Shell Point

By Stevie Blankenship

You could call this a tour-de force -

an excellent story that held away throughout -

- Lee Maynard

Screaming with the Cannibals,

Pale light of Sunset

Crum, Cinco Becknell.

The mixed verse and prose is called prosimetrum. It is found in Indo-European literature from ancient Sanskrit on. Irish medieval stories mix verse and prose with poetry interspersed in the prose narrative. Tolkien used it. Now this writer tries his hand at it- successfully I think.

T.S. Pelzel- Critic

Young men in most cultures have some kind of rite of passage. The Maasai tribe of Africa, in generations past, had to stalk and kill a lion with only a spear before they were considered warriors. In another part of the world, in the Vanuatu tradition, a male teen jumps from a high place with only vines attached to his ankles. The goal is to brush his head on the ground without breaking his neck. If he survives he is considered a man.

Tiki Morton's rite of passage was achieved as teen deep in the coal mines of West Virginia. But now, a few years later, he was looking for adventure. Wayne Black was just along for the ride trying to find himself in the bottom of a bottle. And the great Pierre la Rue? He'd been a man for a long time, he thought.

This is the true story of three 'good ol boys' from West Virginia who come face with to face with adversity in the Gulf of Mexico and ultimately face to face with themselves. They weren't looking for their rite of passage- they were just trying to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504952651

Stevie Blankenship

The author grew up in the beautiful mountains of West Virginia and is a current resident. He has also lived in Ft. Lauderdale Florida and New Orleans Louisiana. He was educated in the public school system in Charleston, West Virginia and Greenbrier Military School. He attended Marshall University and graduated with a B.A. from Morris Harvey College. He earned his masters degree from West Virginia Graduate College. He was a Licensed Professional Counselor in private practice before retirement. He was also an A.C.E. certified professional trainer and a licensed professional poker dealer. In earlier years he was an award winning drug-free body builder and a distance runner. The author is still an avid Scuba dive with many dives in Cozumel, Mexico-Belize-Bonaire -Turks and Caicos-The Bahamas-And the Dry Tortugas. He wrote his first novel, a 385 page yarn about his misspent youth and experience as a teen alcoholic called Wild-still available through Authorhouse or his website 22wild.com. His new release, Shell Point is base on a true adventure at sea with two of his good friends and the struggle to survive. People don't know what they are made of until they get taken apart a little bit.

Book preview

SHELL POINT

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STEVIE BLANKENSHIP

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2015 Stephen Lakin Blankenship. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse    10/08/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-5266-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-5267-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-5265-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015916068

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Epilogue

I want to thank the great American writer Lee Maynard for editing this book. Lee, you magnificent bastard, you are the best!

This book is dedicated to my shipmates,

Tiki Morton and Pete Stroup a.k.a. Pierre la Rue.

CHAPTER ONE

Tiki stood on the bow of the small sailboat bobbing in the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Moments earlier he had watched the beautiful sunset and now the cool black night settled in all around him. He listened to the ocean splashing against the hull holding his face into the wind. He felt like some disembodied spirit floating in the dark free of the world for a moment. He took a deep breath of fresh salty air excited about a new chapter in his life and a bold adventure about to begin.

The running lights suddenly clicked on spilling a shimmer out on the bay, a short skirt of blue water sealing in the shine between the blunt blare and the blackness. Tiki could hear the hum of the wind change its tone as he eased his head around looking back at the stern. He could see Carter in the glow of the mast light sitting behind the wheel holding up an amber bottle of beer to toast Tiki, the sea and the sailor life. A black cap fit tight on Carter’s big head topping the trellis of a wild wiry beard that stitched his jolly face together. Behind him across a half mile of icy ocean the marina lights twinkled in the distance giving depth to the dark choppy waters in between.

