Zander's Island

By RL Martin

Seventeen year old Zander Hua from Tacoma is excited to help his dad transport an expensive yacht from Seattle to Hawaii for a retired software executive named Estevan. Zander invites his girlfriend Jenna along for the journey, and she brings her cat, Mr. Jackson. Several days after heading into open ocean, Zander falls asleep on deck under the stars but wakes up when someone removes his safety harness and throws him overboard. Suddenly, he finds himself alone a thousand miles from any land with nothing but the clothes he has on, his cell phone and a pack of chewing gum, both of which are concealed in a Ziplock bag. The night sky lights up in the distance. The yacht is going up in flames. After treading water for most of the night, Zander decides he can struggle no longer. But just as he is about to let himself drown, he hears a cry and thinks it must be Jenna. He follows the cry and finds that it is not coming from Jenna but from Mr. Jackson who has climbed on top of a native American dugout canoe. Estevan had been transporting the canoe on the yacht, he said, to be displayed at his summer home in Hawaii. Zander doesn’t know how the capsized canoe and the cat got there, but he gets it righted and finally climbs inside with Mr. Jackson.

The next day, Zander begins to notice pieces of trash floating around him and recalls a school project he did during his freshman year about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. He starts pulling in all kinds of trash, including fishing nets, Styrofoam cups, straws, bags, bottles: anything he can use to help him survive. He collects rain water in a Perrier bottle that was floating next to his canoe. After collecting more bottles, he makes solar stills. He tries to catch fish with the nets he has found and ends up snagging a small shark. Needing a place for the leftovers of the shark, he makes a raft, which he refers to as his island, from the flotsam. The blood, however, attracts a much larger shark, and the antique canoe cracks and sinks. Zander is left alone on his floating island of flotsam.

While Zander struggles to survive, Jenna is facing her own challenges. Estevan has taken her with him in his life raft and has called on his fellow drug smugglers to pick them up. Jenna must use her strength and cunning to avoid being sold into the sex trade. Told in first person from Zander’s point of view, this is the story of how both Zander and Jenna fight for survival on the high seas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RL Martin
• Release date: Nov 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463804995

RL Martin

– MA in English Composition– Eight years in Asia as an English teacher, English correspondent, and newspaper editor– Ten years as a community college English Instructor– Many years as a tree-hugging bleeding-heart liberal– Catholic convert 2013 from protestant background–still a bleeding heart but focused on the sacred heart of Jesus

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Zander’s Island

Copyright 2019 RL Martin

Published by RL Martin at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Table of Contents

Intro

Into the Water

Day Zero

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

Day Six

Day Seven

Day Eight

Day Eight – Afternoon

Day Nine

Day Ten

Day Eleven

Days Since

Intro

Somewhere around Neah Bay between Washington and Canada, while dad was at the helm of the Wayward Star he told me, You should be glad you weren’t born a girl. If you were a girl, your mom gonna name you Xantara. He chuckled at the thought and looked at me sideways, trying to gauge my reaction. I watched as we slowly glided past a giant cargo ship. I noticed it was flying the Taiwan flag, and dad got all excited. He blew the whistle several times. Taiwan was the place of his birth.

After the ship passed, I asked, What’s so special about the name Xantara?

"Its mean protector of Earth."

Oh, I said.

I hadn’t heard that story before, but it didn’t surprise me. My mom was like that. She was always wanting to do everything humanly possible to save the planet. That was like her only goal in life and the sole purpose the fates had given her: save the earth, save the oceans, recycle, save the whales, animals have rights too! It didn’t really matter. She was gung ho about it all. And it seemed like it didn’t matter what got in her way. Everything and, brothers, sometimes everyone—including yours truly—took second place to Mother Nature.

Zander means protector of people, dad said. I like that better.

I thought about that for a minute. I already knew that. Dad told me once before, back when I was younger, but the significance of my name didn’t really sink in until I knew that I could have been named Xantara!

How did you guys decide on my name? I asked.

For some reason, your mom like names that start with z sound. My English is not so good. So your momma. She have to make that final decision.

I knew dad hated hearing stories about how our oceans were dying, almost as much as my mom did. It bothered him, too, but his attitude towards it was different. What can we do? he said. All you can do is your part and leave the rest up to God. Try to be a good person, Zander, he said. Like Ghandi says, ‘Live simply so that others can simply live.’

