Offshore
Episode 20: Still Return
The Cloudlander rode the outer winds of the boiling storm, adjusting their heading yard by yard with its rotation. Even this far out from the eye of the storm, the waves churned and frothed. Heeling the boat became a strenuous collaborative effort with both Anqien and Jinai dashing to throw their weight against whichever direction the boat was straining. Monster breakers slammed against their hull and splashed over the deck, so that their shoes were doused, rivulets running between the metal bumps.
“I think we should move out at least half a mile!” Jinai shouted. “We can’t keep going like this!”
Heart thrumming and hands tightening on the helm, Anqien nodded back. “Yeah, let’s move it,” they called back.
“Ready to tack!”
They hauled the mainsail against the wind and tacked to port, snapping to an outward trajectory through the embattled waves. This was a gamble that would cost them precious time, but their limbs were blazing and their shoulders heaving—and to save them strength for tomorrow, it seemed a necessary wager.
On a broadening radius through the outer clouds of the storm, they ploughed through the waves which gradually petered out to lower surges, no more than two feet high. Here, without the rain blurring the sky, they could see the swirling grandeur of the lightning-pricked cumulonimbus—larger than a city, deluging the waters below.
“Guess we’re alone out here,” Anqien said. “Who knows where the others are?”
Without a word from their crew on their whereabouts, they let the storm slingshot them out into the grey-blue beyond as it turned eastward, the veiled sun slowly sinking through the sky to their right.
The storm had been cold company, but company it had been. Without it stirring the sky and sea, there was nothing here but mist and grey water. At two o’clock, they broke for lunch and consulted the map together, but the horizon around them was mirror-flat and empty for miles around. Their speed and arced route put them somewhere one hundred and twenty miles southeast of Nara-sa, approaching the border of Niro, but that still left them a huge margin of error.
While the waters were quiet around them and they had no landmarks to find themselves on the map, they proceeded on the same trajectory southeast, a shot in the dark, using their compass to keep the route steady.
The clock ticked to five o’clock. Nothing showed. The silence in their earpieces persisted.
“Wouldn’t it be funny if we actually got lost during the NHR?” muttered Jinai as the pair sat down for a water break. “Nothing quite like a storm to shake it up.”
“Don’t say that!” Anqien sulked. “It might just happen.” She slapped their arm and laughed.
Then, as the golden hour threw a few precious rays through cracks in the clouds, they saw something—solidifying faintly from the sun-drenched horizon—a pair of islands just off to the right of their bow.
Jinai raced to the stern. “They’re about three miles out,” she said, shading her eyes. Anqien shuffled the map out of the watertight safe and glanced between the compass and the two islands, sitting misty and strange in the distance.
“Alright, we’re some way west of the ideal path,” they said, eyeballing the bearings of the city of Antao from where they were. “A hundred and twenty degrees from north should get us to Antao.”
Jinai had already returned to the mainsheet, and at Anqien’s declaration, she took hold of the car. “Ready to gybe!” she shouted, and began to haul the sail in through the wind. “Might wanna duck!”
As the prevailing gale caught the sail on the other side, the boom swung sharply to starboard, and Anqien dove by the helm while it whooshed overhead. Springing back upright, they spun the helm to correct the angle as the yacht turned through the wind, one eye on the compass until they were pointing a hundred and twenty degrees from north.
Then, carried on a broad reach, the Cloudlanders’ sailboat sped into the grey, clear of the storm, with only their compass and calculations to point their way.
“—back? Should be back, do you hear me—”
“Hey!” Anqien pounced on the very first inkling of voices from the other end of their line. “We hear you!”
“Oh, thank Laveda,” Jinai exclaimed.
“They’re back!” Lujang yelled, relief bearing the edge of frustration.
“There you are!” Telaki sounded like a parent reunited with her children. “How have you been going these past five hours?”
“Whoa, five?” Jinai gasped.
Anqien glanced at the clock on their dashboard. “Yeah, that’s right,” they said. “We struggled with the breakers for a fair bit there, but we pulled out soon enough. Other than that we’ve been alright! Rode the updraft until the storm turned east, and now we’re uh, a couple of miles past that pair of islands at the top of the Nami Archipelago, and headed southeast to Antao.”
“Oh!” Iki chimed in. There was a little frantic chatter as they started to pour over their copy of the map. “Yes, perfect, if you’re where I believe, then you would want to be headed due a hundred and seventeen degrees right now.”
“Great, we’re just about doing that, yeah,” Anqien said, turning the helm to adjust their heading.
“Perfect! Perfect, this is what we like to hear. Intel says that no one’s close to the finish yet, but it looks like you have just three hours to go.”
“Phew, my arms are starting to kill me,” they muttered. “But ten hours on leg two? That’s almost as good as last year, even with the storm.”
