ARTIE DRAGER WAS MISERABLE. He was wet, cold, and seasick, and he could not remember ever wanting anything in life as much as he wanted to be back on dry land. He huddled in the open cockpit against the back of the main cabin bulkhead to get some shelter from the wind and spray and stared at the glow of the GPS chartplotter that showed course and distance to landfall. There would be no getting off this boat ride for at least 30 to 36 hours, if the ETA displayed in a corner of the screen was to be believed.
Artie could not escape the constant sound of the crashing waves that lifted and tossed the small schooner as she shouldered her way through them in the darkness, driven onward by 20 knots of steady trade winds filling her sails. The noise and motion assaulted every part of his being, making rest impossible. He marveled that his brother could be sleeping soundly in his bunk down below, oblivious to the roaring water and horrid pitching and rolling. But Larry was a sailor, while Artie knew now, if he had not known it before this passage, that he most definitely was not. Though he was cold and tired of getting drenched with salt spray whenever the bow crashed into a larger-than-average wave, Artie knew he couldn’t go below even when it was Larry’s turn to come on deck for his watch. Being down there in the confines of the dark teak cabin just made his seasickness worse, and each time he had tried it he had rushed back up the companionway to spew over the rail. By now there was little left in his stomach and he didn’t want to think about eating more.
The queasiness had begun just hours after they’d sailed out of the anchorage near Fort-de-France and dropped Martinique astern for an offshore passage to St. Thomas. Artie had had high expectations at the start; it seemed like a fantastic idea for a much-needed vacation—a quick trip to the Caribbean to help his adventurous younger brother on an exciting yacht delivery job, sailing a gorgeous wooden schooner to her new owner. Larry did this for a living, and he had assured Artie that this would be a short, easy run. But Artie had never sailed offshore, and he hadn’t counted on the seasickness. If not for that, it would have been great. Ibis was a beautiful little ship, and well set up for ocean voyaging.
The electronic autopilot connected to the wheel and controlled by the computer in the GPS did an excellent job of keeping the 45-footer on course. While taking his turn on watch, Artie really didn’t have much to do other than scan the horizon every fifteen or twenty minutes to look for the lights of ships or other vessels that might be dangerously close. So far there had been none. Artie stood again and checked through a full 360 degrees for any flicker of light over the crests of the dark waves. There was nothing he could discern, especially through the light rain that was falling, further obscuring the night sea and adding to the discomfort he already felt from the spray. Artie would not have believed it possible to feel cold in these tropical latitudes, but being out in the wet and windy night for hours had him shivering. He looked forward to the return of daylight when the sea would seem warmer and much less menacing.
He sat back down on the cockpit seat and pushed buttons on the GPS, zooming the electronic chart out to where he could see the big picture, showing the boat-shaped blip that indicated the schooner’s position in relation to all the other islands of the eastern Caribbean from Trinidad to Puerto Rico. Their destination was a waypoint Larry had selected at a channel marker outside the anchorage at Charlotte Amalie, in St. Thomas. An average speed of around eight knots made their progress to the waypoint seem excruciatingly slow to Artie, who had never traveled any distance at such painstaking speeds, but he took comfort in the fact that at least they were well over halfway through the passage. Staring at the seemingly stationary blip on the chart was somewhat depressing, though, so he huddled back against the bulkhead and pulled the hood of his foul-weather jacket back over his head, unzipping the front so he could get to his Blackberry phone, sealed in a Ziploc bag in one of the inside pockets. Through the plastic, he pushed the buttons to power it up and scroll through the text messages to the last one he had composed to Casey.
He had written dozens of such messages, each time pressing the SEND button when he was done, though he knew there was no point as long as they were this far offshore, well beyond the reach of any cell phone towers. But it gave him something to do when he wasn’t hanging his head over the rail and puking, and it made him feel closer to her even though he knew she wouldn’t get any of his texts until they made landfall and the phone could reconnect to the network.
Text messaging was his lifeline to Casey. Artie had just learned how to do it five years ago when he was 42 and Casey, at 14, began using her first cell phone. He had quickly learned that phone calls were passé these days, at least among teenage girls. Even now, when she was in her second year of college, Artie found it much easier to reach Casey by text than any other means, so he’d grown used to it and did a passable job of typing with two thumbs on the tiny keyboard. He wrote to tell her what it was like out on the ocean at night, how sick he felt most of the time, and how glad he would be when they finally disembarked at St. Thomas. Writing made him feel closer to her. He wondered what she might be doing at that particular moment, hoping that at this hour she was sleeping safely in her shared apartment near campus. He ended his latest message by reminding her how much he loved her and telling her he couldn’t wait to spend a weekend with her after he got back home.
