Days of the Python (Python Trilogy Book 1)

by David Jurk

  The marina might as well have been a small city. It spread out before me in a profusion of boats so varied in size and shape it was stupefying; I had trouble taking it all in. There were hundreds and hundreds of boats, perhaps thousands; from quaint old wooden Friendship sloops to rigid-sail carbon fiber space ships nearly fifty meters long. Set alongside a secured quay, there was even an old Oracle America’s Cup winner from 2016, looking for all the world as if it were ready to race out to sea, to take flight.

  And buildings? Christ, the place could’ve been a factory. There were three mammoth structures, all with huge doors set into their ends, like hangars, to allow access to the biggest of the boats. All surrounded like beehives with an army of workers and machinery, buzzing about on innumerable tasks.

  I turned into the first of the driveways, cautious and tentative, not even sure where I should park. Even the size of the parking lot unnerved me. Still, I found an opening and parked the Tacoma, took a deep breath and climbed out. I was here, they should be expecting me, and where the hell else could I go?

  As it turned out, Tina was busy, overseeing the repair of some structure in the outer harbor. Just wait, her harried admin told me, she’ll show. What time had been agreed on? Well, that’s exactly when she’d be here. I was half an hour early.

  For the next thirty minutes, feeling a wacky blend of excitement, fear and curiosity, I wandered around the marina, up and down dock after dock of slips, searching particularly for multihulls. Those I found were mainly catamarans, huge cruisers; I came across only one trimaran and it was clearly a buoy racer, not a boat designed for blue water. It was frighteningly obvious that the driving force in this place was money; there were boats here worth ten times what I’d sold the farm for. Maybe twenty times.

  I felt a very strange tension growing with every passing moment, as I thought about Windswept being in this place, amongst these boats. There was only me to maneuver it, only me to get the rigging set and do the myriad things one needed to do when you launch a boat. I hadn’t even figured out how I’d manage to grab a mooring ball and steer at the same time. It was overwhelming; just the thought of handling the boat in a place this crowded was terrifying. And the list I was keeping in my head of other things, the things I was realizing I’d need, grew longer and longer. I was slipping toward pure panic – as if I waited in the wings of a vast theater before an audience of thousands, about to walk out alone, naked, needing to perform some great act I was only dimly capable of. I checked my watch nervously at least every five minutes, willing the half hour by, wanting to just be done with it, to get past the pure unknown-ness of it all.

  As the half hour came precisely to a close, I was promptly back in the office, the admin nodding at me approvingly for my promptness, nodding in the direction of a slight blonde woman, just coming through an inner door. In her forties I guessed, hair pulled back into a tight, all-business pony tail. She was attractive, yes, but what stood out was her presence, her absolute command of the situation around her; her pure confidence. It emanated from her like an aura. To be so sure, to have no fear - I envied her.

  “It’s Owen, is it?” she asked, approaching me. Yep, definitely German, I thought. She held out her hand. It was small, but calloused and strong; a grip like a man.

  We chatted for a few minutes about the process of unloading the hulls and assembling them. I tried to point out the challenges with getting everything on the same level; nothing I said even scratched her surface. She was polite and attentive, but the things I thought of as challenges weren’t as much as drops of water on granite to her. She pointed out the building I should direct the truck to and assured me that the supervisor there was expecting me and I should feel confident that he’d take care of things. Questions? No, no questions. She turned to leave; another matter needed her attention elsewhere.

  From somewhere, idiotically, I felt the need to break through that cool control, to reach the person inside. Impulsively, I called after her; “Danke fur Ihre Hilfe!”

  She stopped, turned with a faint hint of surprise, eyebrow raised, and responded to me so rapidly in German that I couldn’t make out a single word. Feeling like a fool, I hesitated, could think of nothing clever to say and just smiled dumbly, giving her a brief nod. With a tilt of her head she let me know she knew, then turned and left.

