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~ author D. S. Cooper

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Tag Archives: Sea Stories

Corsair Canyon

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Doug in D. S. Cooper Books, This Writer's Life

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Amazon Kindle, Coast Guard Rescues, Sea Stories, Writing

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When quartermaster Tom Hamblin awakened Melinda with an intercom call just after three in the morning, she pulled on her Coast Guard sweatshirt and went straight to the pilothouse.

“What have you got?”

The interior of the Tuckernuck was full of shadows and the dim glow of red night-lights, except for the fluorescent lamp over the chart table.

“I overheard some radio chatter from the Rescue Coordination Center in Boston, Captain. One of our Pelican helicopters is missing.”

Melinda felt the emotion rising in her chest. When she sucked in a deep breath to hold her feelings down, it pinched her heart. But she held fast.

“No distress call?”

“No. The last thing Boston heard, they were getting ready to hoist a sick crewman off a Taiwanese long-liner. That was almost an hour ago.”

“Did you copy a last known position?”

He swept his hand towards the outer margin of the chart and stopped at a spot on the edge of the Continental Shelf, where the shallow water of George’s Bank dropped off into the abyss of the deep sea.

“Corsair Canyon. Too far offshore for us, but I thought you’d want to know, since your husband …”

“How are the wind and seas out there?”

“The automated weather buoy is reporting ten-foot swells.”

“Right.” Melinda bit her lower lip in a moment of hesitation. She stepped out of the pilothouse and looked around at the calm water of the boat basin and into the sky, which was being swept by fast moving clouds. When she leaned back into the pilothouse, her mind was made up.

“Go ahead and wake up the crew, Tom. We’re getting underway.”

Quartermaster Tom Hamblin dove into the passageway leading below decks and began turning on lights and rousting the crew. A few moments later, Ensign Nichols and Senior Chief Johansen joined her at the chart table.

“That’s way outside of our patrol area,” the ensign dutifully observed.

“Our patrol area boundaries are just lines on a chart, XO.”

“They can’t send us way out there,” Dag Johansen complained. “That’s nuts!”

“Boston hasn’t given us orders to go.” Melinda said. “My decision.”

Johansen gave her a sideways look and asked, “Is Kyle on that helicopter?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Does it matter, Senior Chief?”

“Nope.” Johansen turned and dove down the passageway into the boat, saying, “You’ll have engines in five minutes, Captain.”

A few minutes later, Ensign Nichols took the helm and backed the Tuckernuck away from the pier. They idled out of the boat basin and past the little lighthouse on Race Point and came up to half speed between the jetties. Then Melinda pushed the throttles down all the way, and they rocketed into the night with spray flying off the bow and the diesels thundering.

“We should slow down, Captain,” Ensign Nichols suggested as they rounded Point Rip.

“Hold your speed, XO.”

The seas grew larger as they approached the edge of the North Atlantic Ocean until the Tuckernuck was vaulting over gray rollers in Great Round Shoals Channel. With each airborne leap, the boat’s contents went weightless, and then slammed down when the hull landed into succeeding waves with explosions of spray. The cups and plates in the galley, the tools in the engine room, and the crew’s personal items in their lockers all rattled and shook, each adding their distinctive sound to the cacophony.

“Captain, we’ve got to slow down,” Nichols said, holding onto the console and the helm to keep from falling down. The lights of Nantucket were disappearing in the shifting mountains of waves surrounding the Tuckernuck.

The ocean ahead was a black abyss.

“There’s no point in going if we don’t get there in time to help,” Melinda told her second-in-command.

“Captain, the air station has launched another helicopter to rescue any survivors. And there is a C-130 aircraft circling overhead by now. They don’t need us out there.”

“I’m aware of that, XO. Helicopters and airplanes get the glory and the headlines, but somebody always has to get down and dirty between the waves with a boat to finish the job. That’s us.”

“Captain,” Nichols pleaded, “we can’t go on like this. The boat won’t take it!”

“Stand down, XO,” Melinda calmly said. “Quartermaster Hamblin, take the helm.”

“Aye aye,” the quartermaster said, taking the helm from Ensign Nichols, who stood aside and held onto the chart table to keep from being knocked off his feet by a steep train of waves. By then the Tuckernuck’s bow was knifing into fully developed ocean swells, throwing huge plumes of dark-green water aside.