He loved to quote Ghandi. I’m not sure why but his favorite Ghandi quote was, Whatever you do will be meaningless. But it’s very important that you do it. The saying never made sense to me when I was a kid, but I think I’m starting to understand it now.

His second favorite quote in the world was not from Ghandi. It was some Irish joke and it goes like this: I drives me boat and me wife drives me dinghy!

I swear, I heard it a hundred times when I was a kid. Every time he said it, he’d laugh and slap his knee. Hao hao shao (so funny) he would say. It was the one good joke he could tell in English, but I always thought the joke needed a good Irish accent to make it work. I was kind of embarrassed when he said it. Actually, I was always sort of embarrassed by his broken English. And dad wasn’t exactly shy. His voice could carry for miles no matter what he was talking about. He didn’t care about what others thought of him. And he didn’t let anything like a little language problem bother him. He kept his sense of humor, even when people started losing their patience with his heavy accent and bad grammar.

Dad always had a good sense of humor, but I am always losing mine. Unfortunately, I also lose my train of thought a lot. In middle school, the counselor in Tacoma said I had ADHD. I’ll be a senior next year, but I still got it, I’m sure. I guess it wasn’t bad enough for me to take anything for it. Or, maybe my mom thought the meds would hurt the fish or something because that’s actually a problem these days. The medicines people take get peed out and end up in our drinking water cause there’s no way to filter that poison out. I’m not kidding. It’s just another stupid thing my generation has to worry about, like the environment. I’m not on meds, brothers, but maybe I should be. After I tell you what happens in this story, maybe I should be.

Dad gently turned the yacht in a southerly direction and we started heading down the Washington coast with the goal of hitting San Francisco in a few days. I went out on deck to wave goodbye to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and then Jenna snuck up and hugged me from behind. We sat on the deck holding hands and watching the seals play and the seagulls fly around us. We soaked up the sun, something we didn’t see too much of in Tacoma, and talked about what it would be like to be thousands of miles from land.

I looked forward to seeing the stars at night in the middle of the ocean, away from light pollution on land. Jenna looked forward to pulling into the port in Oahu and seeing Waikiki Beach. She was nervous about the trip, and I have to admit, I kind of was, too. This was going to be my first time into the wide-open waters. Sure, I had been fishing with my dad off the coast, near Westport, Washington, but those were just day trips. I knew we’d be back each night. This was the real thing. Someday soon, we would be thousand miles from land. I kind of felt like we were pilgrims or something. I half wanted to call the yacht we were on the Mayflower, but she already had a name, the Wayward Star.

Jenna’s cat, Mr. Jackson, jumped into her lap, clearly trying to get a closer look at the gulls overhead. I reached over and ran my palm slowly down his back, reminding myself I should wash my hands before touching my eyes after petting him. As I stroked the cat, I thought it was a miracle my dad and Estevan agreed to let the three of us aboard.

Here’s how it all happened. You see, dad got hired by this guy named Estevan Campos to sail Estevan’s yacht from Seattle to Hawaii. He was this rich retired software executive who probably retired because nobody liked him. And he wanted to move his boat to his summer home in Hawaii. And since he wasn’t all that healthy and didn’t have much experience sailing, he put an ad for a captain on one of those boating websites. My dad saw the ad and answered it.

Estevan wanted an experienced captain and at least one other hand on deck. When dad told me about the gig, I begged and begged him to let me come along. It was summer, and school was out and I didn’t have a job. I knew a lot about fishing and sailing because of the time I had spent with my dad as a kid, and I had been working out (Well, sort of. I was in okay shape, but not as good as I let on like). I bombarded him with all kinds of reasons about why he should let me go with him, but what finally worked was guilt. Brothers, guilt always works. You’ll be away for over a month, and I won’t get to spend any time with you, and I’m about to graduate high school and go off to Wazzu. This is our last chance, I said.

Dad looked down at the ground that day and then started nodding his head. Dui le, Zander. You should come. Bu gou, hen wei shien.

Dad told Estevan about me, and eventually they both agreed that I could come. You have to promise to be careful. Always wear a life vest on deck and use tether when you’re on deck too, dad told me. I will. I will, I said. I probably would have promised to donate my liver if that’s what it took. That’s how bad I wanted to go.