Tiki started back taking careful steps swinging from wire to wire pulling his way along the slippery fiberglass deck. He knew a fall into the frigid December waters could be fatal. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the shine of the sea rippling in the runners as he planted one foot at a time moving along cautiously. He hopped down beside a small open cooler of beer and plucked a long-neck out of the watery ice. Turning around he sat and settled back against the red leather cushion with Carter, looking over the hump of the cabin beyond the glow of the bow light where the night lay heavy on the sea.

A crude intelligent man of twenty-seven, Tiki looked older and wiser than his years. He was a rough-hewn sort cut from sturdy stock with tousled brown hair and tales of a hard life reflected in his steely blue eyes. There was a trace in his face of the toll of his troubles and crows-feet cracks on his tan cheeks to tell. His smile was slightly crooked when he wore one, a seam sewn tight between a pleasant thought and his serious side. He always spoke with purpose, but now he had no use for chatter sitting quietly listening to the soothing sound of the sea, sipping his beer. He had been down south for a few short days and was starting to feel right at home on the water like he had some lost strain of sailor in his blood and his short time on the sea was stirring the link.

Carter took a moment to clink his bottle against Tiki’s in a toast to good times. He leaned toward the wood spoke wheel, reached out and turned the key off. The sea and all went black as they both honored the silence below the riddle of a whistling wind. The dark was the perfect cover to coax out the memories of a fine day pleasantly passed.

They had been sailing on the bay since noon and Tiki was becoming a proficient sailor with Carter’s help. After several days of instruction Tiki was confident he could handle the boat by himself. He leaned his head back resting his neck on the leather cushion sensing Carter was watching the dark sky too. It was a brief interlude before the stars popped out like pinpricks from a bright beyond. It was only moments until the sky was ablaze with diamonds, each star painted with the sharp point of a silver brush. They sipped their beers and watched the twinkling starlight, bobbing on the bay listening to the ocean’s soothing sounds.

A boat horn sounded in the distance, a broad baritone that lingered vibrating the air. Tiki wondered if it was some fine freighter sailing for Europe or a rusty hulled frigate laden with goods steaming away to South America. He imagined his own little sailboat on a long voyage to the other side of the world and the image excited him. He turned to see the last twinkle of the boat vanish in a quick flash far out on the horizon and then the sea went black again. A sudden flapping pulled his attention to the white sail on a short tether whipping back and forth. The wind shifted suddenly giving the sail a crack. It was a loud snap of a sound to shatter the silence, some cryptic cosmic clap to call his attention to the tough task ahead. In two days he was going to captain his own little sailboat out of the safety of the bay into the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Using a crude form of navigation called dead reckoning, Carter and Tiki had plotted a course. The sail from Shell Point to a small port south of Tampa Bay would take day and a half according to their calculations. Tiki was trying to keep all of his newly acquired sailing skills fresh in his mind and wondered how well they would serve him far out to sea.

It was Tiki’s recently purchased sailboat, a 27 foot Erwin named Cartiki, but it was his good friend Carter who had taken care of the small boat and learned how to sail her for the last two months while Tiki was tending to business in West Virginia. Carter would not be making the trip so he was trying to teach Tiki everything he knew about sailing in a few short days.

Carter had serious concerns about Tiki taking to the open sea with only a few fundamental sailing skills. And what was even more worrisome was Tiki’s choice of deckhands. Wayne Black and Pierre la Rue were friends who were driving down from West Virginia to sail with Tiki and neither of them had ever set foot on a sailboat. It was clear to Carter that Tiki thought a two day sail far from the coast was going to be easy. But Carter knew from his own limited sailing experience that things out on the ocean didn’t always go as planned. The weather on the Gulf in December was fickle at best and the seas could change from calm to calamitous in an instant.

Carter had mostly day sailed on the bay where he could head in at any sign of bad weather. He worried if Tiki encountered even a mild storm thirty or forty miles from land he might panic and Carter knew full well that panic at sea could be deadly. He had tried to talk Tiki into waiting a few days before embarking. He had explained he had time off from work next week and would sail with them. Carter knew with his experience it would be a much safer trip. But Tiki was insistent that the Cartiki was sailing the day after tomorrow. Carter was aware of Tiki’s stubborn nature and if he said he was sailing the day after tomorrow then that was that.

