Float Plan(29)

“Now head dead downwind,” Keane says, rolling up the jib and trimming the spinnaker. The belly of the sail fills with air and the boat surges forward. Fast becomes even faster and it feels as though we’re flying.

“I won’t ask you to do that.” He takes over the tiller and I shift so he can sit. “Unless you want to learn.”

“I don’t know.” The fat, colorful sail snaps in the wind, the edges curling in and billowing out. “I might.”

The hours stretch out like other crossings we’ve made, long and slow, despite the boat racing through the sea at seven knots, and we fill the time as best we can. Sailing can be romantic. It can be exciting. But it can also be mind-numbingly dull. I find the deck of cards and we play a few rounds of War. When we tire of cards, I bring up the travel Scrabble board and we argue over whether banjax is a real word.

“In Ireland it is,” Keane says. “It means to make a mess of things, usually by being incompetent.”

“We’re not in Ireland.”

“Well, we’re not in the United States, either, but I reckon if you’d just played a twenty-two-pointer with a triple-word score, you wouldn’t be arguing.”

“No, I’d be winning.”

His shoulders shake as he laughs so hard that I start laughing too. When I finally get my breath back, I say, “I have a question.”

“Ask it.”

“Do you have a home? I mean, like an apartment somewhere in the world where you keep your stuff?”

“I wasn’t joking about traveling with everything I own,” he says. “I suppose my permanent address is back in Tralee with my folks, but I’m a vagabond. A chemineau, if you will.”

“Is that what it means?”

He nods. “I looked it up.”

“Do you ever get lonely?”

Keane is quiet for a few beats. “Sometimes, especially when I’m at home in Ireland, when I see my siblings with their families. I wonder if I’m missing out.” He adjusts the trim on the spinnaker. “But companionship is easy enough to find, especially for a handsome bastard like me.” He glances at his watch. “You’ve still got about an hour before my shift ends.”

I don’t have anything to do, but I feel like I’ve been dismissed. I go down into the cabin, grab my comforter from Keane’s bunk, and crawl into the V-berth. Once I’m stretched out, the wind and waves send me straight to sleep.



* * *



“Anna.” Keane’s voice burrows into my sleeping brain. It’s time to wake up, but I’m not ready. After a long night of sailing, it feels as if I’ve only been asleep for a few minutes. “Anna.” His voice is low, but there’s an urgency that pulls me upright. “Come here. There’s something you need to see.”

I climb up on deck, expecting dolphins or sea turtles, but we’re being followed by a small pod of humpback whales. Keane turns the boat into the wind, bringing us to a stop, and the whales surface a few yards from the boat. A large barnacle-crusted head rises out of the water and pushes air from its blowhole, sending a puff of salty spray over us like a misty rain.

“Oh my God.”

The whale holds there, watching us until it sinks below the surface. We scramble to the foredeck and sit on the port rail while the boat drifts. The dark bumpy bodies arc through the water, their stubby dorsal fins appearing and disappearing. The large whale moves closer to the boat, rolling over to reveal its white underside and long pectoral fins.

“I think it’s showing off.” I don’t know why I’m whispering, but there are no other sounds except the splash of their huge bodies, and the moment feels too sacred to disturb.

“I reckon you’re right.”

“This is”—I push away a tear with the heel of my hand—“this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I have a mate who lived in Martinique for a time.” I appreciate that Keane keeps his voice low too. “A few years back we were hanging out on the beach after doing some surfing when a pod of about four humpbacks happened past. They were breaching and lobtailing—that thing where they slap their tails against the water—and it was a spectacular sight, but nothing like being this close.”

Two smaller whales seem to be playing a game of how close they can come to the boat, swimming right below our dangling feet, but the large whale is nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, in the distance, the surface explodes, and the large whale leaps out of the sea. The huge body crashes back into the water, sending an enormous white spray up and out, in every direction. The boat dances on the ripples, but neither of us speaks. I don’t even know what to say. We sit in silent awe. And when the whales are gone, we let the boat drift.

“I wish—” I stop myself from saying Ben’s name, and feel conflicted about that. I still wish he were here, but this experience is perfect without him. It belongs to us—to Keane and me—and all the wishing in the world can’t make Ben part of this. “I wish they’d stayed a little longer.”

“We could linger a bit,” Keane says. “See if they come back.”

I shake my head. “That wouldn’t make this any more perfect.”

He douses the sagging spinnaker and unfurls the jib as I bring the boat back on course for Providenciales. We’re still about four hours from the island, but we’re in the home stretch.