Not that the kitchen wasn’t great. A side-by-side Sub-Zero refrigerator and freezer, a microwave plus convection oven, a built-in coffeemaker, dishwasher, and a Sub-Zero wine cooler. Nice appliances but hardly in the same league as the diesels. Plus there was a 20kw generator, ten 24 V batteries, two 12 V batteries and chargers.
I scrambled back to the kitchen when I heard Hooker on deck. In an instant, he was down the ladder, moving around me, checking the mechanicals. He looked around and I guess everything was okay. He went up to the pilothouse and started the generator. He unplugged and stored the shore power electrical cord. He flipped breaker switches for the main engine start. He turned on the VHF radio, autopilot, radar, GPS receiver, depth sounder, and boat computer. He entered the GPS course from Key West to Cuba into the boat’s computer. He did a test of the bow thruster.
All the while he was telling me what he was doing, and I was trying to remember in case I had to do this myself. You never know, right? He could get washed overboard. He could have a heart attack. He could get drunk and pass out!
“Vocabulary,” Hooker said. “The ropes are called lines. The bumper things are called fenders. Right is starboard. Left is port. Front is the bow. Back is the stern. The steering wheel area is the helm. The kitchen is the galley. The crapper is the head. I don’t know why any of these things have their own names. It makes no sense to me. Except maybe for the head.”
Hooker handed me a walkie-talkie. “As soon as the engines are warmed up we’re pulling out, and you’re going to have to help me. I’m going to give you directions on the walkie-talkie. Ordinarily I’d have someone on the dock to help untie the lines, but we’re trying to sneak off this morning, so we’re going to have to manage without help. I’m going to hold the boat against the dock and you’re going to untie the lines and throw them onto the boat. You’re going to start at the bow and work your way back.”
I was ready. First Mate Barney, at your command. I climbed over the rail that ran around the bow, and I scrambled onto the dock. I was wearing shorts and sneakers and my pink ball cap. I didn’t need sunglasses because the sun was still struggling to rise out of the water. I had the walkie-talkie in my hand. And I was pretty darned excited.
Hooker was standing at the wheel, and I saw him put the walkie-talkie to his mouth. “I’ve got her steady,” he said. “Start throwing the lines. Do the bow line first.”
“Okay,” I said. “Doing the bow line.”
I reached for the bow line, the walkie-talkie slid from my hand, bounced off the dock, splashed into the water, and disappeared from sight. I looked up at Hooker, and his expression was a lot like the expression on the shooter’s face when he watched his blood seep into his shirt.
“Sorry,” I said to Hooker, knowing full well he couldn’t hear me.
Hooker gave his head a small shake. He was saddled with a moron for a first mate.
“Give me a break here,” I yelled at him. “I’m new at this.”
Hooker smiled at me. Either he was a very forgiving kind of guy, or else I looked really sexy in my pink hat.
I threw the rest of the lines onto the boat and climbed on board. Hooker crept the boat back, inching away from the dock. He got clear of the dock and he reversed his direction and swung the boat around to leave the marina.
“We need to stay at idle speed, five knots, until we leave the marina,” he said. “Once we get into open water I can increase the throttle to bring us to cruising speed.”
I had no relationship to knots. I was strictly a miles-per-hour kind of person. And on my salary, which was going to be zero as of tomorrow, I didn’t think I had to worry about cruising at thirty-two knots much beyond this trip. Still…
“I don’t know what the hell a knot is,” I said to Hooker.
“One knot equals 1.15 miles per hour.”
The sun was finally above the horizon and the water in front of us looked like glass. We plowed through some small swells at the mouth of the harbor and then we were in the open water. I stored the lines and the fenders away as best I could. When I had everything tidy Hooker took the boat up to speed, and engaged the autopilot.
“The autopilot interfaces with the GPS chart plotter,” Hooker said. “And it’s a lot smarter than I am.”
“Can you just walk away from it now?”
“In theory, but I wouldn’t walk far. Especially not on this cruise. I need to keep my eyes open.”
“Worried about pirates?”
“I don’t know who I’m worried about.”
SEVEN
After two hours of ocean cruising, the whole boat thing started to get old. There’s not a lot to look at when you’re in the middle of the ocean. The boat was noisy, making conversation a pain, and I got nauseated when I went below while we were under way.
After three and a half hours, I was looking for land.
“Cuba is off the port bow,” Hooker said. “We’re about fifteen miles offshore, and I don’t want to get closer. The islands
we’re looking for are about ten miles out.”
“You’re pretty good at this boat stuff,” I said.
