Dangerous Shores: The Journey Home Read online

  Dangerous Shores; The Journey Home

  By

  Christine Conaway

  Text copyright© 2015 by

  Christine Conaway

  All Rights Reserved The novel is a work of fiction born solely from the mind of the author. Names, places or incidences are purely coincidental or used fictitiously.

  Contents

  September 11 2016

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  The Journal…Day Four

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Day Six the Journal

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Journal Day Nine

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Journal; Day Eight

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Journal Day……Not Sure!

  To all the Sailors who have the courage to drop the lines and go, because when bad things happen, good people go to sea.

  September 11 2016

  I think I have always kept a journal. When I was much younger I called it an accounting of my life. In the beginning, there were pictures documenting everyday occurrences readable only by me. Crude drawings with stick people are what anyone who dared to look saw, but to me they represented everything.

  As I aged, pictures became words and words began to fill every ruled notebook I could lay my hands on. I never did grow out of using a ruled notebook to contain my story. When I began to write, overall cost dictated their use but in truth, I kind of liked the continuity of those college ruled books.

  Growing up, we were poor by most people’s standards, but I always felt rich. I never went to bed hungry and I always had clothes on my back; mostly sewn by my Mother and I always felt loved.

  Our town has a population of 45,000 but I really think no one has been keeping score because as long as I can remember the sign has never changed. I always wondered what happened to all the babies that were born on a daily basis and the older folks who gave up and went to a better place. Maybe the score evened out over time and no one found it necessary to adjust the sign at all. It didn’t matter to me, as I grew older all I thought about was leaving.

  My folks were savers and to them, everything had value. My father worked hard and saved every extra penny he made. My Mom turned those pennies into dollars, or so my father said. When I was young I used to think they had a money machine hidden somewhere, until I was old enough to understand; by scrimping and reusing what we had we didn’t spend the dollars he made. We lived a frugal lifestyle, bought whatever was on sale by the case and stored it away for an emergency. I suppose today people would call them preppers and in their own way maybe they were. They just never made a big issue of it like the people do in this day and age.

  I was born in the same house where my father was born and his father before him. The house from the outside looked to be little more than a tar paper shack, and practically invisible where it sat on the property. To get there you had to cross through my Uncle Jerry’s land and before that it was 7 miles of dirt road and before then, 11 miles of paved county road. It was isolated to say the least.

  My uncle and father were farmers; dairy to be exact until the government said they had to stop milking their cows. They received government subsidies for not producing milk. And it almost broke my father’s heart to give up his cows. I think he felt they were giving him welfare and calling it a subsidy.

  But then again, that is the past and it is time to move on. I love the lifestyle I have chosen as my own. I meet new people every day, and see new places on a regular basis. I call a 1990 Catalina sailboat home. She goes by the name of Annie-C; named after my sister who never lived to see her first birthday. Today my home is anchored off Emerson Point, just southwest of St. Petersburg Florida.

  I have been here for 2 weeks trying to decide where to sail to next. Writing cruising articles for several published sailing and boating magazines, allows me to live an interesting life. However, there is only so much you can write about that others haven’t written about already. It comes down to writing it, making it more interesting and hopefully putting your own spin on sailing the waters around Florida.

  Actually, I don’t really have to worry about where my next meal is coming from or boat repairs either for that matter. At least not in the immediate future. Uncle Jerry passed away, or as folks back home liked to say, “Went to a better place,” followed within the year by both of my parents. I believe heartbreak from the loss of his only brother and a lifetime of hating his life killed my Dad and losing him broke my Mom’s heart. She had always relied on Dad for every decision and she walked around lost without him. One night she told me that she could not wait to be with him again. Several weeks later she went to sleep and never woke up.

  They never had recovered mentally from the loss of the dairy farm. Dad always blamed the government for taking away his livelihood. He sold the cows at auction and went home and sat. He seemed to withdraw from all of us. Mom tried and so did I to bring him around to finding a new purpose in life, but nothing we suggested was of interest to him. He and Uncle Jerry would sit on the back porch, listen to Fox news and smolder.

  “Our government is taking us down,” Dad would rant, “I am embarrassed to be called an American. Every time I turn on the news it’s free this and free that. Who’s going to pay for all of this I ask you?” With barely a pause to breathe, “We are…that’s who; working class Americans.” He would scream back answering his own question.

  Uncle Jerry never had a chance to answer, he just sat and nodded yes or no as he saw fit. One day it all ended when Uncle Jerry died. A smoker for more than 50 years, you would have thought that was what killed him, but no. He fell off his four-wheeler on his way home from our house. Apparently, after crashing it he walked the rest of the way home went to bed and that was his demise. The Doc said “his insides were a mess,” by way of explanation to my Dad.