After he put the phone away he was drawn again to the irresistible glow of the chartplotter screen, even though he really didn’t want to know that they had only covered about three miles in the last twenty minutes. Artie checked the time on the screen and saw that his watch would be over in just one more hour. The GPS had a built-in XM satellite radio receiver, so to kill time, Artie turned it on and tuned back to a blues station he’d been listening to earlier. He turned the volume up just enough to hear the wail of bending guitar strings over the endless crash of water, but not so loud that Larry would hear it down below. Artie thought it was great that they could pick up any kind of music or news they wanted out here beyond the sight of land, and he wished his Blackberry were likewise satellite-enabled. Maybe someday soon, all cell phones will be, he mused.
He stood to scan the horizon again, bracing himself with one hand on the steering pedestal to keep his balance as the long, narrow hull plunged into the troughs and cut through the crests of the endless waves that marched across their course at nearly a 90-degree angle. The rhythmic motion seemed to be in sync with the Memphis blues emanating from the waterproof speakers that filled the cockpit with sound. The music reminded Artie of his home near New Orleans as he hung on and looked out into the darkness, still searching for ships that were not there. At least the rain had quit again, and the sky was starting to clear up. He could once again see the North Star hanging low on the horizon almost directly ahead on the course they were sailing. He was staring at it and thinking about Larry telling him that if you measured the angle of this star (Larry called it Polaris) above the horizon, that number of degrees would correspond to your exact latitude north of the Equator. Down here in these “little latitudes,” as Larry’s favorite singer, Jimmy Buffett, described them, those numbers were in the teens. Right now, according the GPS, Ibis was located about halfway between 16 and 17 degrees north. Artie looked back at the pole star and stretched his arm out in front of him, “measuring” with his thumb and forefinger. It was indeed a low angle, and that looked about right.
As he contemplated the challenges early navigators must have faced in the old pre-GPS days, suddenly the entire horizon in the direction of the star erupted in a blinding flash of light—first yellow and white, and then an eerie green that backlit distant clouds and reflected off the waves around him, washing the decks and cockpit in a flickering glow. Artie’s jaw dropped as he watched the spectacle before him. Another brilliant flash of reddish-orange followed the green, and then there was a glow of white that lit the sky almost like daylight. The flash was over almost as soon as it began, but the light was imprinted on Artie’s retinas and he couldn’t see anything for a few seconds after the flash. He stood there transfixed as his vision came back, expecting to see more lights, but everything seemed to be normal again. After a few seconds he realized that part of the background noise he heard in addition to the wind and waves was static from the XM radio.
Artie glanced at the GPS unit and turned down the volume. The green display of the chartplotter no longer showed the position of Ibis, but instead was flashing with a message, SEARCHING FOR SATELLITES, just as it had when Larry had first powered it up. Artie pushed the menu button to scroll through the main navigation screens. Speed, distance to destination, ETA, course, heading, and all other parameters were blinking zeros, confirming that there was no satellite fix. He tried changing channels on the XM receiver but all he got was more of the same static. He was so absorbed with trying to make the unit work that he didn’t notice that the yacht was changing course and heading up into the wind until he felt the pitching increase as the bow took the waves head on, and he heard the flogging of the sails as they lost the wind and luffed. In the next instant everything on deck became chaos as the mainsail and foresail booms swung wildly back and forth and the boat wallowed in the breaking swells. Artie yelled for Larry, and was about to open the companionway hatch, but didn’t have to. The change in motion had awakened the seasoned skipper and he was on deck in a flash.
“What happened? Larry asked as he leapt to the helm and disconnected the autopilot linkage so he could steer by hand.
“The GPS went nuts!” Artie said. “You wouldn’t believe the lights that went off to the north; red, yellow, white, orange, green…. It was so bright for a minute that it blinded me.”
Larry was listening as he brought the bow of the schooner back through the wind, allowing it to fall off until the sails filled and the boat gradually eased back up to cruising speed.
“Was it heat lightning off in the distance?”
“Oh no! Nothing like lighting at all. Besides, the sky was already clearing, like it is now. There was no thunder, and this was brighter than any lightning I’ve ever seen. It was like daylight out here for a few seconds.”
Larry was deep in thought as he listened and kept the yacht on course. “Here, take it a minute while I check the chartplotter. Just steer by the compass and keep it on about 350 degrees.”
“I was listening to the XM too. It went to static about the same time the sky lit up,” Artie said as he switched places with his brother.
“This is pretty weird,” Larry said. “The GPS says it’s still searching for satellites. It usually locks on in less than thirty seconds even when it’s first powered up. Still nothing on the XM either.” Larry opened the companionway hatch and turned up the volume on the VHF marine communications radio. It had been on all along, but they had kept the volume down once they were far from land and away from most boat traffic. When he turned it back up, nothing could be heard but static on Channel 16. Larry hit the scan button and found only static throughout the band.
“Nothing on the VHF either, huh?” Artie asked.
“No, nada. All the electronics are still working, just not picking up a signal. If it had been lightning, it would have fried everything. Of course, lightning striking the boat would mean we were in a big storm and that would have been obvious. Heat lightning couldn’t do this.”
