Troubled Sea

Troubled Sea

by

Jinx Schwartz

BOOKS BY JINX SCHWARTZ

The Hetta Coffey Series

Just Add Water (Book1)
Winner/ EPPIE Award

Just Add Salt (Book 2)

Just Add Trouble (Book 3)

Just Deserts (Book4)

Just the Pits (Book 5)

Other Books

The Texicans

Troubled Sea

Land of Mountains

Hetta and Jenks Jenkins have broken free from the corporate rat race and are enjoying a life others only daydream of: living aboard their boat in Mexico's hauntingly beautiful, but remote, Sea of Cortez.

This sea, however, comes with serpents. After stumbling into a drug deal gone wrong, they are caught up in a gut-wrenching ocean of intrigue that threatens to sink more than their dreams.

What people are saying about Troubled Sea

This one was the absolute best in terms of "can't put it down". Her other are also fun, funny and full of adventure. I'd recommend them all highly. Jacquie, Bainbridge Island, WA.

A friend recommended this book. He said it was a page-turner. What an understatement!!! You will be hooked after the first couple of pages. This book had me on the seat of my pants from beginning to end. Kudos Jinx. Richard K. Barber, Baja California Sur, Mexico.

WOW! This is one of the best boating books I have ever read. Non-stop action, can't put the book down type of story. As a boater myself, I recognized many of the anchorages, locations and people that I had met in my cruising of the Sea of Cortez in a time before this book's setting. Very authentic as well and the author's experiences as a live aboard cruiser shows. In navy talk, Bravo Zulu, which means "well done". Allen MacDiarmid, Goodreads

Troubled Sea

Copyright © 2004

e-book Published by Jinx Schwartz 2011

All rights reserved.

The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to persons, whether living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning to a computer disk, or by any informational storage and retrieval system, without express permission in writing from the publisher.

Acknowledgements

While it is true that I penned
Troubled Sea
, the concept for the book was my husband, Robert’s. He helped outline the plot, then spent many hours critiquing—a perilous task—my manuscript. Troubled Sea was written aboard our boat,
High Jinx
, which was lost when Hurricane Marty decimated much of the fleet in the Sea of Cortez.

A big
gracias
to Roger Pramhus, Bunnie Adams, John Reynolds, Geary Ritchie, and my enduring technical assistant and hubby, Robert "Mad Dog" Schwartz.

In the Sea of Cortez, cruisers lose their identities to their boat names, so I wish to acknowledge the following boaters for helping me with the original edition of Troubled Sea:
SV Backstreets
, Dennis and Paula;
SV Peach
, Susan and Wain:
SV Resande
, Morrie and Lorrie;
SV Inclination
, Garth;
SV Pyawacket
, Gray and Dorothea;
SV Telitha
, John and Laura;
SV Paloma Blanca
, Rebecca and Lutz. I also owe a debt of gratitude to some landlubbers for that edition: Susan Daniels, Jennifer Redmond, Mary Schroyer, Sheran Vaughn, Monica Brooks, Pam Germain, Monika and Russ Madden, and David Gunkle of the Sierra Vista, Arizona, Library.

Cover art by w
ww.PhillipsCovers.com

Dedication

We’ll miss our friend, Roger Wales

Now a loving memory

A master of sales and sails

A fine sailor, he.

And we mourn our beloved High Jinx

Lost in ‘03

Consigned to the deep by Hurricane Marty

A fine ship, she.

And as always, to Mad Dog, my own bright star, who guides me through life’s storms into fair winds and following seas.

TROUBLED SEA

The Sea of Cortez, or the Gulf of California, is a long, narrow, highly dangerous body of water. It is subject to sudden and vicious storms of great intensity.—John Steinbeck,
The Log from the Sea of
Cortez
.

Chapter 1

Spawned by fierce Santa Ana winds in Southern California, the gale gathered strength as it roared south across the Sonoran Desert, and then lashed the turquoise waters of the Sea of Cortez into a white frenzy.

In an open fishing boat—a panga—a determined driver wrestled a seventy-five horsepower outboard for command of his craft as it caromed off one six-foot wave, and crashed into another. Bare head bent into blinding spindrift, he stood with his feet spread wide for balance, knees flexed to absorb the shock of the boat bottoming out in the troughs. Covered only by his weatherworn jeans, his legs were numb with cold and fatigue. Arm and shoulder muscles burned with the effort of maintaining his grip on the outboard motor’s extended steering handle. As forty-five knot winds shot salt bullets into his scalp and through rips in his ratty slicker, a less determined man would have turned around, put the wind to his back and ridden south with the seas.

But Pedro Gomez was not a man.

Using an electronic instrument he barely understood, thirteen-year-old Pedro had set out alone, leaving his sick brother, the intended driver, back at their fish camp. He managed to successfully navigate to the center of the Gulf, pick up the intended cargo, and head north before the brunt of the storm hit.

