Queen of Hearts

by Sheryl Wright

  Her reward was a smile and an almost silent, “Sorry.”

  Ally stood with a leg braced in the cockpit well and her other knee resting on the starboard bench, much as Erin had been doing on the opposite side. She had a perfect view of the starboard deck and some of the port from below the boom. She couldn’t help but watch as Erin made her way along the steeply pitched lower deck, all the way to the bow. She was grabbing the mooring line, demonstrating how to gather and tie it to the deck rail. Ally couldn’t hear what was being said, but she did see Erin pointing out other problems and watched as the bow team worked to make them right. “Good work, Erin,” Ally said, whispering her appreciation to the wind.

  On the port side the team handling the big mainsail was squared away. The sheets were even and the mainsail tight as a drum, their running lines all safely secured. And they were all sitting on the deck, bare feet dangling over the edge. They had left the crank inserted in the winch instead of removing it and stashing it in the special hold designed for its storage. Ally always did the same on short day sails and especially when racing. She would have to say something nice to the woman she’d put in charge on the port side. She knew her stuff and had no problem leading her team.

  Back on the starboard side, things were getting done, but there looked to be a clash of wills, with Erin refereeing some dispute. Ally was about to go forward herself to straighten it out when she felt the wind fall off on their current heading. The woman at the helm felt it too, but looked to her first.

  “Set your course to one-eight-zero. Head south! You’ve got it!” Why could she not remember their names? She watched the woman manning the overly large stainless steel wheel. She spun the wheel a few turns left, watching the compass spin. She must have spent some time learning to read a compass in movement. While the bow swung left toward the south, the movement caused the compass to spin in the other direction. You had to understand procession, to be able to calculate the reciprocal properly. Most day sailors just looked for where they thought they wanted to go, aimed for it, then checked once the compass had settled to see if they were on track. The helmswoman knew her stuff and swung the wheel and the rudder to midships at the exact reciprocal heading. When the compass swung back, they were on a perfect southern course and right on her planned track line for the first turn. By Ally’s calculation, it would take them twenty minutes to finish this leg. Connie had designed the course so that they would pass, temporarily so, into American waters. Making this officially a truly two-nation race.

  Erin was back at Ally’s side. She tipped her head aft. “Looks like Rene’s boat had some troubles getting started. That’s Pam’s boat behind us.”

  Ally tried not to stiffen at Erin’s tone when she said Pam’s name. Of course, Erin would be interested in Pam. Everyone was. Even Connie admitted she hadn’t realized just how much effect Pam still had on women. Of all of them in the competition, she knew two had been sent home for fooling around together, and Connie had quipped without thinking that Pam had been either everyone’s first or second choice. Excluding the gold diggers, there wasn’t a woman, except the two already sent home, who’d voted just for Rene and Virginia. Ally wasn’t surprised at all but wondered if having insider knowledge was wise. Guessing she was not the favorite was one thing. Knowing it was a whole other bandwagon. Seeing Erin’s open affection was a gut punch, a small one but it still hurt. In a way, this was almost as bad as high school. At least this time she had Connie feeding her info. And it wasn’t like she expected to win. That would be Pam. She could see her on one knee asking the perfect woman for her hand. Maybe that was Erin’s dream too?

  She turned to look aft and could see Rene finally had her sails up. She had a lot of water to cover, but she seemed to have picked up on the wind change close to shore and turned to get abeam of the quartering headwind. Pam, on the other hand, had set a hard course for south right from the get-go. That was just like her. Headwinds be damned. She always steered straight for her goal and never considered altering her course. It might be the only advantage Pam ever left her. “She’s not taking advantage of the inshore winds. We might be able to use that on our downwind run.”

  “What about the next leg?” Erin asked. “If we’re not careful, we could end up in irons.”

  It was a smart observation, and Ally smiled. “That’s why we’re going to overshoot the first marker. Hopefully, Pam and Rene will think we screwed up and they’ll turn inside us and head straight for the next leg. If they keep the most direct route, they’ll be bobbing like ducks while we cut back from a lower compass point. We won’t have the wind abeam, but we can make a quartering wind work.”