  That seemed to change Dad and he sat on the porch alone until the end. Uncle Jerry, a lifelong bachelor left all his worldly possessions to my father and then by way of my parents passing, to me. I had no idea how quickly those dollars we had always saved had added up. Uncle Jerry had made a few investments we knew nothing about, so now by anyone else’s standards I am very comfortably set for life.

  I boarded up both houses, leased the land for pasture to someone I only met through our solicitor, packed one small bag and headed to Florida to find my dream.

  Chapter one

  The gentle motion of the boat had rocked Ellen to sleep, as it had every night since buying the craft. Her lifestyle said when you are tired you sleep. When you are hungry you eat, and it was her growling stomach that finally woke her. Stretching, she swung her feet to the deck, inadvertently kicking her journal. She had to scramble to grab the pen before it went out the back of the transom. Her latest piece of wit was sadly lacking in anything new. While this anchorage was everything a person could want in an outdoor experience, it had been written about to death.

  “I really have to find some people friends. I spend way too much time talking to myself,” she said as she climbed the ladder down to the main salon.

  One look in the cooler showed nothing of interest to eat. However, the aft cabin had a bounty of stored food. When she had decided to make a sail
boat her home, safe food storage was a worry and how much food could weigh was another. Her parents had taught her early on about freeze dried and dehydrated foods, so she knew this was a great option.

  The internet held so many possibilities for ordering on line; she soon had a year’s supply for two people or 2 years for one person. The cost savings on buying for two people for a year was incredible. With a shelf life of 25 years, spoiling or running out of food was a nonexistent possibility.

  When the order arrived, the total weight was less than 150 pounds. Storing it in the aft cabin still left plenty of room for anything else she wanted to take along. She still had to think about fresh fruit and vegetables but so far she had always managed to find an adequate supply.

  In the back of her mind, she had always thought to find an island somewhere in her travels and plant a small garden so she had also ordered a supply of heirloom seeds. The island had not presented itself as of yet, so the seeds were still somewhere on the boat. Exactly where they were, Ellen had no clue but felt better just knowing that they were there.

  Opening one of the storage buckets, she reached in sight unseen, and grabbed a Mylar bag. Whatever is in it, will be dinner. Ellen saw Cheesy Macaroni spelled out on the front of the package.

  “Yummy, my favorite…or it will be soon.” Ellen said as she put it on the counter. The water from the hot water tank was usually hot enough to burn skin, but she believed in always boiling it to be safe. This is Florida and stuff grows in all the water.

  Finally, dinner in hand she settled in the cockpit. The sun had already set for the day but the little solar lights shed adequate light in the cockpit. Not enough light to read by, but enough to eat by.

  Finished with dinner she stretched out and tried to relax. Where to go and what to do plagued her every thought. She thought about a quick trip home, but worried about the Annie-C being left alone just before hurricane season.

  The lease on her land needed to be renewed and she had considered faxing the thing to the tenant. The funds he paid went directly in to one of the farm accounts and for six years he had neither missed one nor been so much as a day late. A perfect tenant, but she was getting an itch to go home. Not to stay but maybe see if he or they; the corporation, would like to purchase the land. Between her Uncle Jerry and Dad, she had one half section of land; 320 acres. About half of the land is trees, brush, two small spring fed ponds, and the rest is in pasture. She had previously decided to keep the 20 acres around the homestead in case she ever wanted or needed to move back on dry land, but had no attachment to the rest of the property.

  Uncle Jerry’s house would need to be cleaned out, furnishings donated and the equipment sold. Most of it was antique and probably didn’t run anymore. The equipment that didn’t have a vintage motor to run it had to be dragged by animals of some kind. At one time he’d tried to farm using only draft horses and a pair of mules, but found after one season that he didn’t have the energy nor the required patience for farming the old fashioned way.

  Stomach full, Ellen stretched out in the cockpit to think. She must have fallen asleep because something startled her awake. She floundered around, disoriented, trying to figure out what had awakened her. She thought she saw a fading glow on the horizon but couldn’t say what it was. Sudden nausea assaulted her, but passed quickly. She briefly wondered about her dinner. Putting the thought aside she looked around.

  The tide had changed and the boat was now facing northwest, distant lights across the bay should have been visible. There were none. In fact, there were no lights anywhere. Not on any of the shorelines in her view nor shining from her little solar lights. The moon reflecting off the still water was the only source of light around.

  The usual sound on the water no matter what time of day or night, was the big and small motors on fishing boats. They were always going somewhere. Except this night. Normally, if you listened closely you could hear the occasional car, or music from one of the mansions on shore. Tonight, she heard nothing.