  I found a bench outside the building and sat to wait for the truck. I was far too nervous at this point to keep wandering among the boats; so thinking it might help, I pulled a pen and a ledger from my backpack and started a list of things I knew I needed to do yet. That little exercise didn’t help a bit; the list had grown to both sides of the page when I heard the grinding of an electro-diesel and looked up to see the flatbed turning into the marina, the familiar sweep of Windswept in its keeping, come at last to the shores of the Pacific.

  What rose in my heart then was a sweeping tide of desperate pride and fearsome anxiety for this creature of mine, this boat that had been so much a part of me for so long, had been at the deepest root of a lifelong dream of going to sea. A boat that somehow had become real and tangible, a distinct being really, which – if not for the promise to Rachel – would’ve died. And now I was the son, not the father; it was now Windswept that would need to provide for me. Whatever I had poured into her, whatever diligence, whatever focus, whatever excellence would now be what was returned to me. Was it enough?

  I walked to the truck, motioning to Mitch the proper spot and stood helplessly watching as they parked, and the swarm of men converged on the boat. This was a long-feared moment of dread for me – the off-loading, the transformation of these sterile hulls and connectives back into the living entity that Windswept was to me. Would it all fail now?

  But I needn’t have worried - this had been a good choice after all, this place. They knew exactly what they were doing. A huge track-driven crane was pulled up along with a truck full of beat-up looking foam blocks. What the hell, I wondered, were those for? They positioned the crane and gently and securely lifted the three hulls from the truck, arranging them easily on top of – what else? – the foam blocks

  And the moment they were off the truck and settled gently in place, Mitch and Luke were gone.

  “Need you to sign for the delivery,” Mitch said, brusque and dismissive.

  As I signed, I wished them well.

  He was done with me, grunting a goodbye, then snatched the receipt from my hand, and turned away, Luke already in the truck. I watched them pull out of the marina with a mixture of relief and fear. With their departure, it was settled. It was just Windswept now.

  Turning back, I saw the three men standing around the boat, talking, gesturing at the hulls. As I walked over, they turned to me.

  “Hey captain,” called the supervisor. I stiffened, not needing any sarcasm just then, but there was nothing but sincerity in his eyes and it came to me abruptly that I was a captain now; in their eyes I was the master of this boat.

  “Hey,” I said. “Name’s Owen.” We all shook hands – theirs were the hands of working men. I gripped hard, wanting them to see me the same way.

  “Chris,” he replied. “Good to meet you.” He was curious, gesturing with his head towards the hulls.

  “What are these made of?”

  “Synthetic Okoume veneers,” I said, expecting to see raised eyebrows and getting them. “Three layers of three millimeters, vacuum bonded with epoxy.”

  “Wait,” he said. He’s astonished. “These are only nine millimeters thick?”

  I nodded. This is a little speech I’ve given dozens of time; practically every time someone new walked into the barn during those days she was being built.

  “Actually,” I told him, “only the main hull – the center one, right?” I gave him my well-practiced spiel. “Polynesians call that the vaka – that’s the only one that’s nine millimeters. The two outrigger hulls – called amas – those only have two layers; they’re just six millimeters thick.”

  Now he was openly flabb
ergasted.

  “Are you kidding?”

  I smiled and shook my head.

  “With the epoxy and the use of vacuum compression, the Vaka hull has the equivalent strength of aluminum. The amas not quite, but it isn’t needed. There are longitudinal stringers all along the inside – sort of a full-length skeleton of synthetic wood and epoxy – that make the amas incredibly strong.”

  “And these,” he asked, pointing to the four connectives.

  “Called akas,” I said. “Nothing fancy there - simple box beams of the same synthetic plywood, encased in epoxy, faired with foam for piercing waves.”

  He stood staring at the boat, shaking his head.

  “Who’d a thought?”