“I’m telling you, it wasn’t heat lighting that I saw. I’ve seen heat lighting before; not at sea, but I’ve seen it. This was like the Northern Lights or something. It was really kind of spectacular. Really beautiful, if I hadn’t been so shocked when it happened. I wish you could have seen it.”
“Maybe it was something like the Northern Lights. Maybe some kind of atmospheric disturbance that’s temporarily interrupted radio signals. Strange that it would affect satellite signals too. It must have been really strong,” Larry said.
“It was strong, all right, and it was in the north. I can’t imagine that you’d see the real Northern Lights way down here though. You can’t even see them from most parts of the United States except in unusual conditions.”
“Maybe you could if it was some kind of unusual phenomenon,” Larry said. “I’ve read somewhere that solar storms can sometimes send a disruptive pulse through our atmosphere. I hope it’s just temporary, like the interruption of radio and TV signals you sometimes get during a strong electrical storm.”
“How are we going to navigate without the GPS if it doesn’t come back on?”
Larry laughed. “We’ll just have to do it the old-fashioned way—with the compass,” he said as he pointed to the big Danforth steering compass mounted on top of the wheel pedestal. “Or the stars.” He nodded to Polaris, still hanging low over the horizon in the general direction they were sailing. “At least we can get the coordinates of the last position the GPS fixed on before the signal went out. Keep her on course; I’ll go down and get the paper chart and my logbook. We’d better plot a DR course and start keeping track of things right away.”
“DR course?”
“Dead reckoning. It’s another big part of the old way of navigation. Basically involves knowing your approximate ‘speed made good’—that is, the actual speed over ground, taking into account adverse or favorable currents—and the distance to your destination, then calculating how long it will take to get there assuming the same speed is maintained. Of course there are other factors, like sideways set from currents and such, but on a short passage like this it’s relatively easy to get accurate enough.”
“You call this a short passage?” Artie asked, at the same time noticing that for the first time on the trip he didn’t feel seasick anymore. Maybe it was the excitement of all that had happened that had taken his mind off it. “What do you call a long passage?”
“Sure it’s short: 350 miles?Three days and three nights, tops. Like I told you before, a long passage is a whole ocean. Like the run I did from Cape Town to Barbados last fall.”
“You can have that! This is long enough for me. Seeing those lights almost made it worth it, though. I wish you could have seen them yourself. Dammit, come to think of it, I wish I had thought to get a photo! I had my phone in my pocket. Casey would have loved to see that. I just didn’t think about it, it happened so fast.”
“Maybe she saw it from there,” Larry said.
That thought had not occurred to Artie, but of course, if it were some big event like a solar flare, it probably would have been visible all over North America as well. After all, it was in that direction. “Well, I wish she could have seen it, because it was so unusual, but the dad part of me hopes she didn’t, because it happened at about two a.m., her time, and I hope she was in her room sound asleep.”
“But you know she was just as likely to be out partying,” Larry said.
“Nah, I know she does a little, but not on a weeknight. You know she’s pretty serious about school.”
“Not like I was, huh, Doc?”
“I guess you went to a different kind of school. I still don’t see how you learned so much about boats, considering we grew up in Oklahoma. It’s like you were born with it or something.”
“I feel like I should’ve been. Guess I’m a lot like Buffett, just a pirate lookin’ at forty; born about two hundred years too late. But seriously, you know I’ve been out here sailing all these years while you’ve been doin’ the doctor thing. You learn a little out here, bit by bit. If you don’t, you won’t last long, because Mother Ocean doesn’t care who you are.”
Artie envied his carefree younger brother in a way, but he couldn’t imagine living Larry’s life. Initially, he had thought Larry would tire of it too and settle down into a regular job, but now, after spending just a few days with him in his element, Artie doubted it. Larry had a knack for always landing on his feet no matter how bad things got, and now, in his late thirties, he was apparently doing fine, with his skills as a delivery skipper keeping him in demand and taking him to some of the most exotic places in the world.
Artie preferred the security of a regular routine and a steady paycheck, and besides, he had Casey to think about, not just himself. In the beginning, a lot of it was about the money. After graduating from medical school and completing his specialty in ophthalmology, he was on the fast track to making the big bucks in private practice during the early years of his marriage to Dianne. But when Casey was just twelve, their family was torn asunder in one evening by someone else’s impatience on a rainy interstate highway. Artie lost his wife and Casey lost her mother, and suddenly making a lot of money didn’t matter near as much. He traded the long days of one surgery after another for a low-stress staff position at a V.A. hospital, where he could keep reasonable hours, have the weekends off, and spend as much time as possible filling the roles of both father and mother to his only daughter. Despite the challenges, he thought he had done pretty well as a single parent, and now that Casey was away at college, he felt the time had passed much too quickly and he often wished for the days when she was still living at home.
He kept checking the GPS and trying the XM receiver as Larry steered the boat by hand. “Still nothing,” he said. “How long do you think this interference could last?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, Doc. I hope not much longer, but who knows? I’ve been on boats that were hit by lightning. Sometimes it takes out everything electrical on board, and other times it might just be the radio or nothing at all. Seems like every strike is different. People try all kinds of tricks for preventing strikes—dissipaters on the masthead, grounding everything on board to the keel—but I have my doubts about how effective any of it is, since lighting behaves in such strange ways and is so unpredictable.”