  Not even enough wind for a halyard to be slapping the mast. Total, complete silence. The lack of lighting anywhere on shore sent a shiver crawling up her spine. This had never happened before. Even in some of the remote islands she had dropped anchor in, there had always been lights of some kind. Some were only other anchor lights, or lights from another boats cabin but there were always lights, or music or voices. Now, nothing. Not as far as she could see and nothing as far as she could hear either.

  She always heard of blackouts occurring in places like L.A. or Chicago, but could never imagine this little piece of Florida having a blackout.

  Ellen reached into the cubby behind where she sat, fingers feeling for the flashlight she always kept in there. With the flick of her thumb she switched it on. Nothing! Puzzled, she hit it on the heel of her hand which did nothing to help. Sometimes you had to use this technique to get a good connection, but still nothing.

  “Great, that’s just great,” she said, talking to herself as usual. “I just put new batteries in it.” She flicked the switch back and forth several times and still nothing. She wondered briefly if it might not be the bulb, but she would need a light to find the spare bulbs. “Always something to do on a boat. It never ends.”

  Navigating in the dark was something she was used to doing. She made her way forward, undressed and climbed into the V-berth. Tomorrow would be soon enough to figure out what was going on.

  Chapter two

  Always an early riser, stemming back to her life on a working dairy farm where there were cows to milk and animals to feed, Ellen woke at first light.

  Washing up, she was reminded that she needed to fill her water tanks and top off the fuel. However, these chores would have to wait until after her morning coffee.

  There is something about the rhythmical glup, glup, glup sound the small percolator made when it perked, that appealed to her. Just the sound screamed home and fresh to her ears and you don’t get the same fresh smell from a drip coffee maker. Anticipating her coffee, she set the filled basket into the pot of water and turned on the burner as she pushed the spark button. To her surprise, it didn’t work. That in itself was not unusual but just the day before she had fixed it by changing out the battery.

  She grabbed the barbeque lighter she kept behind the stove for just such an emergency and stuck it under the pot and clicked the trigger. No familiar whoosh said the gas stove had lit. She tried again, but nothing. She knew it had worked last evening and there was no reason she could think of that it shouldn’t work now.

  “Damn, I can already see this is going to be one of those days.” Then she remembered the flashlight. Ellen hit the switch on the LED, (Light Emitting Diode) light above the sink. Nothing! This proved true for every light in the cabin. Not one of them worked. She checked the panel where the main breakers were located. It was dark. The 110 side was always dark when at anchor, but the 12-volt side should have had amber lights for everything that was on. No matter how long she stared at it, the whole panel remained dark.

  “There still has to be a way to make coffee,” Ellen said, thinking out loud. “What electricity does a propane stove use?” She looked from the panel where she plainly read the word stove, to the stove itself and then looked out the companionway to the cockpit. She mentally followed the propane lines from the stove to the propane locker. The sealed container sat under the aft port seat.

  “Got it!” she declared, the solenoid that allowed her to turn off the flow of gas was the problem. All she would have to do was bypass it and her stove would function properly. She had added the solenoid because she was too lazy to turn the gas on or off when she wanted to use the stove. Flipping the switch was so much easier.

  Within minutes Ellen had turned off the gas at the bottle, disconnected the solenoid and plumbed the gas line directly to the regulator. She turned the bottle back on and locked the propane locker, effectively sealing the bottle inside and went back down to the galley. She turned the knob, heard the hiss of es
caping propane and lit the stove. Satisfied with her work she set the coffee pot back on the burner. She sat down at the table to think while she waited for her coffee. Something had taken all of her electronics out at the same time.

  Dread finally began to seep in. Was this one of those things that her Dad had always warned her about? The great emergency that required her to go home?

  “Ellen,” he’d say, “you have to be prepared. Someone, someday is going to drop a nuke on us. When that happens, God forbid it ever does, but if it happens you’ve got to be prepared.”

  “Now Joe,” Mom would caution him, “don’t scare the girl. America is too big for anyone to think they can get away with using nuclear weapons.”

  Her Dad and Uncle Jerry had always been so sure that someone would push the big red button and put an end to the world as we know it. When Iran got in to the nuclear business in 2013, they were positive our lives would take a turn for the worse. Obama made his sanctions and empty threats to no avail. Iran simply thumbed their noses at the world and went their merry way.

  Her Dad had always assured her that they would be ready. “Girl, you come running home. You keep that bag packed and you come home. You get here as fast as you can.” He never let up about being prepared to run home.

  Carrying a go-bag had been drilled in to her head for years until leaving home. He had packed the first go-bag, and she had continued to pack it, adjusting to meet her changing needs. However, she never expected to ever have to ever use it.

  Thinking back to the previous evening, she remembered the glow in the sky. Had someone actually gone and done it?

  “Stupid,” she said, a hint of laughter in her voice, “You sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting here thinking these stupid thoughts. You would be vaporized.”