Chapter 4: Riders on the Storm
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BARELY TEN MINUTES into their race home, the upbeat mood from their glorious day of surfing had vanished. The eastern sky curdled into something dark and ominous, coughing lightning stabs and sheets of black rain.
The transition at sea was alarming. One moment they were gliding smoothly under the mainsail and power, the next moment the waves had swelled dramatically, the whipping winds spraying off the white caps. The boat pitched side to side, the easy rhythm replaced by the wild rising and falling over the rolling swells. The teen crew held tight to the rails.
“Life vests—now!” Jake shouted from the helm.
Kat scrambled below deck. “We’re two short!”
“Told ya!” Brando's yelled back.
With the exception of Luke and Jake, the friends scrambled into the orange vests over their wet suits, straps tightened across their chests.
“Raise the spinnaker!” Jake yelled to Luke. He knew it was a risky move. But racing across the Gulf Stream, he needed to put distance between the Sloop John B and the approaching storm before the rough weather overwhelmed them.
Luke and Kat raised the spinnaker to max out speed by capturing more wind. With both the mainsail and the large, billowing spinnaker up, the boat surged forward. But as fast as they sliced through water, the storm closed in faster. The wind whipped around them, alternately pushing and dragging on the boat, and waves crashed over the bow, sending sheets of saltwater cascading down on the deck. The larger sail area had given Jake a boost of speed, but in the process, he sacrificed the Sloop John B’s maneuverability in worsening conditions, making it difficult to avoid the repeated, forceful bashing by the rising ocean swells.
A sickening snap severed the tiller line in Jake’s hand, and he lost control. Jake desperately spun the wheel to tack the boat into an approaching wave, but his steering was gone. The wave slammed the Sloop John B broadside, the starboard deck rolling onto its side in the churning sea, flinging Wheels, Brando, Sunny, Zoe and Kat overboard like rag dolls.
The boat lurched over, nearly capsizing. Fighting against the incline, Jake managed to secure a ring buoy to the boat’s mooring line and, with a desperate heave, tossed it toward Wheels and Zoe, who struggled to grip the hull’s slick surface. Brando, spotting Zoe dazed and floating nearby, wrapped his arm around her chest and dragged her toward the listing boat.
Clinging to the railing, Jake cautiously traversed the steeply angled hull, desperately counting heads in the water. Sunny was nowhere to be seen. Luke slid down on the mainsail to the cabin, now half sunk. He emerged with surfboards, which he passed one by one up to Jake, who hurled them into the turbulent sea.
Amidst the driving rain and mountainous waves, Zoe and Wheels clung precariously to the buoy, their fingers numb as they worked to tie their board leashes together into a makeshift raft. Suddenly, a monstrous wave engulfed the Sloop John B, forcing Jake and Luke to do the unthinkable. They abandoned ship, plunging into the roiling water and swimming for the improvised raft.
Drifting away from the wreckage, Jake scanned the waves, his eyes desperately searching for Sunny—a bobbing head, a waving arm. Not again, he thought. Then, as a wave lifted the bow, he spotted her, clinging to the upturned rudder.
“SUNNY!” he yelled, barely audible above the storm.
Jake released his board and paddled furiously toward her through the wild chop. Spotting him, she let go of the rudder and swam. Jake grabbed her arm and hauled her onto his board.
“You’re late,” she coughed, spitting seawater.
Clinging to the surfboard, together they kicked and paddled through the tumultuous waters toward the others, as Jake turned his head in time to see the Sloop John B vanish in the blinding rain and towering swells.
The storm raged for hours, its fury finally yielding to glimpses of a clear sky. Stars, cold and distant, peeked through racing clouds, punctuated by a crackle of lightning, as the storm moved on toward the Florida coast.
Adrift in the Gulf Stream, the seven friends clung to their raft of leashed surfboards, the current steadily carrying them north.
Hours later, Brando, his voice barely a whisper: “Where does this end?”
Luke, exhausted, deadpanned. “England.”
Jake warned, “We stay together, no matter what,” though his words felt small against the vast ocean.
As the long night wore on, measured by the rhythmic rise and fall of the waves, the teens clung to their boards, fighting sleep and keeping an eye on one other, wary of someone nodding off and slipping into the sea, unnoticed.