“But this wasn’t lightning,” Artie reminded him again, as if he suspected his brother doubted what he saw.
“I know that, Artie. Definitely not lightning. I would have heard the strike if it had been that close. I’m just talking about how power surges affect electronics or do not affect them, depending on unknown variables. And this was obviously a power surge. And if it took out our satellite radio and GPS signals, it had to be powerful. I’ll bet they have no signal on the islands, probably not even on the mainland.”
“Well, if that’s the case, at least it doesn’t matter to most of those people. Most people ashore aren’t listening to the radio anyway, at this hour, and GPS isn’t necessary on land.”
“You’d think it was, from what I saw last time I was in Florida,” Larry said. “It looked as if every car on the Interstate had one glowing on the dash just to find the next exit—pretty pathetic if you ask me. Do they not even teach kids to read maps anymore these days?”
“Maybe not, but Casey can find her way around. She didn’t want the confusion of something else to distract her when she was learning to drive, and she still doesn’t want one. I just hope this weird interference didn’t interrupt her cell phone service, or her Internet access. Now that would be a disaster of epic proportions in her world!”
Larry laughed. “Yeah, you should have seen their faces that first night she and Jessica were anchored with me at one of the out islands last summer and they found out they couldn’t text their friends back home! It was like I had just told them the boat was sinking or something. I think it was the worst thing either of them could have imagined happening!”
“Yeah, but Casey talked about that trip for weeks, Larry. Man, you just don’t know how much good it did her.”
Casey’s raving about what a great time she and her roommate had had spending a week of summer vacation sailing with Larry was in fact the main reason Artie was here now. She had gone on and on about the clear water of the Virgin Islands and how much fun sailing was, but Artie now knew that Casey and Jessica’s trip had been much different than this delivery passage he was on now. Larry had taken them on leisurely day sails among closely spaced islands where they had stopped to eat seafood and sip tropical drinks at beachfront cafés, anchoring every night in protected waters where the boat hardly rocked. It was a universe away from the hellish two days and nights Artie had already spent at sea, when the boat was like a mad carnival ride that never stopped moving, and there was nothing to look at but endless waves as far as he could see. He didn’t think Casey or Jessica would have liked such a voyage either, but then again, you never knew. Larry seemed more content out here than anywhere Artie had ever been with him. When they had started the passage, his brother was nervous and stressed as he went through checklists and inspected the boat one last time. The stress stayed with him as they motored out of the anchorage and finally got the sails hoisted and set, but with each mile they put out to sea, Larry’s smile got bigger until he seemed as if he didn’t have a care in the world and the land astern slipped beneath the horizon. This was his world out here, and the place he felt at home. For Artie, the passage was just an ordeal he had no choice but to endure once he was committed to it.
But now he was free of the awful seasickness for the first time since they’d left the anchorage. He didn’t know why it had suddenly gone away, but Larry had said he’d seen people instantly cured of seasickness before when there was some sudden crisis such as a storm that demanded action and somehow snapped the body out of the throes of nausea. Artie figured it was the shock of seeing the incredible lights as well as the “boat crisis” that had occurred when the autopilot went haywire. Now that he didn’t feel like he had to throw up all the time, he was hungry, and he reached inside the companionway for a bag of pretzels and pulled a soda out of the built-in ice box under one of the seats.
Larry stayed at the helm as the sky gradually lightened in the east, and soon a new day was breaking, the early light casting a slate-gray sheen on the rolling waves the schooner slashed through on her course to the north. When the sun climbed above the horizon and began to burn away the chill and dampness of the night, Artie felt better than he had on the entire voyage, and offered to spell his brother at the helm so Larry could go below and brew a pot of coffee in the galley.
When Larry returned with two cups in hand, the sun was already hot, the start of another tropical day that would soon have them both crowded into the scant shade of the small Bimini top that covered the cockpit.
“Still nothing,” Larry said as he pushed buttons on the GPS unit that was still displaying a flashing SEARCHING FOR SATELLITES message. Larry sat back in the cockpit and made another entry in his logbook, checking the compass as he did so.
“Do you know where we are?”
“Close enough. We’ll reach St. Thomas in time to enter the anchorage about this time tomorrow morning. We should get a visual by the glow from all the lights there early tonight. At night you can see the more populated islands from a long way out at sea.”
“What if this power surge, or whatever it was, caused their electricity to go out?” Artie asked.
Larry chuckled at the thought. “Not likely. That would take one hell of a powerful event—though it doesn’t take much for the lights to go out anyway on those islands. But this wouldn’t have anything to do with that, I wouldn’t think. My best guess is that it was just some kind of space interference or solar flare-up or something that messed up the satellites. Although I’m surprised it would affect local VHF radio reception, unless it somehow disrupted the big transmitter stations on the islands. We don’t know if we can talk to other vessels or not, since we haven’t seen any. But there’s usually some boat-to-boat chatter going on even this far out, and I should be able to get the NOAA weather radio channel in St. Thomas, so that’s kinda weird.”
