Page 13 of The Hitchhiker in Panama
“Okay. When the canal is emptying the water, the boat goes down and you have to loosen the line.” Eivind demonstrated this by taking most, but not all, of the wraps off the cleat. “Hold this.”
I grabbed the line while Eivind jumped back down to the dock. He wrapped a hand around the line, just above the cleat, and pulled. I walked my hands down the line, letting it out.
“Good. Not too much, you still need”—Eivind used one fist to mime pulling—“tension. I will loosen the line, like when the boat will be raised in the canal.”
I gradually pulled the line in until it was tight with the cleat on the dock. I bent over to finish the figure eights and the lock on the cleat.
“Very good. So, Jonas is the captain, and he will be at the helm. If he tells you to cleat the line off, you cleat the line off, no matter what. Okay?”
“Okay, cool.” I couldn’t help grinning. I’d learned so much already. Eivind climbed back on board.
“What else do you want to learn?”
“I’m sure you have better things to do than teach me about boats.”
Eivind’s eyes held mine and he leaned into me. “No. I have nothing I want to do more than teach you about boats.”
We smiled at each other for a few moments until I snapped myself out of it.
I looked around me. “Hmm . . . okay, let’s start with what I do know. This is the mast.” I put my hand up against the large metal column in the center of the boat. “And that thing’s the boom.” I pointed to the large horizontal metal thing sticking out from the mast. “Mainsail, shroud, jib?”
“Genoa. That sail is a genoa; it is bigger than a jib.”
“Okay. So which of these lines do you pull to unroll the genoa?”
Eivind showed me where the lines for each sail ran, which line you pulled, which lines you released. I wasn’t going sailing, but Eivind kept up with it anyway, patiently explaining.
I pointed to one thing. “What’s this?”
“Hmm . . . a thingamabob?”
I laughed. “How do you know that word?”
“As a kid, Jonas obsessed overThe Little Mermaid. Mum made us watch all the Disney movies in English for practice. In our house, we had thingamabobs and dinglehoppers when we were growing up. He always wanted to play Prince Eric with the neighbor girls who had red hair. We stayed friends with them for so long. I am pretty sure Jonas did not even like them, but they had red hair, so . . .” He shrugged.
“And you? What did you want to play when you were little?”
Eivind grinned. “I wanted to be a rock star.”
“Were you in a band?”
“Yes, but we were terrible.” Eivind sat down on the top of the main salon’s roof, stretching his legs out on the deck in front of him.
“What did you play?” I sat down next to him and leaned back on my hands.
“Guitar.”
“That’s definitely the hottest instrument. I think you should play some guitar for me.”
He laughed. “I do not have one here. How do you feel about a ukulele?”
I scrunched up my nose. “A ukulele is cute, not sexy.”
“Ah, so if I want to seduce you, I need to borrow a guitar.”
I grinned. Eivind’s eyes scanned my face, dipping to look at my lips and then traveling back up to meet my eyes.
I turned my face away. Closing my eyes, I sighed and tilted my head back. The sun heated my skin. “Unless I want a sunburn, we should wrap up out here.”
