Bikini Baristas: Ted Higuera Series Book 4

by Pendelton Wallace

  “Ease out on the jib,” Chris yelled.

  Ted let the jib sheet out a foot or so.

  Chris let the bow drop slightly off the wind and jockeyed for position. Kraken, a white Benneteau 40 with a decal of a giant squid eating an old sailing ship on her bow was to windward. The Jaguar, a little Hotfoot 27, edged ever closer to leeward. Chris held his course.

  The start clock on his instrument panel counted down the time.

  Less than thirty seconds.

  “Ease the jib.”

  Ted responded instantly.

  The Courageous slowed down just a tad. The trick was to hold his speed as much as possible. They needed to sheet in and resume full speed an instant before the starting gun went off and surge over the starting line like a runaway locomotive.

  “You’re cutting it pretty close, Chris.” Harry, in his red foul weather gear, sat in the tactician’s seat on the high side of the cockpit.

  “We’ll make it. It’s going to be close.”

  Ten seconds. Nine. Eight.

  “Sheet in.”

  Five, four, three.

  The Courageous surged forward, leaving Kraken and Jaguar behind.

  The starting gun went off.

  Chris and his crew flew across the starting line.

  The first leg took the racers down the Straits of Juan de Fuca, the body of water that separates Canada from the U.S., for almost seventy miles out into the Pacific Ocean. The race course was nearly one hundred and forty miles. They would be crossing the finish line, back where they started off the mouth of Victoria Harbor, in the wee hours of the morning.

  Kraken edged ahead. Mephisto, from the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, was making a good showing. Chris Jockeyed for position and kept Courageous near the head of the pack.

  His Chesapeake 43 was a good upwind boat, but when they rounded the mark later that night and headed down wind, there would be hell to pay. The big red sloop was a rocket sled down wind. With the big red, white and blue spinnaker, she took off like the Devil was chasing her.

  All through the day, Chris drove his boat and crew. There wasn’t a soul on board who wasn’t drenched in sweat and aching to the bone. That’s what sailboat racing was about. Pushing yourself to the limit, a test of not only strength, but stamina and nerve. Just how good were you?

  Maria and Kayla manned the galley providing hot coffee and chocolate all morning long. At lunch they had sandwiches and cups of hot soup. The crew ate in shifts. There was no rest on a race. You kept the pedal to the metal from start to finish. A crew member might have a ten or fifteen minute break to use the head and grab a sandwich then it was back on duty.

  Chris and the Courageous fought for every inch to windward.

  Late in the day, they engaged in a tacking duel with Bonnie Lass, a Hunter 40 with an all-female crew out of Tacoma. The Lass had managed to inch ahead of Courageous. Chris couldn’t let that stand.

  “Stand by to come about,” he shouted.

  His crew snapped to attention.

  “Ready about,” chorused half a dozen voices as each crew member took their places and readied themselves.

  “Helm’s a lee,” Chris roared spinning the big stainless steel wheel. The Courageous spun on her keel.

  “Let go and haul.”

  Candace cast off the starboard jib sheet. Ted pulled like a madman to haul in the port sheet. When the wind caught the huge Genoa jib sail, Ted needed the mechanical leverage of the big sheet winches to finish the job. His muscles ached as he cranked in on the winch.

  “’Vast hauling,” Chris shouted.

  The red rocket boat settled down on her new course. She was heading right for the Bonnie Lass.

  “Starboard tack,” Chris shouted at the top of his lungs.

  The skipper on the Lass understood the move. Chris changed onto the starboard tack so that he would have the right of way, forcing her to give way to the Courageous.

  She wasn’t having any of it.

  The Bonnie Lass swung through the wind onto a starboard tack.

  “Standby to come about,” Chris yelled as the Bonnie Lass crossed the wind.

  “Helm’s a lee.”

  The big red sloop turned into the wind once again, this time, moving away from and ahead of the Tacoma boat. As Courageous surged ahead, they left the other boat in their wake.

  “Nice piece of sailing, son,” Harry beamed with pride. “I couldn’t have done better myself.”

  Chris felt a warm glow inside, despite the cold wet evening. He didn’t often get praise from his dad.

  As the day faded to night, the race went on. Chris drove his boat. Harry never left his post at Chris’s side, giving bits of advice and encouragement hour after hour.

  The crew began to feel the effects of fatigue. This was the wall. They had to push through it. Once they were on the other side, it would be all downhill.

  They were coming up on the windward mark. Kraken and Jaguar clung stubbornly to Chris’s tail. Hot Spur and Bonnie Lass were close behind. Chris had to time this just right.

  “Number one chute, don’t you think?” he said over his shoulder to his father.

  “Sounds good to me,” Harry said.

  “Make ready the number one kite,” Chris yelled up to Candace on the foredeck.

  “Aye, aye, number one kite,” she echoed.

  Candace and Alan went into a frenzy of activity making ready to hoist the spinnaker.

  “Stay as close to the marker as you can...” Harry had a panicked look on his face. “Chris… I... Argh”

  Harry grabbed his chest and collapsed to the deck.

  “DAD!” Chris yelled. “Ted, take the helm.”