“Captain, I have to formally object to this course of action. We should slow down and return to our patrol area immediately.”

“That’s fine, Ensign Nichols. Since you’re no help here, please remain in your stateroom until I have a chance to address the matter.”

When Nichols went below, Melinda and the quartermaster were left alone in the wheelhouse.

“So,” Tom Hamblin gave her a wry smile as a big wave tossed the boat and they both hung on. “How do you like command at sea, so far?”

Excerpted from the novel ROYALS ALL THE WAY!

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The North Atlantic

15 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by Doug in D. S. Cooper Books, This Writer's Life

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Amazon Kindle, Royals All The Way!, Sea Stories, Writing

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A brief excerpt from my third novel, ROYALS ALL THE WAY!

They did go below in time to get some sleep, but the wind freshened and the seas picked up during the night. When the steel plates on the deck drains above their berthing area began to slam shut with each wave that slammed into the side of the ship, none of the cadets slept. So Kyle, Melinda and Ben weren’t exactly refreshed when they were roused out of their bunks at zero three thirty hours for the dawn watch.

“Better hang on.” Ben laughed, when the ship felt like a living creature, making random movements under their feet as they dressed.

“This is spooky,” Kyle whispered when they stepped out onto the main deck and looked skyward. The sails and rigging were making giant arcs across the heavens as the ship rolled. Ragged clouds surged past the moon, which backlit the sails in an eerie gray-scale light, like a photographic negative.

The midnight watch had doused and furled the royal sails. When the salt spay came over the rail and wet their cheeks, they raised the hoods of their sweatshirts.

“It’s magnificent,” Melinda mused. The whitecaps caught the silver moonlight as if the sea were a shimmering plateau of sequins, all the way to the horizon.

“I don’t know,” Kyle doubted. “All of a sudden this ship doesn’t look that big.”

They mustered on the sterncastle and stood a trick at the wheel while the summer ensign took bearings on the running lights of passing ships on the distant horizon. There was a long whispered discussion about which lights in the sky were stars and which were planets. And they tried to piece together the constellations in the gaps between the silver-fringed clouds, which seemed to be getting lower as dawn approached.

“That’s Constellation Boeing,” Ben laughed when they all realized that one of the twinkling silver lights they were studying was not a star but a jet airliner, bound for New York or Boston.

The breeze continued to freshen and back to the south, which pushed them northward, towards the high reaches of the North Atlantic where there were icebergs in the springtime. So, in the blue-gray twilight before dawn, their watch was sent aloft to furl the topgallants.

“The wind is really howling up there,” Melinda said with a trace of reluctance.

“It’ll be sporty for sure,” Ben laughed as he scrambled up the ratlines like a hungry spider in his web. “Go large, or stay on deck.”

“You’ll be all right,” Kyle nudged her hip with his own as they started up the rigging behind Ben. “Just stay close to me.”

Ben reached the topgallant first and clambered out to the tip of the spar. Melinda was between the boys, heaving the heavy canvas up while the wind tried to pull it out of their grasp. Kyle was the tallest and strongest, but Ben was wiry and determined, and they all three worked well together.

Just as they finished lashing the sail to the spar, the first rays of the sun came between the horizon and the clouds, making Melinda’s eyes flash green above cheeks which were rosy from the salt air. Kyle raced down the ratlines ahead of the others. But when Melinda reached for the ratlines, Ben tugged on the sleeve of her sweatshirt to hold her back.

“Can you keep a secret?”

Then, without warning, he stole a long first kiss on her lips.

“Ben!” Melinda said as they stepped off the topgallant spar and climbed down the ratlines, side by side. “Never do that again!”

“Never?”

“You couldn’t have picked a more inappropriate moment, Ben. What if Lieutenant Brown saw that?”

“Lieutenant Brown can’t see us up here. When is a better time?”

“Never in public.” She climbed down faster as if she really wanted to get away from him. “And never on the ship!”

“Blame it on the salt air. Melinda.” He kept pace at her side as they neared the deck. “You’ve never looked more beautiful.”

“You’re awful, Bennett Laird.”

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