  I showed them the attachment sleeves that had been built into the vaka and amas, explaining how the thick steel pins had to be slipped into them, tying the three hulls together. He understood immediately that they needed to get the three hulls aligned not just in parallel, but in terms of their relative heights to one another.

  “How are you going to level everything?” I asked.

  “The blocks,” he replied simply.

  Of course. They brought up a small, portable hydraulic lift on wheels and used it to lift and hold one end or another of the hulls, slipping small pieces of the foam under the hulls as levelers and in minutes, the hulls were all perfectly leveled, and the men were walking around, nudging them into alignment for the connectives. The whole process had taken maybe half an hour, from unloading to this.

  As I watched them, I could’ve kicked myself. Why the hell hadn’t I done something similar in the barn? I thought of all the work and expense that had gone into the complicated system of overhead tracks I’d installed, all the expensive chain falls; all of that could’ve been replaced by a few cheap blocks of foam. And a memory came to me; Rachel ruefully looking at all the hardware mounted to the barn beams, crossing her arms, doubt on her face, insistent that that there must be a simpler way. Yep, Raich, turns out there is.

  The akas were then slid into their sockets, a simple chore with everything sitting so well aligned. I was already anticipating the lift into the water when Chris walked up to me.

  “Where’s the pins?”

  “Pins?” I asked.

  “For locking in the connectives. Didn’t you say they were secured with stainless steel pins?”

  A cold chill seized my neck. What had I done with the pins? The truck? I struggled to remember.

  He was watching my face. “Are they a common size?” he asked, already anticipating the sequence of events if the pins were lost. I shook my head.

  “Completely custom,” I said dully. “In diameter and length.” I racked my brain. “Can you give me a minute?”

  “Sure,” he said, and held out his phone. I stared. Oh, right. I waved mine next to it.

  “Call me when you find them.” I nodded and headed for the truck, walking, then running.

  Not there. Think you fool, think. I closed my eyes, trying to remember what I’d done in the barn, only three days ago. But it now seemed like three months ago and all of it had gone dim.

  The port aka, Owen, remember? To keep them always with the boat. Her voice was sweet and clear, the hint of a smile in it. Of course! Relief washed through me, and I raised my phone.

  Half an hour later, Windswept now perfectly joined together, the largest overhead lift I’d ever seen pulled up. The driver directed this mammoth thing with a remote, as he walked beside it. With it looming obediently ten meters above him, an old memory of a state fair in New Hampshire came to me; a small boy leading an Ox through the crowd, managing it with a stick the size of a baton. It had stunned me then, the giant beast controlled with a small switch, and this thing stunned me now. It could’ve lifted a house.

  They hauled two sets of slings under the vaka, attached them to the lift, and the driver took one last contemplative look - and slowly, Windswept was lofted into the air. I held my breath as I heard the akas groan taking up the weight of the amas. But of course, that’s exactly what they were supposed to do, what they were designed for. Still, seeing it like this, working as a single unit, for the first time I began to have an appreciation for the engineering that had gone into her design.

  And now, three meters off the ground, slowly yawing and swaying as the crane crept at a snail’s pace toward the water, Windswept was truly whole. The hours and days and months – the years – that I had spent on all those separate sections had come to this. She was now exactly what I’d made her; no more and no less. It was on me now, all of it.

  And just like that, as though it were the most inconsequential, routine thing in the world, the crane lowered her until her keels found the surface of the harbor, and she was home, at last in her element. I stood awed at the sight of her, perched so lightly on the surface of the water that she hardly seemed to touch it. She sat resplendent; all my dreams of what this moment would be like paled at the reality before me. Tears welled in my eyes and I wondered that this thing was even possible. That we were here, after everything, Windswept in the sea. This boat that I’d built, that Rachel and I had built, was in the Pacific Ocean. And I was embarrassed, tried to duck my face away so the crane driver wouldn’t see my tears, but I suppose he’d experienced this all many times before because he’d turned away, giving me the moment to myself.