  Erin agreed with her captain, as did the woman at the helm who was listening. Erin moved away to kneel on the port aft bench.

  Ally had a good line of sight, and the deck pitch wasn’t too excessive. She wasn’t going to push these women too much. After all, this was supposed to be fun. Climbing from the cockpit, Ally made her way along the port side, taking time to chat with each of the women manning the mainsail and boom. Just because this was some weird group date didn’t mean she should ignore anyone or spend time with just a few. If she were serious about this competition and imagined herself a real contender, she would be happy to let the women come to her, but the stakes were high for Connie and in a way, Pam too. Pam wanted a wife and Connie needed a commercial hit. If Ally spent some time trying to be charming, it would please Connie. If she got to know a little about each of the women she would be prepared when Pam came to her to discuss her choice. Or would it be choices? With Pam, she always kept her options and mind open.

  It took thirty minutes to make her rounds of the boat. When she returned, she found her helmswoman and her co-captain Erin in a deep conversation. She felt a little like she was interrupting, but what the hell, this was her boat and wasn’t this queen business supposed to be all about her? “Sorry to interrupt…”

  “We were just talking about you,” her helmswoman said. “Don’t worry, it was all good. You do realize you’re the only one of the queens who’s interested in the details of each woman? I was just saying how nice it was that you even asked simple things like where we’re from.”

  A little embarrassed, Ally was tempted to make a joke or slough it off, but such nice words deserved a comment. “Please forgive me, but I don’t always remember everything I’m told. Will you be upset if I have to ask a second time?”

  This she asked of the woman at the helm. The smile she received told her the jig was up. “I wondered if you would ask or just get one of the PAs to tell you. My name is Mary, and I’m from—”

  “No, don’t tell me. You’re the University researcher from Portland?”

  The woman’s smile radiated more than forgiveness. Okay. Maybe one or two might like me after all. Hmm. A little embarrassed, Ally turned away from the helm, trying to look like she had other business needing her attention. She hesitated when she realized Erin had been listening to the flirting going on and maybe knew just how uncomfortable it made her. As if a beautiful, smart woman would be looking at me like I’m a prospect. Probably she’s thinking, how did I get stuck spending the day with such an awkward nerdy-girl? “All hands. Ready for the turn to port! Prepare to tack!”

  “Tack means duck!” they all called back as they had practiced that morning, and had their heads down and eyes on the mainsail.

  “Tack! Hard to port. Helm set heading zero-seven-zero!” They swung around one-hundred and ten degrees and began the hard fight to harness the wind coming in just twenty points off their nose. While their ground speed slowed appreciably, Ally’s strategy to extend the first leg had worked like a charm. She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to Erin’s questioning eyes. She could fall into eyes like that, live there even, but right now she was sure her interest was about winning, not her.

  “Rene’s boat is in irons like you predicted. It worked!” Erin’s excitement had finally returned.

  “Pam’s still doing okay, but ju
dging by the flutter in her sails she’ll be forced to tack a few times before the next marker.”

  “That’s good. That’s good!”

  Ally couldn’t help but return that gorgeous vote of confidence. It felt nice to believe Erin was on her side, even if her heart or interest lay elsewhere. Checking the course chart, and their time, it was easy to calculate their four-knot speed through this short leg designed to do just what it had done. She was surprised Pam had fallen for it. Of the two of them, she had always considered Pam the better sailor.

  The year before they started boarding school, their grandfather had purchased an authentic Chinese junk. It was easy to prove it was authentic, as he got it from a family selling their catch on the weirs of the Yangtze River. He’d had the best chandlery in Hong Kong refit and kit her out, including adding a brand new set of blood-red sails. He paid a commercial transitioning crew to sail her west to the isthmus of Central America, through the Panama Canal, east to the Atlantic, north to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and on to display for the grand opening of Ontario Place. The girls had grown up underfoot as he learned, but not well, to sail the extravagant barge.