“I just wish I could call Casey and ask her what’s going on up there in the Big Easy. I guess she’s getting dressed for class by now,” Artie said as he looked at his watch.
Despite all the caffeine, Artie was exhausted from being awake and sick for so long, so when Larry told him he didn’t need any help steering, he stretched out on the cockpit seat and slept through the morning. When he woke shortly after noon he felt even better, and the nausea still had not returned. As he stretched his arms and stood against the cabin bulkhead, he asked Larry if they were still making good progress and glanced at the GPS to see if it had started working again.
“I guess not, huh? You decided to just turn it off?”
“No,” Larry said. “It looks like we’ve got an even bigger problem than the lack of satellite reception. The whole chartplotter unit just went off as if it had been powered down about two hours ago. I can’t get it to do anything when I push the power button. The VHF radio did the same thing. Without the autopilot to hold course, I didn’t want to go below and check the 12-volt circuit panel, but if you’ll take it a minute, I’ll go do that now.”
Artie got another cold Coke out of the ice box and moved into position behind the helm. Larry disappeared down the companionway steps and reappeared five minutes later.
“This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen, Doc. The VHF is dead as a doornail. The stereo is dead. The single-sideband radio receiver is dead. Even my personal handheld GPS receiver that was turned off and stuck in the locker under my bunk is dead. Not only is the autopilot disabled because it can’t communicate with the chartplotter, but the unit itself won’t even power on. I tried to power up my laptop and it won’t come on either; ditto for my cell phone. But we still have ship’s power. The batteries are apparently still working, and the LED cabin lights still come on, but there’s nothing to that but a simple 12-volt circuit and a single switch from the breaker panel. It’s apparently everything with sensitive electronic circuitry that’s shut down.”
“What could have caused that to happen? That stuff didn’t shut down right after I saw the lights last night. It was just the signals that were lost. Did you see anything else this morning?”
“No,” Larry said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It was daylight and you can see how bright the sun is. If whatever caused those lights to appear last night had happened in the daylight, I’ll bet you wouldn’t have seen them at all. For all we know, this could have been an even stronger second surge.”
Artie’s Blackberry was still in the pocket of his foul-weather jacket that was now bunched in a corner of the cockpit. He was reaching for it as Larry pondered the cause of the strange shutdowns. He took it out of the Ziploc and pressed the power button. It normally took a couple of seconds before it would light up when it had been turned off, but press as he might, nothing happened this time. The expensive smartphone was an inert object in his palm. He removed the back cover and took out the battery, waiting a few seconds before replacing it and trying again. Nothing—the phone was dead.
“What in the world?” Artie asked as he stared at his dumbfounded brother.
“I can’t imagine what could cause this,” Larry said. “Like I told you before, I’ve been in electrical storms on boats and seen everything on board fried. A good lightning strike could do this—and even take out stuff like the handheld GPS and computer that were not connected to the vessel’s electrical system. But I’ll be damned if I know what could do it on a clear sunny day like today.”
“I don’t see how even lightning could affect a device that’s not plugged into something. Isn’t that why they tell you not to leave the TV and stuff like that plugged in during a thunderstorm at home? Remember how Dad used to run around unplugging stuff every time a summer rain came up back when we were growing up?”
“In a lot of cases, unplugging stuff does save it. But sometimes if a sailboat like this takes a direct hit to the mast, it can send enough of a power surge through the whole boat to fry everything. I’ve heard of strikes melting all the 12-volt wires in the vessel. Hell, there have even been cases of lightning running down the mast and blowing a chunk out of the bottom of the hull—sinking the boat!”
“I guess I can see how that could happen with a really powerful bolt of lightning. But as you said, the sky is blue and clear. What could cause a power surge like that on a day like this? It has to be something to do with those lights I saw, but how?”
“It had to be some kind of electromagnetic pulse thing,” Larry said. “I don’t know enough about the science of it to know what’s possible. But I have read something about how solar flares could disrupt radio signals and such on Earth. I couldn’t imagine one powerful enough to short out electronic circuits though—but that could be what happened.”
“What if it was something intentional? Some kind of terrorist attack or something?”
“I suppose that’s possible too, but I don’t know how. Unless maybe if it was a nuclear attack, but the way you described those lights, it seems more like some freak of nature event to me.”
“Whatever it was, I just wonder how far-reaching the effects were? I sure hope it hasn’t done the same thing back home where Casey is.”
“Well, South Louisiana is a long way from the eastern Caribbean. I guess we’ll find out more when we get to St. Thomas in the morning. Surely it will be in the news.”
“I’ll just be glad to get to a working phone so I can call Casey and make sure she’s all right.”