The two sat quietly for a while entertaining their own thoughts, feeling the cool night air swiftly siphoning off the sultry heat of the day. Tiki felt a sense of satisfaction from learning new sailing skills. He took a sip of beer looking up with the starlight glazing his eyes and thought of his sail to come. He thought of legendary sailors like Captain Cooke and wondered if he had the stuff to meet the challenges of the sea.

Buttoning up his sailor coat, Carter suddenly leaned forward and clicked the key lighting the mast and the runners.

It’s getting cold, time to head in. He said. Carter pulled his cap down snug on his head. He turned the key another click and the motor rumbled and vibrated the deck under their feet. He pushed the throttle forward engaging the engine forcing the sailboat into a slow glide through a slapping sea.

Tiki sat up to see the fluttering sail catch the wind as the stern slid around, the bow slowly pivoting toward the distant sparkle of marina lights. The slight chill of the breeze was now a biting cold as it increased in strength with the boats forward movement. He felt the cold worming through the weave of his sweater giving him a preview of what it was going to be like at night out on the open sea.

Carter stood up behind the wheel fingering the worn wood spindles. With his cap down tight over his head, he looked the part of a captain Tiki thought. He couldn’t help but to admire Carter for learning to sail the boat so skillfully in such a short time. But Tiki, not Carter was the one who was going to sail the Cartiki on her maiden voyage. Tiki was going to show Carter, Wayne Black and Pierre la Rue he had what it took to be a sailor.

Tiki liked his reputation for being a tough guy. A West Virginia coal miner and a bar room brawler he had worked underground since he was eighteen. Through a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, now at twenty-seven he was the owner of a small coal company. He had gone from poor to wealthy in nine short years. But now he wanted to prove to himself that he could be just as tough and smart at sea as he was on dry land.

Tiki had loved the ocean since he was a little boy. On vacation with his family when he was nine, his dad had rented a tiny sailboat at the beach. He and his dad sailed for three or four hours along the shoreline. Tiki took to sailing right off. His dad even let him take the tiller for a few minutes before the water got rough in the evening tide. He never sailed after that, but that one day on the water with his dad left a lingering impression. When he got home from the beach Tiki found a copy of Hemmingway’s The OLD Man and The Sea and read it in one sitting. He read every book he could find that had to do with sailing. He read Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer and Melville’s Moby Dick. From those books and books like it he was convinced that sailors were the toughest men alive. Those rough characters he had read about still floated somewhere in the back waters of Tiki’s mind.

The swells rolled out long cresting in the glimmer of the marina lights as the Cartiki motored closer to the docks. Bulbs strung from pole to pole framed the wide marina housing a hundred sailboats. Tiki could see the planked deck running away into the shadows and barebones rigging of bobbing boats looking like the shiny strings of silver cobwebs in the marina lights.

Carter cut the engine and the momentum caused the Cartiki to drift slowly sideways into the dock.

Man the bow, Tiki! Carter called out. It was the last order Tiki would take from Carter. Tiki was the captain now.

Tiki was excited about spending his first night on his boat alone. He could have a cocktail or two and reflect on the day. Carter had to get home to his girlfriend. With Carter gone and Wayne Black and Pierre la Rue not arriving until tomorrow he could have one final night of privacy. He was excited. The adventure was about to begin.

CHAPTER TWO

Tiki spent the night on the boat down in the cabin on the starboard bench. One of two bunks on each side they were nothing more than six foot red leather cushions framed in above the lacquered wood flooring. He wanted to get used to the bob and sway at sea and perhaps immunize himself against the chance of seasickness. He also wanted to spend some time alone with his sailboat, bond somehow with board and beam, before Wayne Black and Pierre la Rue arrived the next day.

