Page 38 of The Second Chance in the Mediterranean
One item I recognized was the chartplotter. While it wasn’t the same oneEikhad, it was similar and I could navigate around it well enough. I pointed to the screen, glancing up just before touching it. “May I?”
“Sure.” Dom gestured for me to go ahead.
I touched the screen and zoomed out, trying to get a sense of where we were. We were entering a narrow strip, land on either side, and I looked up and out the window. Shouldn’t we be seeing the coast?
Dom followed my gaze. “The clouds have our visibility blocked. But mainland Greece is somewhere out there.”
I zoomed out further, and saw that to our starboard side should be the heel of Italy. I wavered my finger over the screen before resetting the view.
We moved on and Dom showed me the controls for the sails and for the masts. I didn’t understand much of the terminology.Eikhad had just two sails most of the time, a mainsail and a genoa. Neither looked anything likeThemis’s sails.
“Have I lost you?” Dom asked.
Pressing my hands to the counter, I blew out a breath. “Yes. Wow, this is such a complicated boat.”
“She really is.” We wandered back to Dom’s original chair and he hauled himself up before gesturing to the chair next to him.
“How are you finding things here so far?”
The chair had foot- and armrests, so I adjusted myself to sit comfortably and then folded my hands in my lap. “Things are pretty good, despite the terrible charter. I like your crew.”
Dom’s chest puffed out with pride. “Glad to hear it. I think they’ve all done pretty well. Roy working out okay?”
I nodded. “He’s very competent and easygoing.”
“Good. It’s always felt to me like the head chef and crew chef have to work more closely than anyone else on the team.”
I let my eyes wander out over the ocean. “I agree. But I also think we’re used to much higher-pressure jobs. No offense intended, but this is a cakewalk compared to the normal restaurant.”
Dom’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out to check.
“Do you need me to go?”
He waved a hand at me. “No, it’s just my daughter texting.”
“How old is she?”
“Twelve and starting to think about boys, unfortunately. Her mum is being pretty lenient and...” He sighed. “It’s hard to be okay with these kinds of things going on when I’m not there.”
“Are you the kind of dad who would threaten boyfriends?” I grinned.
“Absolutely. Those boys wouldn’t know what hit them.” He laughed, but it quickly faded to a sigh. “I hate that I’m not around much.”
“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Ah well,” he started, “we met on the job, of course. Where else are you going to meet someone in this field? It was fine for a while. Most yachtie couples are dramatic as, but Diane and I did pretty good. We got married, and I was optimistic that we’d just keep on like we were. But I was a young, dumb kid. Diane wanted family and so we moved back to her home in England and I tried to work in one of the ports, but it justlacked something.”
“I know exactly how that feels. It’s like working in a restaurant. There’s something missing because you never leave, never see anything.”
Dom blanched. “It was really too late for me to be a port captain, so my pay was shit compared to what I get here. And now I’ve got child support and whatnot.” He shook his head. “There’s no winning, really.”
“Sorry to hear about your troubles.”
“Ah, it’s okay. I got to fly them down here once already, and Nat and Justin let me keep the girls here with me on the boat. Actually, this was just before you got here. They slept in your cabin while it was empty.”
“Aw, cute little sleepover.” I gestured to his phone. “Do you have photos?”
Dom gleefully pulled up pictures of his daughters, Ashley and Maura, and we flipped through them for a while, Dom telling me funny stories about the girls.