Artie took another turn at the helm as Larry worked out their approximate position on the paper charts and made detailed entries in his logbook. The steady trades continued to bear Ibis to the north-northwest along the rhumb line that Larry plotted on the chart. He said they were making good progress and should arrive as predicted shortly after daylight the next morning. The afternoon wore slowly on under the tropical sun as the two brothers separately pondered reaching land again and finding out the source of the strange electrical pulse.
They passed one ship sometime around mid-afternoon but it was so far away on the horizon they could not distinguish any details other than that it was a freighter of some type and that it was moving slowly, if at all. The sea was otherwise devoid of traffic and they saw nothing but the occasional breaching dolphin until nearly sunset, when Artie noticed several objects floating in the waves several hundred yards ahead, and just slightly east of their course. He assumed it was floating garbage or debris of some sort until they sailed closer and saw how much of it there was. Many of the floating objects were shiny, reflecting the light of the late afternoon sun. Pointing it out to Larry, Artie asked what he thought it could be.
Larry stepped up to the cabin roof and leaned against the mast to get a better view through his binoculars. After a few seconds he told Artie to steer for the debris.
“What is it?” Artie asked, “Can you tell?”
“Some kind of wreckage. I can’t be sure, but maybe parts of a boat—or an airplane. We’d better check it out. There could be someone in the water. Head up a bit so I can ease the sheets. I want to slow down and be ready to heave to if we see anyone.”
As they closed the gap, it became obvious what the floating objects were. “Oh my God, it was a plane,” Artie said, astonished, looking at a clearly recognizable wing tip floating, half awash, dead ahead of the schooner. He steered past it as Larry scanned the water for any sign of survivors.
“Looks like it was a small private jet, maybe a corporate aircraft of some type…. Definitely not a commercial airliner,” Larry said as they passed more recognizable pieces of fuselage and a tail section.
“You think it broke up like this when it hit the water, or could it have exploded first in the air?”
“Hard to say, but since there’s more than one piece here in the same place, it probably hit the water first. A lot of the parts may have sunk.”
“Maybe whoever was on it was already rescued,” Artie said hopefully, as they both scanned every wave for any sign of life, half-expecting to see the bobbing heads and waving hands of life-jacket-wearing survivors any minute now. “How long ago do you think this happened?”
“My guess is not all that long, considering that these pieces are still floating together. It wouldn’t take but a few hours with this much wind to scatter them miles apart. I’ll bet it happened when all the electronics shut down this morning.”
“You mean that you think that power surge or pulse or whatever it was that shut down our electronics could have also caused the plane to crash?”
“Absolutely. It might not have affected an older prop plane with manual controls, but this was obviously a late-model, high-tech jet. Aircraft like this have so many computer-operated controls and instruments that a total loss of on-board systems would have doomed it, no matter how good the pilot was.”
Larry grabbed the helm as he was talking and brought the bow of the small schooner through the wind to change tacks. “We had better crisscross through the area a few times and look carefully. If this plane crashed because of the pulse, no one has been here to look for survivors, and no one likely will, at least any time soon. They would not have been able to make a radio call before they went down, and anyway, air traffic control on the islands may be down too.”
Artie was stunned at the implications of what his brother had just said. “What about commercial airliners? Would they crash too if they were close enough to the source of the pulse to be affected?”
“Yes,” Larry said. “Let’s hope this thing was just local, but if not, I’d hate to think of how many jets would have been flying just in and out of the island airports in the area. St. Thomas is especially busy, with all the tourists connecting to the cruise ships there. You know, come to think of it, I haven’t heard any jets overhead at all today, or seen any vapor trails. There are usually so many you don’t give ’em any thought, but I know I haven’t seen any.”
Artie climbed to the cabin top and began desperately scanning the waves for any sign of life among the floating wreckage. “You’d think we would see them if they were still here, even if they were dead. Wouldn’t the bodies float for a while?”
“Maybe, maybe not. The waves could have carried the wreckage at a faster speed than floating bodies. But from the looks of these pieces and parts, I honestly don’t see how anyone could have survived the impact. Then there are plenty of sharks in these waters too. You know that from the ones we’ve already seen.”
Artie shuddered at the thought of being in the water for a long time without a boat. He knew Larry was right. He thought that if he had been in that situation, he would have preferred to have died in the crash rather than be eaten alive later.
“I know in some of the big airliner crashes over water they’ve picked up survivors who had been more than a day in the water,” Larry said, “but this jet might have gone straight down with an impact no one could have survived. That, and the fact that there was probably only a pilot and perhaps a copilot and two or three passengers on board makes it even less likely we would find them even if they were still afloat.”
Larry tacked the schooner twice more and made a couple of passes upwind of the debris, just in case any swimmers or floating bodies were drifting at a slower pace than the remains of the aircraft. They both scanned the rolling seas on both sides of the boat continuously as they sailed, but saw nothing else, and soon the sun was rapidly sinking to the horizon, taking with it the last chance of seeing anything they hadn’t already spotted.
“We may as well get back on course to St. Thomas,” Larry said. “Maybe we can find the answers there.”