After Carter left he put on the warm coat he purchased from the Army-Navy Store. It was the traditional sailor coat, dark blue with big shiny buttons. He fixed himself three fingers of brandy in a short glass as he stood at the sink next to the ladder. A cube of faint marina light shone down through the open companionway brightening the blue fabric on his shoulder, his wider half dim in the shadows. He flattened his hand on the cool wood step and took a sporting drink of brandy. His eyes watered from the jolt sending a lone tear rolling over his sunburned cheek and breaking apart in the bristle of a slow blooming beard.

Tiki looked up through the hatch watching the bright stars dagger through the hazy dim light. He held his drink tight stepping up on the ladder and popping his head out of the companionway. Easing up another step he rested his arm on the fiberglass flange of the hatch looking back through the marina. Dozens of sailboat of every stripe and size bobbed easy in their slips. Giant sails that had bloomed in the blue bays breezes now lay flaccid wrapped around dormant booms and tucked away in green canvass covers. Bunches of brambly mast reached high in the sky, pointing to the stars boasting boughs of silver rigging.

There were no sailors about late at night, morgue-like in a fashion, quiet and lifeless. But looking down the promenade of shadowy planks several slips away he could see an old man in the glow of his boats runners. Shadows formed his face in the dim dawdling light with subtle shapes shifting suddenly bringing his profile into clearer view. His old jaw was set hard, a wedge against time under a frayed cap worn from the same. His white hair flowed like fleece from some fanciful fable hanging irreverently to his shoulders.

The man I’d like to be someday, Tiki thought. Then from far away Tiki watched him float like a ghost from bow to stern and vanish. Tiki imagined the exciting stories the old sailor could tell. Tiki wanted a few sea tales of his own to tell, and perhaps a tattletale scar or two.

A chilly breeze polished Tiki’s cheeks, a jolly sort of cold that brought the rouge out. He bounced a glance off a short shimmer skirting the boat out to the black boundless bay and rolled his eyes up to the sky. The stars long shine pushed the universe back to their farthest twinkle. It was romantic in a classical sense, being all alone on the boat with the bouquet of brandy on the breeze and the sounds and smell of the sea to savor.

He was building a relationship with his boat, bonding with the bay in his brief time alone. The Cartiki belonged to him and he could do with her as he pleased. He could sail her around the world all by himself if he chose to. Joshua Slocom had done it back in the 1800s. Tiki had read about him sailing his little sailboat, The Spray, around the globe all by himself. Tiki laughed at the naïve notion. Joshua Slocum was a lifelong sailor and had grown up on the ocean and Tiki was green as seaweed having all of three days sailing experience. But nonetheless Tiki felt a certain power being the commander of his own ship. Perhaps a sail around the world was premature and a bit too ambitious for now, but maybe someday. He was feeling confident in his newly acquired sailing skills. He felt sound in the fundamentals that Carter had taught him and he knew teaching Wayne Black and Pierre la Rue could do nothing but reinforce his expertise.

Tiki took a sip of brandy then held it out in front of his face staring into its glimmer as the strong sting receded from his tongue. The brandy was not as strong as the whiskey he usually drank. All he had aboard was a couple of bottles of brandy and a couple of cases of beer. He didn’t want Wayne Black and Pierre la Rue getting into the hard liquor. That could mean disaster. Tiki had already decided there was going to be minimal drinking on this voyage. They couldn’t go out to sea drunk or else they might never return.

Tiki was trying to think of a way to tell Wayne and Pierre la Rue about the forced sobriety while sailing. If he had told them over the phone that there wasn’t going to be any drinking on the sail trip he would certainly scare them off and he would be sailing alone. He knew after driving eight hundred miles from West Virginia only to be told it was going to be tea and crumpets here on out wouldn’t go over well. They weren’t setting sail until the day after tomorrow so they could drink a few beers when they arrived. He would find a way to break the news as gently as he could.

Tiki had known Wayne and Pierre la Rue for a long, long time. And he knew when they partied they didn’t mess around. When Wayne Black and