  He didn’t look to see if Ted acknowledged, he dropped the helm and turned to his father.

  “Dad? Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

  Harry’s face turned from white to blue in the cockpit lights.

  Chris put his ear to his father’s chest. “Nothing!” he shouted.

  “Harry!” Candace dropped the orange turtle on the foredeck and came charging back to the cockpit. “Harry, no.”

  Chris felt his father’s wrist then his neck. “No pulse.”

  “CPR!” Candace shouted. “Give him CPR.”

  Chris ripped off Harry’s life vest and unzipped his foul weather gear then measured the distance from his collarbone and began compressions. “Breathe for me,” he shouted to Candace.

  “Somebody, call the Coast Guard.”

  “Tim, take the wheel,” Ted shouted.

  He dropped down the companionway hatch and dashed to the navigation station and picked up the microphone from the VHF radio and checked that they were on channel 16.

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is the sailing vessel Courageous. We have a medical emergency on board. One of our crew members is having a heart attack.”

  “Courageous, this is the US Coast Guard, Port Angeles Station. How many people are on board your vessel and are they all wearing life jackets?”

  “We have eight people on board. All are wearing life jackets.”

  “What is your position?”

  Ted read off the coordinates from the automatic pilot.

  “We have a chopper en route. They will be there in about an hour. Can you give your crewmember CPR?”

  Chris fought for his father’s life. He stubbornly compressed his chest and Candace gave Harry breaths. Minutes turned into hours. Chris thought he would collapse from the effort.

  From somewhere to the east, he heard the sound of helicopter blades.

  “They’re here,” Candace shouted.

  “Set off a flare,” Chris yelled. It was pitch dark.

  “Courageous, this is Coast Guard helicopter 2451. We have a visual on you.”

  “Courageous here,” Ted said.

  “Get your sails down and turn into the wind,” the chopper pilot said. We’re going to lower a basket to pick up your crewman.”

  Ted relayed the information to the deck and the crew jumped to
comply.

  The big white helicopter with an orange stripe hovered over the boat, setting up hurricane force winds. A door on the side of the chopper opened and a metal basket was lowered from a winch.

  When the basket was inches off the deck, Chris and Candace lifted Harry into the basket. Chris waved to the chopper and they lifted away from the boat.

  The basket with Harry aboard dangled at the end of the wire rope as the helicopter gained altitude then the chopper slowly began to winch in the basket.

  In a matter of minutes the basket was inside the big bird and the helicopter was speeding back towards shore.

  Post Script

  I hope you enjoyed reading Ted and Chris’s latest adventure as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Reviews are the life blood of independent writers. The more reviews we get, the more Amazon and others promote the book. If you want to see more Ted and Chris adventures, a review would go a long way towards allowing me to write more books. If you liked the book, I ask you to write a review of Bikini Baristas on Amazon.com, Goodreads or where ever you go for your book information. Thank you so much, it means the world to me. If you didn’t like the book, then please disregard this paragraph.

  I’m going to sweeten the pot here a little bit. If you post your review in the first week Bikini Baristas is available, I’ll enter your name in a drawing for a thriller package. I will send you four thrillers by other authors that I admire. I’ll also throw in an Amazon.com gift certificate for $40. Just send me an email with a link to your review and your address. We’ll hold the drawing on August 15th, 2015, will notify the winners immediately and send the prizes via Amazon.com.

  I’d love to hear your comments and criticisms. Who knows, maybe some of your ideas will appear in a future Ted Higuera novel. To contact me click here or use the Contact Penn form on my web site at www.pennwallace.com.

  If you liked Cat, you have to read my short story about one of her early cases, Mirror Image, available on Amazon.com at http://tinyurl.com/n5bxoed.

  Ted, Chris and the gang will be back. The next book takes our heroes back to Mexico, this time to the Baja California peninsula. Once again, an evil drug lord plots against our boys. Maria disappears and all havoc breaks loose. You’re going to meet some interesting new characters and, of course, find out what happens to Harry.

  Look for it around Christmas of 2015.

  For now, if you liked this story, you can browse my other books and short stories at http://www.pennwallace.com/index.html.

  Thank you very much for reading my book. I hope you enjoy my other works and don’t forget to write.

  Author Bio

  If Chevy Chase had played Indiana Jones, he would be Penn Wallace. Penn has a thirst for adventure, but nothing ever seems to go exactly as planned.

  Penn graduated from the University of Oregon (Go Ducks!) and has had three careers. He owned and operated two restaurants and worked for several major chains. In 1990, he went back to school, got his MBA in Information Systems and embarked on a new life.

  After his wife died in 2010, Penn lost all interest in work. He left his career as a software engineer and bought a big old sail boat. He spent the next two and a half years restoring the vessel.

  In the fall of 2012 he set sail for the warm blue waters of Baja California in his 56-foot sailboat, the Victory. You may read an account of this adventure on his blog at www.pennwallace.com. This is when Penn started his third career, as a writer.

  Penn currently resides in San Diego, but expect him to pull up anchor and set sail for the Panama Canal and the Caribbean soon.

  You may contact Penn at http://www.pennwallace.com/contact-penn.html and visit his web site at www.pennwallace.com.