When I told Jenna I was going, she acted kind of hurt, like I was breaking up with her or something. It never occurred to me that she would want to go, but she kept saying things like, Oh, you go ahead and have fun. I’ll just stay here alone and work all summer. Guilt, brothers. I’m telling you. It got me. Of course, it wasn’t just guilt. I wanted her to go, too. Really, can you imagine? I mean having a beautiful girlfriend with long brown hair and brown eyes along with you as you cross the Pacific Ocean? That’s like crazy romantic, to me anyways. So, I started asking dad and Estevan to let Jenna be the second deck hand, even though they weren’t sure they were going to take anyone else.

At first, Estevan was dead set against her. It’s too much of a liability. If we take anybody else, it has to be a man who can carry his weight, he said. But after I showed him some pictures of her and explained that she had been a lifeguard at the YMCA when she was like 14, he started to change his mind. I also mentioned her cat because I had heard him talk about how much he loved cats and the fact that his own cat had died not too long ago.

So that’s how Jenna, Mr. Jackson, and I were sitting there watching the gulls fly overhead as we made our way south towards California. I stroked Mr. Jackson again, this ugly American Wirehair cat and reminded Jenna to be careful with him. He didn’t have a tether on like we did. I looked around at the beauty of nature and understood why mom wanted to save it. It was all a miracle. The fact that her mom and my dad and Estevan agreed to all of this, an insane miracle!

I should tell you about the yacht, the Wayward Star. She was a beautiful 80-foot sailing yacht, with all the luxuries that you can imagine on it. She boasted an entertainment center with a big-screen TV, a full kitchen with gas stove and dining table, a main cabin where Estevan slept, and two guest cabins. Jenna had her own cabin while dad and I shared the other one. That was one of the things we had to agree on. Estevan and Jenna’s mom insisted that the two of us have separate rooms. We were both okay with that. I brought my PlayStation, so when we weren’t working, Jenna and I could play Call of Duty or Fortnite or something. Well, I played it more than she did. She brought a lot of books and it seemed like half the time her nose was in a book.

As awesome as the Wayward Star was, it turns out the owner, Estevan, wasn’t all that awesome. He ended up being a rude and obnoxious show off. He seemed to enjoy repeating how much the yacht cost. Four point two million, he said about fifteen times in that many different ways before we even left Elliot Bay in Seattle.

He had this lame, fake-sounding accent. I’d never heard anything like it before, and I’ve heard lots of accents. It was like some actor who you know is British but is trying to pass himself off as some southern American gentleman. He said he was from Brazil, but something seemed off about him. Maybe because he was so arrogant. Any conversation with him always somehow ended up being about all the stuff he had and all the hella big-deal things he had done.

Sometimes, he talked down to my dad. I know my dad knew it, but as usual, he didn’t seem to care about it. It sure bothered me though. I guess it was kind of a sensitive spot. I wanted to protect my dad, who never really did anything all that big with his life. One time, after hearing Estevan ask dad, Didn’t you ever want to do something with your life? I was about to say, Didn’t you ever want to go screw yourself? but my dad must have read my mind.

Zander, trim the sails, he said.

I fumbled with my life vest, so mad I could hardly see straight. But after getting to work on the sails, I started thinking what did it matter? I looked around at the beautiful design of the Wayward Star. Brothers, Estevan had everything. My dad had basically nothing. But they were both on the same boat, sailing the same waters, eating the same damn food, and watching the same freaking sun set. I guessed that’s what Ghandi meant. It really doesn’t matter what you do. But it’s really important to do it. So, I decided to just mind my own business and not let the old bottle of ape farts bother me.

Jenna came out onto deck as I was trimming the sails and gave me a hand. When we were finished, Estevan came out and stood across from Jenna and me and leaned against this old native American canoe that he was taking back to Hawaii with him. He kind of leaned up against it and caressed it like it was his girlfriend. This is a dugout canoe made by the Makah Indians. Cost me $43,000. I’m going to put it in my vestibule, he said. I had to look that word up later. Who the hell talks like that? Vestibule. Who even has a vestibule in their house? He talked all about how it was made and how expensive it was. The whole time, he never made eye contact with me. He kind of rubbed the canoe up and down and then looked at Jenna, who pulled closer to me. He went on to talk about his collection of indigenous stuff in Hawaii and about how big a collection of