  Pam had always been the one to take the helm and from Ally’s position, take command. It was her grandfather who changed her understanding of the situation when he much later explained it was his strategy to keep an eye on her. Ally was the one he trusted to be in the right spot and do the right things. He counted on it, and that knowledge had done plenty to ease her battered ego where her perfect cousin was concerned. Pam would always be the brilliant attorney and the beautiful woman. Ally at least could win a race.

  “Okay, crew! Be ready to tack. We’re going to go a little long on this leg. Sail master! Be ready to run out the spinnaker!” she ordered, turning to catch Erin putting more sunscreen on her face. “Aww. I liked the freckles.”

  Erin gave her a look that said she didn’t believe a word of it. Behind them, they could hear Pam bellowing at her crew to move faster. As predicted, she had them tacking back and forth like an angry zig-zagging shark, her mainsail battened tighter than plastic wrap across the mouth of a bowl. “They’re catching up!”

  Ally calmed her, explaining, “They can’t actually catch us on this leg. What we need to do now is make sure we don’t give up our advantage when we drop our Genoa and run out the spinnaker.”

  Looking determined, Erin was nodding vigorously. She pointed to the course marker. “We’re there.”

  Checking the marker and the women on her crew, she waved for them to hold their places. “Two more minutes! Be ready to tack hard! Sail master, are you ready with the spinnaker?”

  “Ready, captain!” she hollered back.

  Ally wasn’t one hundred percent confident they were, but she wouldn’t undermine the woman she put in charge. Turning back to Erin, she warned, “We might have to run forward and grab the sheets. If so, I’ll go to port just in case they need help with the spinnaker pole. Can you handle starboard?”

  “Sure,” Erin said, sounding pleased to have an actual job to do. “Do I run it through the Fairlead block?”

  “No, use the turning block,” she started to say, then realized there were no turning blocks on the aft transom, just cleats.

  Erin, looking back, must have understood her confusion and immediately opened an aft storage cover. She pulled out two blocks attached to short shock cords. “I spotted these earlier. Will they do?”

  Checking her watch, Ally nodded. “You just saved the day.” She reached out, taking only one of the blocks and attaching it to the aft cleat, watching to be sure Erin did the same. “Ready?” When she nodded, they switched places. Erin reached for the rail, and Ally called to the crew, “TACK!”

  “Tack means duck!” the crew called back.

  “Hard to port. Helm, make your heading two-seven-zero. Bow, raise the spinnaker!” All around them, women rushed to make the changes necessary to get the forty-foot sailboat moving in virtually the opposite direction. The boat swung wide and the luft loosened to capture as much of the tailwind as the design could amass. She called out to the women on the mainsail, letting them know she was proud and pleased. Up front, the bow crew wasn’t doing as well. She’d had a feeling this would be harder than it looked but couldn’t blame them for trying. Nodding to Erin, she placed a hand on the helmswoman’s shoulder. “Keep her pointed right at the Whitby Harbour Mark—”

  Bang!

  The helmswoman fell into her arms while Erin, who was just climbing from the cockpit, was saved from falling overboard by the woman placed in charge of the mainsail. Lucky for Erin, she was kneeling at the traveler and tying off the running lines when Pam’s boat ran into them.

  Righting her clingy helmswoman, Ally turned, checking her crew before turning on Pam and company. Before she could issue a single expletive, Pam’s boat, which had turned too late not to hit them, scraped ahead, its bowsprit snagging their spinnaker and dragging it with them. Mad as a hatter, Ally tore down the port side of her boat, managing to grab the tail of the now submerged spinnaker. The women working the bow, as confused and riled as the rest, caught on quickly, jumping to action, and worked with Ally to retrieve their soaked secret weapon.

  One of the women had the spinnaker pole in her hand. “It’s bent now. Can we still use it?”

