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Tack Through Time

Don Stockard

    Evan came on deck, yawned, and looked around the cove. The fresh breeze coming in from the open ocean ruffled his blond beard and shoulder-length hair. He frowned as his eyes halted on a cigarette boat that was gliding into the cove.
    “Jeanne!” he called down the companionway.
    His wife, a trim brunet, was soon in the cockpit. “What’s up?” she asked, frowning slightly in response to the note of worry in his voice.
    “There.” He nodded toward the powerboat. It was dull gray in color, slim and some fifty feet in length. They could hear the low-throated growl of its powerful engines.
    “Uh oh!” Jeanne glanced at Evan. “Drug runners.”
    Evan nodded. “Apparently we didn’t pick the best place to anchor.”
    “Why are they here? The chart doesn’t show anything on this side of the island.”
    “That’s probably why they’re here.”
    The couple was silent for a moment.
    “We’d better get out of here,” Evan said.
    “How? They can go sixty knots and we can do ten at best.”
    “The hope is they’ll let us go if we just quietly leave.”
    “Don’t start the engine. It’ll be quieter if we just sail off.”
    Evan glanced at the open ocean. “There’s enough wind to tack out of here. You stow stuff below. I’ll get the sails and anchor ready. When you’re done, come up and sail us off the anchor. I’ll haul it in.”
    Jeanne nodded and vanished below.
    When she returned, Evan raised the mainsail and ran forward to bring in the anchor. As Jeanne sailed the boat slowly forward, Evan hauled in the anchor. The jerk of the anchor breaking loose from the bottom brought the boat directly into the wind. Evan hauled the anchor in another six feet, tied if off, and unfurled the jib, allowing it to fill and bring the bow around. Once the boat was sailing again, he brought the anchor all the way in and secured it.
    In the meantime, the cigarette boat had halted fifty feet off shore. A dinghy rowed out to meet it. The two men in the dinghy passed bundles to the three in the boat. By the time the transfer was complete, the sailboat was making headway toward the open ocean. The cigarette boat turned and motored slowly toward them. Evan was watching it through binoculars.
    “There are three men. One’s driving it and the other two are beside him.”
    “Are they armed?”
    “Oh yeah.”
    “My God! What are we going to do?” Jeanne was pale and shaking.
    “All we can do is keep doing what we’re doing.” Evan glanced ahead. “We’ve got to tack. We can’t get out of the cove on this heading.”
    The necessity to do something concrete focused Jeanne’s attention and she steered the boat into the wind. As the bow passed through the wind, the whole boat shuddered.
    “What was that?” Jeanne screamed. “Did we hit something?”
    Evan glanced at the shore as he sheeted in the jib. “We’re still moving and I didn’t hear anything. How’s the wheel feel?”
    “It’s steering fine.”
    “We’re probably okay.”
     They glanced at the approaching boat and gasped in shock. There was no sign of the cigarette boat. Instead a fully rigged Spanish galleon was sailing toward them.
    “What the hell!” Jeanne shouted. “Do...do you see what I see?”
    Evan didn’t reply as he blinked his eyes several times. He lifted his binoculars and focused them on the galleon in the vague hope that they would penetrate the illusion. He only saw a magnified version. “It’s full of men. They look like they just stepped out of a pirate movie set or something.”
    “What kind of ship is it?”
    The jib began to luff. “Watch where you’re going!” Evan shouted. “Fall off! Fall off!”
    Jeanne quickly adjusted course and the boat healed as it gathered speed.
    “It’s a Spanish galleon. They were common in the 16^th century.”
    “So what’s it doing here?”
    “I have no idea. But whatever it is or why it’s here, it’s not gaining on us.” He paused for a moment, frowning, and glanced at the shore. “We’re far enough past the end of the island. We should be able to tack.”
    “What good will that do us?”
    “It was a real chore to tack those things.” He nodded at the galleon “It took them a long time. That’ll drop them further behind.”
    Jeanne nodded and brought the bow through the wind as Evan handled the sails. Once again there was the disquieting shudder as the boat went through the wind.
    “I’d like to know what that’s.... Oh no!” Jeanne pointed at the cigarette boat closing in on them.
    “Tack again!” Evan shouted.
    “I don’t know if we have enough speed to get through the wind!”
    “Hold on for a second! I’ll tell you when to go!
    Evan glanced from the shore to the cigarette boat and back to the shore. He could feel the boat gaining speed. The cigarette boat was less than a hundred yards away and closing rapidly. “Now!” he shouted.
    Jeanne threw the helm over. There was the same shudder as the bow went through the wind. Much to their relief the boat slowly fell off to the new course. Evan sheeted in the jib. A quick glance showed that the galleon had replaced the cigarette boat. It was, however, significantly closer due to the time they had lost during the two tacks.
    “Keep it as close to the wind as you can and maintain speed,” Evan said. “Those old galleons couldn’t sail very close to the wind and they weren’t that fast. Probably eight knots maximum.”
    Jeanne glanced at the galleon. “We’re lucky to do ten on a reach, let alone close hauled.”
    “Their maximum isn’t against the wind either.” Evan glanced at the sails. “Keep going as you are. Since they can’t go as close to the wind as we can, they’ll not only be falling behind us but off to the side as well.”
    Evan was right. They slowly pulled ahead of the galleon and the course of the galleon took the ship further to the west. Evan kept an eye on the pursuer with the binoculars.
    “Get ready,” he said. “It looks like they’re going to use the bow cannon.”
    “Bow cannon?”
    “Yeah it looks like they’re loading it now.”