  I assumed they’d free Windswept from the sling then, to be tied up to the dock while I organized things, but they were experienced here, far too savvy for that, had seen too many launches go badly – so the sling stayed in place. He turned to me, kindly ignoring my surreptitious attempt to wipe tears away, and told me to take my time, but to get on board as soon as I could and make sure nothing was leaking. I nodded and headed for the dock, unable to take my eyes from her. She was changed; beautiful beyond words but altered somehow. Something had awakened in her; there was an energy, a poised capacity for movement that I’d never seen before. Even as she rocked gently, still secured by the sling, her movements reminded me of a bird of prey; feral and quick, efficient, ready for flight.

  The next few hours were a blur. Aside from a small leak from the port side driveshaft seal, which was quickly fixed, she was watertight and perfect, and they released us from the sling. We were tied up temporarily to an inner dock and I made an endless number of trips back and forth from the pickup, bringing equipment, sails, lines, batteries, electronics, clothes, cooking and eating utensils – as I brought on board everything I needed to live on her. I took the kayak down from the roof rack on the pickup and lashed it into its carrier on the forward netting; it would serve as my ‘tender’, ferrying me back and forth from the boat.

  As the afternoon waned, Windswept was settled. I had installed the batteries, charged them and verified that the drive motors would at least turn on. Lights glowed softly from within the cabin, bow and stern lights shone as they should; everything was in place, ready to go.

  I went to the supervisor of the yard and asked for help moving the boat. I suppose he was familiar with the insecurity of a new captain and smiled patiently, then turned and called out to someone. A young girl appeared. He saw the look on my face.

  “Tina’s daughter,” he said, by way of explanation. “Emma. Has worked around boats here since she was five. Trust me when I say you’re in the best possible hands.”

  The girl grinned at me and I could see her mother in her face. She had inherited the easy confidence as well and held out a small hand to me.

  “Hi,” she said. The top of her head maybe reached my chest.

  “Hi, yourself,” I replied. “I’m Owen.”

  “Good to meet you, Owen.”

  I worried that she’d seen the look on my face. “Listen,” I said, a bit flustered. “I didn’t mean to question your…experience.” She laughed.

  “Happens all the time. It’s OK.”

  We walked over to the boat and stood on the dock for a moment, just looking.

  “She’s beautiful,” said Emma. I was s
tarting to really like this kid.

  “Thanks.”

  “Drive system?” she asked.

  I glanced at her.

  “Twin electric motors. Completely independent controllers.” Would she understand the relevance of that? I shouldn’t have wondered.

  “Wow,” she replied. “That’ll make this a cake walk.”

  We stepped down into the cockpit.

  “AI?” she asked, seeing the monitor on the pivot next to the hatchway. Again, she caught me flat footed.

  “Yeah,” I said, slowly. “It’s the full, extended system – drive systems, navigation, boat management and remote sensors.” I was warming up. “The whole enchilada. The extended AI is supposed to provide a nearly human interface.”

  She whistled, both eyebrows raised in a miniature version of her mother.

  “Wow,” she said. “That’s sweet!”

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “Want me to initialize it for you?”

  “You know how to do that?” This was another thing I’d been dreading – I’d heard configuring these systems could be a seriously time-consuming job.

  She cocked her head to one side and considered it.

  “You might want to wait on the full feature implementation,” she said doubtfully. “And just implement the basics for now.”

  “OK, that’s fine,” I agreed.

  “Want me to do it?”

  “Sure!” I told her. “That’d be fantastic.”

  She bent over, pressed a finger against some area on the border of the screen. It lit up.

  “Ray,” she called out, “initialize core functionality.”

  The monitor replied immediately, in a flat expressionless voice. “Initializing.”

  “Ray?” I asked her.

  She grimaced. “Dumb, right? That’s the default name it responds to - short for RayMarine.” I looked at her blankly. “Get it?” she asked.