“Oh yeah, it’s a hell of a storm, this one,” said Iki. “Wouldn’t be surprised if your absolute speed was well above twenty knots.”
“We were doing twenty-five sometimes,” Jinai said.
“Well, there you go.”
“It’s all chaos back here,” said Janda. “No one else can reach their sailors. So it’s pretty dang promising that we can hear you right now. Talk about a great ad opportunity for Cloud Connectors!”
“Oh, we won’t hear the end of it,” Lujang muttered.
“The Mirage crew is having a proper shouting match in the corridors,” Telaki said. “They’re doing their best considering their team has basically flown out of reach of the relays.”
Warmed by the sudden return of their crew’s voices in their ears, Jinai and Anqien renewed their navigational efforts, spotting the wind and taking currents opportunistically. They made up mile after mile, riding the gales and puffs out to the end while the sky turned red.
Two hours after the sun sank into the sea and the night turned inky blue, there began a thin nimbostratus shower. It did not change the prevailing wind, so they stayed on their course, slicing the waves, into the last miles of the leg.
The first white-blue lights of Antao glittered into being, spanning miles of the horizon. The shape of the plateau behind it was perceptible from the lights much farther and higher above the dense constellation of streetlamps below.
The Cloudlanders soared into the glow of the port lights blurred by the drizzle—terminals and pulleys, floodlights on the docks bombastically welcoming them into the largest port city of the republic of Helfi. Among them, the blazing orange of the two official boats that marked the finish point resolved from the hazy backdrop, pulling them in like fish to a lure.
“We’re in sight of the finish,” announced Jinai, and there was a chorus of shouting amongst the crew. Then it was easy as one, two, three—they came into earshot, then into view, of the spectators, packed like teeth in a jaw—first the whistles, then the bellows and revving of motors, swallowed by the tumult as they shot towards the marks.
Almost as soon as they crossed the finish line of leg two, a cheer surged on the shore to drown all other noise, with the sort of electric spark that told them that they had been the first across the line.
“Anqien!” Jinai shouted. “I think…”
“We did it? Whoa!”
As they luffed the sails and the boat slowed towards the incandescent wharves, they saw that theirs was the lone sailboat mast within sight. At the mainsheet, Jinai threw her head up and gave a cry of delight. Anqien steered the yacht to port, just clear of the wharfs, and their teammate scrambled to the helm to throw her arms around them.
They waved to the screaming, flailing spectators while, over their heads, a board mounted on the wall of Hailang Mall lit up with their team name and updated score at the top—three points.
“Assuming the Mirages come second, we’re neck and neck,” said Anqien.
Jinai snorted. “Pretty damn sure they’ll be second.” Up on the wharf, a man in Sail Fed uniform was waving them towards the right with two fluorescent flags, and they obliged, following the directions towards the local marina.
“We won’t see you tonight, so rest up well,” said Telaki over the relay, after the initial unintelligible festivities of the crew, in earpieces not built to handle that volume of noise. “We’ll brief you for tomorrow. It’s looking like a ten o’clock start, like today. You make me so, so proud…”
It wasn’t till five whole minutes later—as they were alighting onto the jetty of their berth and received by a guide—that the cheers of the audience began to rouse again, and they both cast glances at the board as they walked. Over the fans heads, it lit up with the name of the AmaShiru Mirage, with their total points: three.
Jinai stopped in her tracks as they did, seeming transfixed by the moment, and the lights above. “Just like last year,” she breathed.
The boarding facilities at Antao were at a dedicated hostel for sailors in transit. Bags over their shoulders, they climbed the unfamiliar marble steps and took their keys from the counter, shifting effortlessly back into Helfi-yu to thank the receptionist. They walked together to find their rooms—two adjacent, nondescript black doors in a second-floor corridor.
Before they parted, Anqien felt Jinai tap them on their shoulder. When they turned, her shoulder tap turned seamlessly into a hug. As their arms came to circle her, she ruffled their hair, which had slipped halfway out of its band. They felt her pull it the rest of the way off.
“I’m so scared, like you wouldn’t believe,” she said as she stepped back, eyes so wide they reflected all the corridor lights.
“I'd believe it,” they replied, the nervous flutter of their heart turning all at once into a steady ache of wanting. They averted their gaze. Since they had seen the scoreboard, everything had begun to feel like an echo of last year. “I’m absolutely freaking out right now. But everything we’ve done has prepared us for this. Even last year’s run.”
She nodded quietly, prying herself out of the hug, although her hand lingered on their shoulder. “Well…whatever happens tomorrow, we’re going it together. And if it starts to get too much, let me know, alright?”
“Of course,” they answered. “You too, tell me if there’s anything you need.”
They clasped hands and parted at the doors. In the rush of the intensifying rain, Anqien locked the door behind them, battling their nerves all the way to the bed.
Well, we're here. The last leg of the last race. The next 2 chapters I feel need to be posted in the same week SO...