The Skipper – Part 1: Dockside

The yacht lay in her berth at the end of the marina pontoon, a sleek thirty-eight-footer with a dark blue hull and a tall mast pricking the stars. Halyards tapped softly against the rigging. Water slapped the hull. The regatta started in the morning, the crew had gone to the pub, and the boat was theirs.

Astrid sat in the cockpit with a mug of tea and a chart across her knees. She was forty-three, a yacht skipper with a string of trophies and a reputation for brisk command. Piers was thirty-seven, her crewman and her partner, an outdoors-shop manager with sunburnt hands and a soft heart, who had told her once, in a gale, that he loved nothing more than a clear order from a steady voice.

"Sit," said Astrid.

He sat across from her on the cockpit bench. She slid a laminated card over the chart table. Standing Orders. His limits and hers, in marker pen: no marks, nothing painful, no real humiliation, nothing beyond the boat, no one else. The word was Anchor.

"Say it."

"Anchor."

"If you say it, the Skipper steps down. I am Astrid. We make cocoa and look at the stars."

"I understand."

"And every half hour, I ask whether you wish to continue. You answer truly."

"Yes, Skipper."

"Not yet." She pulled on a navy oilskin jacket, tightened the toggles and stood. In the lamplight she looked taller. When she spoke again, her voice was low, brisk and absolutely level. "Crewman Hale. Your sail trim was sloppy today."

"I am sorry, Skipper."

"You will be. Stand at the mast. Hands behind your back. Face the bow."

He stood on the foredeck with his back against the cold aluminium, the dark harbour spread before him, the lights of the town doubled in the water. Behind him her deck shoes crossed the boards, slow and sure. She checked a halyard. She coiled a rope. She let the silence stretch until his heartbeat slowed.

"Are you content, Crewman?"

"Content, Skipper."

"Good. We have a long night of drills."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Anchor.