“It worries me what we will find out,” Artie said. “This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard of. And I certainly never expected to sail through a plane crash site when I came down here for a tropical vacation. This delivery trip is turning out to be more of an adventure than I had bargained for.”
“You and me both, Doc. All we can do at this point is carry on and get to the anchorage. I don’t think the radio, the GPS, or anything else is going to suddenly start working again, so we won’t get our answers until we get there.” Larry went below and grabbed his logbook and paper charts to work out the approximate position of the crash site, and entered it in the log so they could report it to the authorities when they reached the island. He then hauled in the sheets as Artie steered back on course, and soon the schooner was back up to hull speed, carrying them northeast into the growing darkness as the short tropical twilight faded to night.
Without the formerly familiar glow of the GPS in the cockpit, Artie’s gaze was fixed on the big steering compass. At least its backlight still worked, as it was a simple 12-volt bulb wired through a switch to the vessel’s storage batteries. Larry had said the batteries would continue to provide ample power for a few lights, including the running lights and interior cabin lights, until they reached the anchorage. They couldn’t recharge them because the engineless schooner had no alternator, and the charge controllers and voltage regulators that connected the batteries to the large solar panels mounted on the stern rail had been taken out by the pulse. Larry wished that the owner had allowed the builder to install a small auxiliary diesel engine, but he had stubbornly insisted on keeping Ibis a true sailing ship.
Artie reflected on what his brother had said earlier that day about how men had been crossing oceans in small boats without the benefit of electronics for centuries, and how they were lucky they were on a seaworthy sailing vessel instead of some posh motor-yacht with intricate systems dependent upon technology. The schooner worked now just as her predecessors had, and as long as the trade winds blew, they could depend on her to carry them to their destination. The sight of the plane crash had really unsettled Artie, though, and he longed to be able to contact Casey to make sure she was okay, and to tell her that he was. He knew he had to somehow maintain his patience, but as his four-hour watch dragged by, he had no doubt it was going to be a long night.
When Larry came back on deck at 2200 hours to relieve him, he said that the glow of St. Thomas should be visible by now, but it wasn’t. The skies were clear and stars arced over the masthead in such density they looked like clouds of light, but at the level of the horizon the darkness was the same through a full 360 degrees.
“I was afraid of this,” Larry said.
“So, the power is out on the islands?”
“At least in this part of the Virgins. Who knows where else?”
“Can we find it in the dark?”
“Oh yeah, no problem there. We won’t be close enough to it to hit it before well after daylight even if we couldn’t see it. But with this much starlight tonight, we should see the outline of the mountains from several miles out.”
Artie went below and stretched out in his bunk, trying to get some sleep during his time off watch, but instead he spent most of the four hours tossing and turning, his mind racing with thoughts of the horrors of the plane crash and what it implied about what could have happened since he saw the lights. He thought about Larry saying that all jet airliners would be affected if their electronic controls went out, and he began to wonder how he would get back home. He had a ticket for a flight from St. Thomas to New Orleans by way of a connection in Atlanta, and he had been planning to leave the afternoon after their arrival at the anchorage. What if the power were still out then? What if the strange pulse had damaged the instruments of all the planes sitting at the airport? What if some of them had been in flight when it happened and had crashed? There was no way Artie could get any sleep with all this on his mind. He gave up and went back up on deck. It was two hours after midnight.
“There it is,” Larry said.
Artie looked over the bow and saw the dark silhouette of distant ridges and peaks rising out of the sea. “That’s St. Thomas?” he asked.
“Yes, and a couple of smaller islands that lie just outside of the harbor. Normally, the whole mountainside above Charlotte Amalie Harbor would be lit up like a Christmas tree. The lights were out on St. Croix, too. We passed within about 12 miles of it a couple of hours back while you were below, and there was nothing—no glow or anything. That tells me the power is definitely out in the whole island group. I still haven’t seen any air traffic either, and only a couple of vessel lights. I’ve never seen anything like this as long as I’ve been down here. Even after a hurricane hits, there are helicopters and all kinds of planes flying around.”
“That’s why I couldn’t sleep,” Artie said. “I’ve been wondering just how I’m supposed to get back to New Orleans if my flight got canceled.”
“No use worrying about that right now. We’ll find out more later this morning. I’ve reefed the main and staysail to slow us down some. We’ll take it nice and easy on the approach and should be just outside the harbor entrance when the sun comes up. No use taking a risk running too fast in these blackout conditions. I’m glad you came back on deck, because we both need to keep a good lookout until dawn. You never know, there may be big ships out here steaming with no lights—if they’re able to run at all.”
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Artie said. “Especially the one week-and-a-half period of my entire life that I decided to take a Caribbean vacation.”
“Hey, you’re on island time now. Not to worry, mon. Everyt’ing gonna be all right.”
“Yeah, I hope you’re right. But you live your whole life on island time. Some of us have to work for a living. I’ve got to be back at the V.A. Monday morning. I have patients to see.”