  Looking at the pole, Ally knew it was too short for a spinnaker, even an asymmetrical one like this. “No. But it’s okay. That’s not it. It must be a reaching pole or something like that. Where’s the spinnaker pole, ladies? This isn’t it. What we’re looking for should be about three inches thick and longer than the boom.”

  “Got it!” Erin had made it forward. The pole had been unnoticeable, simply lashed to the deck with all sorts of other equipment they didn’t need or recognize. She had it freed in seconds, handing the end that attached to the mast to Ally. She had it connected and hoisted into place in a second. It took all of them a good three to four minutes to haul up the wet spinnaker. By then, Pam had a good lead on them, but she was playing it safe or didn’t know they had a spinnaker on board. Behind them, Rene was gathering some steam after fluttering her way through the second leg. Her team had been slower getting going, but they were smart and learning fast. That or just copying Ally’s strategy. They were struggling to raise their spinnaker too but had a great advantage. Their brightly colored billowing foresail was dry and light. Ally couldn’t guess how much weight the water added to the sail much less if or how it would affect the performance characteristics. She couldn’t help but smile to realize this was a great debate topic to share with KC.

  “That’s an interesting smile,” her helmswoman suggested as Ally climbed back into the aft cockpit. “I wouldn’t mind getting a little of that.”

  “If it’s debate with a good friend on aerodynamics, then you’re in luck.”

  The woman shook her head in disbelief then offered Ally an unsolicited and very wet kiss.

  Allyson froze on the spot. She was not used to being the object of open desire for one woman much less a whole group. She blushed when she realized Erin was back and looking at her with the oddest, almost disappointed look. Ally mumbled under her breath, then, not knowing what else to do, obfuscated, calling, “Cheer master! The Yellow Bellies are on our heels and those boat-ramming clodhoppers are up ahead. Let them know we’re gaining on them and we plan to win!”

  To her relief, the cheer master sprang to her feet, more than enjoying the attention. She was really into it and led their team to cheer their hearts out. While they chanted, Ally took the opportunity to escape the overexcited helmswoman and her thorny co-captain. Moving from woman to woman she took her time, making sure each one was having fun and getting some attention from her. She was sitting with the women manning the bow when her boat eased up beside Pam in the lead.

  “Nice work hitting us back there!” Pam called out.

  “What? You monster! Admit it, Sappho’s Sailors have what it takes to win, and we’re gonna beat you!”

  Pam
just laughed as they eased by, pointing past Ally’s shoulder.

  She turned expecting to see one of her crew standing behind her. What she found was Rene’s boat off her port side. She had rigged her spinnaker perfectly, but instead of using the asymmetrical rig, she had found and understood how to use a fully symmetrical rig with double spinnaker poles. Rene’s boat looked like a water beetle with its two big wings floating out front and dragging them forward at a better pace than they would muster with the smaller and very wet rig. She’d been so fixated on catching and beating Pam that she had forgotten all about Rene.

  “Come on Sappho’s Sailors! We are not going to take this sitting down! Well, some of us will,” she joked with the women around her as she got to her feet and began working her way aft, “Time to lace her up nice and tight. Let’s stretch some knots out of these sails!”

  Immediately, the crewwomen who knew what they were doing went to work capturing every ounce of wind they could harness and trimming their heading for the best angle to capture that wind. And they sang. They might not win, but they would finish and finish knowing they had done their best. It may not make for great TV viewing, but she wasn’t actually here to find a wife, so viewers would have to settle for living vicariously through Pam or Rene. She herself would play out her role for the rest of the week. The contestants would have their say, she’d be out, and Rene and Pam could fight for the affections of the remaining contestants.

  Stopping to check the traveler and the main boom were out as far as the rigging would allow, she was scolding herself when she rejoined Erin and the helmswoman. What the hell is her name and why can’t I remember anyone but Erin?

  The woman at the helm offered immediately, “Oh, what happened? Where did that secret smile go? I bet I can turn that frown upside down.” And she suggestively slid her arm around Ally’s waist.