Though weary and battered, Pedro was unafraid. The tears streaming from his eyes were whipped there by wind, not fear. If he feared anything, other than failure to complete his voyage, the hubris of youth and generations of seafaring genes eclipsed it. The boy’s iron blue eyes told of a Dutch sailor in his family’s past, but his dark skin and coarse hair were his grandmother’s, a coastal Indian girl whose heart and reputation were devastated by a transient European.

Pedro had driven pangas like
La Reina del
Cortez
since he was five. And
La Reina
, her patched hull and peeling paint belying her majestic moniker, was as durable as any of her sisters plying—no, ruling—the Sea of Cortez. Although she charged headlong into tall waves and lurched from gunwale to gunwale in the confused sea, this queen of Cortez shipped surprisingly little water.

Airtight flotation chambers serving as seats divided
La Reina
into three sections. In the V-shaped forward compartment, a rusty propane tank ground against shards of glass from its broken lamp attachment and only water slop prevented sparks and explosion.

A jumble of green nylon nets, cork floats and long heavy lines spiked with three-inch fishhooks slewed in a malodorous, greasy mixture of seawater, gasoline, rotting fish carcasses, and motor oil in the center hold. Under all this lay the precious cargo.

Pedro’s chilled feet shared the aft cockpit with thirty liters of gasoline in a plastic
mammilla
, named for its resemblance in both color and form to an oversized baby bottle nipple. This panguero’s version of a gas tank had a rag stuffed into the top to replace its long-lost
tapon
, and with each impact rivulets of fuel trickled down its sides. A length of rotting surgical tubing, stuck through the center of the wadded up rag, served as a gas line. Next to the
mammilla
rode a gallon jug full of drinking water. Pedro had already jettisoned three empties; environmental science wasn’t a subject taught in his local elementary school.

Although unaccustomed to a motor as large as the seventy-five horsepower Evinrude, Pedro skillfully battled the maelstrom, steering by a star and dead set on making his delivery and collecting five hundred dollars. A fortune.

Pedro didn’t know that he and his cargo were expendable.

Nor would he understand that his brother’s employers factored pangueros like himself and his brother into their “acceptable loss” column. The cost of doing business.

Mentally spending a portion of his future fortune, perhaps on an almost new pair of warm rubber boots and slicker, Pedro never saw the ten-foot comber. Tons of water slammed him to his knees and threatened his grip on the motor’s throttle handle. Pulling himself up, he threw the full force of his wiry frame against the rubber handgrip in an attempt to force the bow back into the prevailing wind. He miscalculated.

Seventy-five horses drove the boat broadside between two waves which, as if applauding their own strength, slammed the panga with watery fists.
La Reina
rounded up, bucked violently, careened to the left, then  snapped right, launching Pedro headlong into the center net compartment. As he struggled to free himself from the tangle of fishing gear, another breaker swept him overboard.

Weighed down by his oilskin slicker and trailing nets, lines, and cork floats, Pedro plunged eight feet underwater before being violently  jerked towards the surface. Staring up through turbulent green water he watched a brilliant whirlpool of yellowish green phosphorescence generated by the spinning propeller. As the sharp steel blades relentlessly gobbled the net and reeled his head ever closer, line bristling with three-inch fishhooks tightened around his body. Polypropylene cut into his soft flesh. Steel barbs embedded in his bones.

Pedro—fading, praying, drowning—gaped into the greedy jaws of the prop until it finally took on more heavy line and net than it could chew and, choked to a stop. Joy, adrenaline, hope, and survival instinct activated the boy’s feet. He catapulted himself to the surface with a swift kick and managed one gasp of air before his water-filled slicker pulled him under. He kicked again.

With each buck of the boat, the line trussing him like a Christmas turkey jerked him up and he was able to get one precious breath before honed blades chased him down. During these dizzying dunks Pedro worked to free one arm, the one skewered by only two hooks. Ignoring the pain he reached through a hole in the net and managed to trip the motor’s elevator lever. The shaft sprang skyward, yanking Pedro, like the catch of the day, a foot above the surface. There he dangled, sobbing and terrified, half in, half out of the water, as the wind began to die.

At first light, a curious, ringbilled gull circled gracefully in the lulling gale, hovered, then glided down to perch on the outboard motor housing. Cocking his head, the bird fixed one yellow eye on the netted, unconscious, Pedro, and then his interest shifted to the shiny plastic packets washing back and forth in the panga’s center compartment. Hopping lightly onto a package, the bird used his wings for balance, surfing the gasoline-slicked package. Two swift blows of his powerful beak shredded the plastic wrap. Shaking bitter white powder from his bill, the gull squawked in disgust, launched himself skyward, and flew twenty feet before his heart stopped.