    Evan could see the puff of smoke which was followed by the roar of the discharge. A fountain of water rose thirty yards to the left and slightly behind the boat. “Hopefully their aim doesn’t improve.” Evan lowered his binoculars.
    “Should we tack again?”
    Evan shook his head. “We stand a better chance against the galleon’s cannon than against a cigarette boat’s machine guns.”
    “I suppose so.”
    Another cannon ball landed. This one was closer.
    Jeanne glanced at Evan. He raised his binoculars. During the next half hour a number of shots flew toward the boat. None came closer than ten yards. The sailboat continued to move ahead of the galleon. The cannonballs began to land to the stern.
    “We must be getting out of range,” Evan said.
    “Thank God. Do we stay on this course? If we keep going like this, we’ll hit Iceland sooner or later.”
    “Until they’re out of sight. Then we can try a tack.”
    “And if the cigarette boat comes back?”
    “Then we go to Iceland.”
    Jeanne smiled for the first time since they had set sail.
    The courses of the two vessels continued to diverge. Evan and Jeanne maintained the same heading. Late that afternoon the galleon disappeared over the horizon.
    “Do you think it’s safe to tack?” Jeanne asked.
    Evan stared at the horizon. “Don’t know. Let me go up and take a look.” He ducked below and returned with a set of ascenders and a boatswain’s chair. He fixed the ascenders to a halyard and worked his way to the masthead. He shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon in all directions. Seeing nothing, he swept the sea with his binoculars. “No sign of anything,” he shouted.
    “Great! Come on down and we’ll tack.”
    Once Evan was on the deck and the gear stowed, they brought the boat over to the opposite tack.
    “Did you notice that?” Evan asked.
    “Notice what?”
    “There was no shudder.”
    Jeanne frowned for a moment. “You’re right. There wasn’t. I wonder why.”
    “I haven’t the foggiest idea. Why did the boat shudder in the first place? Why did a Spanish galleon replace a cigarette boat and vice versa, depending on what tack we were on? Why are we still alive? Are we still alive? Are we dreaming? If so, I wish we’d wake up.”
    “It’s no dream,” Jeanne replied. “We’re awake.”
    “So how do you explain it?”
    “I don’t. Are we in the Bermuda Triangle? Maybe it’s a time warp of some kind.”
    Evan laughed. “Well I know one thing. We’re not telling anyone. They’d lock us up and throw away the key.”
    “That’s for sure!”
    “Okay. Now that things at least seem normal, let’s set a course for the mainland.”
    “I was rather looking forward to Iceland.”
    Evan laughed again. “I wouldn’t be so eager. We’d probably run across a Viking ship!”
    Hooking up the self-steering, they went below and pondered the chart. Making their selection, Jeanne checked the GPS.
    “It’s not working,” she said, frowning.
    Evan pushed several buttons. “I’ll be darned. Oh well, we can do it on dead reckoning.”
    “I suppose.”
    They returned to deck and made the necessary course adjustment.
    The next two days of sailing were uneventful. The strange episode of the cigarette boat and the galleon faded to a fresh but inexplicable memory. Late on the afternoon of the second day they made landfall. It was a port they had visited before and were looking forward to a shower at the marina and dinner at a restaurant they remembered as being good.
    Evan frowned as they drew near the port. “Where’s the buoy?”
    Jeanne scanned the water. “Don’t know. We should see it by now.”
    Evan brought the chart on deck and spread it out on the cockpit bench and glanced at the shore. “Yes, we should have already passed the bell buoy.” He pointed to the chart.
    “Maybe a storm took it out.”
    “What storm? There hasn’t been anything significant in several months and they wouldn’t let it go that long without replacing it.”
    Jeanne nodded. “Oh well. It’s good weather. We won’t have any trouble going in visually.”
    Evan raised his binoculars. He stared at the shore for a long time before lowering the binoculars.
    “Everything look okay?” Jeanne’s frown was in response to the one on Evan’s face.
    Evan did not reply. He handed the binoculars to Jeanne and took the wheel. Jeanne raised the binoculars, focused them, and gasped.
    “Evan...There’s that ship...What do you call it? A galleon?”
    “It’s not the same one. The riggings different. It’s probably a cargo ship.”
    “There’s no town. Just a wharf and what looks like a fort of some kind. And there’s a cart, a horse-drawn cart, going up the to the fort.”
    Jeanne dropped the binoculars and stared at Evan.
    He shook his head slowly. “No wonder our GPS doesn’t work. Welcome to the 16th century. A century where you’re not going to get any diesel for the engine, let alone spare parts. A century in which there’s no way to repair fiberglass. A century in which you don’t want to get sick or pregnant. The odds of survival aren’t that good. A century in which the English wouldn’t be able to understand you when you talk.”
    “What are we going to do?”
    Evan was quiet for a full minute. “Let’s go back to that cove where the whole mess started.”
    “What? Are you crazy!”
    “That’s where it started. Maybe we can unwind it there. It’s the only thing I can think of. Do you have a better idea?”
    Jeanne thought for a moment. “No. I don’t have any ideas at all. We might as well try.”
    “Okay. Let’s go.”
    Jeanne nodded and they brought the boat around. Two days later they entered the cove. Much to their relief there was no sign of either a cigarette boat or a Spanish galleon. They brought the boat into the wind and tacked. The boat shuddered. There was still no sign of a cigarette boat or a galleon. They were able to clear the cove without tacking again. They remained on that tack as they returned to the same port. They breathed a sigh of relief as they passed the bell buoy.
    The marina was as they remembered it. After showering, they went out to dinner at the restaurant they remembered. The food was excellent and they drank more wine than usual.

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