“I wish you could meet my friend Scully. You think I live on island time? Scully could teach us all something about not worrying.”
“Yeah, I heard all about Scully from the girls after their trip last summer. Casey got on a reggae kick I didn’t think would ever end. At least she and Jessica didn’t start smoking marijuana—as far as I know anyway—but she talked about Scully for weeks.”
“I suppose he was the first real Rasta that either of them had ever met. Scully’s a good guy, definitely one of my best friends in the islands. The Rastas smoke their ganja, all right, but it’s different with them. It’s not about getting high and partying. It’s more of a spiritual experience—part of their religion—a path to enlightenment or something like that.”
“Enlightenment? They seem like just another version of dope-smoking hippies to me. You don’t mess with that stuff, do you, Larry?”
“I’m more into good island rum, especially when I’m anchored in a nice spot for the evening. I’m not saying I wouldn’t take a hit off the pipe now and then, but Scully knows better than to bring it on board a boat when we’re doing a delivery, and certainly not to bring it on my boat. It’s not worth the risk of getting a boat confiscated, and I won’t tolerate it at sea.”
Artie figured drinking rum and taking a toke now and then sort of went with the territory for a yacht delivery skipper. Looking at his lean and tanned younger brother standing at the helm, his full beard and wavy hair bleached blond from the sun, Artie thought maybe Larry had been born two hundred years too late. He was an adventurer at heart, and this sailing life he’d chosen seemed to suit him well, and apparently agreed with him, as he looked much younger than his 38 years. Artie couldn’t imagine Larry in any other setting, as these islands had been his home since he had caught a ride on a boat out of Fort Lauderdale during his first Spring Break, and he never went back to college to finish out the semester.
“It’s too bad Scully won’t be in St. Thomas while you’re here,” Larry went on. “But then again, who knows how long you’ll be here? Maybe you shouldn’t have come to the islands in 2013, Doc. Didn’t you know the world was supposed to end sometime around the end of 2012 or, at the latest, by 2013?”
“Hah, hah; very funny, Larry. So the lights went out, and now it’s the end of the world?”
“It would be for most people up there,” Larry said, referring to mainland America, a place he rarely even visited. “What would they do without their DSL connections? What would they do without TV? Yeah, it would be the end of the world for sure.”
“I know it would be for Casey,” Artie laughed. “But seriously, if this were some kind of weird power surge or electromagnetic pulse from a solar flare, or whatever, and it really did knock out the power grid, it might take awhile to fix it, huh?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. I know it takes a while after a hurricane comes through. Happens down here all the time, but they bring in crews from other places with all the stuff to repair the damage. Let’s just hope this is local to this part of the islands. Otherwise, it could be a real problem.”
“I just hope there’s a landline or something working when we get to St. Thomas, so I can call Casey. If it was something local to the islands, she may have heard about it today and may be more worried about me than I am about her—if that’s possible.”
Larry stayed at the helm for the rest of the approach to St. Thomas in the pre-dawn darkness. Under reefed sails, Ibis reached to the north at barely five knots, the fastest speed Larry dared to sail under these eerie blackout conditions where there could be more wreckage like the crashed plane anywhere along their course. They saw the 12-volt running lights of three other small sailing vessels as they neared the island, and as dawn broke with Ibis some seven miles south of the steep coast, they could see the silhouettes of an anchored U.S. Navy ship and half a dozen cruise ships lying outside the harbor. Larry said there were always navy vessels in the vicinity, as well as plenty of cruise ships waiting to dock to load and unload passengers, but he said he had never before seen an unlit cruise ship. He said that by sunrise there would also be a lot of fishing and dive boat traffic heading out of the harbor on a normal day, but today nothing was moving.
“It’s sort of like coming in here after a hurricane, but with the harbor full of boats and without all the buzz of activity that would already be going on from the cleanup,” Larry said as they sailed into the anchorage. Artie could see hundreds of moored yachts filling the natural harbor. There were sailing vessels of all descriptions and sizes, from traditional-looking schooners like Ibis to weird, spaceship-like catamarans and trimarans, as well as motor-yachts that looked like floating palaces. Larry expertly piloted the schooner through the maze of boats until he spotted the numbered float that marked the mooring that Ibis’s owner had rented in advance. Artie took the boat hook forward to the bow, and following Larry’s instructions, snagged the mooring line and slipped it over one of the bow cleats just as Larry eased all the sheets and then quickly sprang into action to release the halyards and drop the sails to the deck. The passage was over. Ibis was secured solidly to the heavy mooring at the bottom of the harbor, and Artie breathed a sigh of relief as she swung downwind and settled down for the first time since they’d sailed out of the harbor at Martinique. He looked at the surrounding green hills dotted with houses, hotels, restaurants, and shops that reflected the morning sun from their shiny windows and created an illusion that everything was normal and as it should be. He looked forward to stepping onto the solidity of that dry land and its promise of shelter, momentarily forgetting the incomprehensible events that had completely altered his reality during his first ocean voyage.