I always thought that I could handle a small sailing vessel fairly well, but nature has a way of making us humble again once our egos get the better of us. Let me explain.
My name is Tom Jones--no, I'm not the signer, I just share the name with him--and I am a very well off 30-something who inherited literally a ton of money when his father and mother were both killed in an automobile accident. I stand about five foot eight and weigh in at a hefty 185 pounds, but I keep myself in fairly good shape by working out at the local gym three days a week. I am single and not really looking, or at least I wasn't, but we'll get to that later.
Anyway, one of my hobbies is sailing my twenty foot sloop, Moneymaker, and I am pretty darn good at it, managing to set and reef sails as necessary and still remain on course. I also own a fifteen foot catboat I called Pussy Cat that I use when I'm not planning to go out on the water for very long. One of my favorite pastimes is to mark a chart with a seemingly random set of legs and then take my boat out into the Pacific and sail that rather aimless course to a certain point on my GPS and then return via another set of aimless wanderings. I've done this many times and have gotten fairly good at it, or so I thought.
I seldom, if ever, take anybody with me. With the kind of money that I have, I am beset by money grubbers and prefer to have some time to myself when I go sailing. The ladies all want screw me in bed because of my money and the men just want to screw me out of it anyway they can. As a result, I tend to protect myself when I'm sailing.
On the day in question, I had planned a course that would take me away for at least a couple of nights so I made sure the galley was fully stocked, the radio was in good working condition, and there was plenty of my favorite booze on board. Everything was ship-shape and Bristol fashion so I cast off early, before the sun even peeked over the mountains to the east of Los Angeles. By the time the sun made itself known, I was a good twenty miles off-shore and had set a course of 220 degrees for my first of six legs.
A couple of hours later with a good run I had passed between San Nicolas and San Clemente Islands and was headed at last for the open sea. With the islands passing over the horizon, I removed the last of my clothing and enjoyed the feeling of the sun hitting my totally naked body. This was a ritual with me. I guess I am basically a nudist at heart and I have never really been comfortable dressed in clothes.
The radio was beside me in the cockpit and about 2 PM came alive with a severe weather advisory for an area about 50 miles south of where I was. Since I was going to be north of the area, I decided all I needed to do was reduce my sails a bit and prepare to have a roller coaster ride. What I should have done was turn about and run before the storm, but this is all hindsight which we all know is 20-20 while foresight is myopic at best.
Faster than you can say storm, I was in big trouble. I took every square inch of mainsail down and used the jib to help keep me from broaching in the waves. The wind was terrible and I watched in horror as the antenna mast snapped off above the jib, carrying away, I thought, my only way to contact the outside world. What happened next put me out of my misery, at least for a while. The boom swung around and clobbered me on the side of the head, knocking me out for a long time.
When I came to, I was sitting in the cockpit with the boom over the port rail, the jib in tatters, and my sloop laying ten feet from the nearest water on an island. The wind had died down and the sun shone down on body. My head ached liked I had been beaten by a band of thugs and when I pulled my hand away from my forehead, it came back bloody red from the open cut. I bandaged my head and then decided I needed to find out where in the world I had ended up.
I took out my charts and my GPS to determine what island I was on and found that my current GPS location did not show any kind of island at all. According to my charts, the nearest island of any kind was an island belonging to Mexico called Isla Guadalupe and that was a good two hundred fifty miles from my position which was supposed to be nothing but open sea.
I began to think I was part of a very poorly written re-make of Gilligan's Island, except I was the Skipper, Mr. Howell and Gilligan all rolled into one and there were no professor, Mary Ann, Mrs. Howell or Ginger present to keep us company. A quick tour of the inside of my sloop revealed a gash in the starboard side that could never be fixed, even in a dry dock. Even the dory that usually trailed behind on a line was smashed to pieces.
I also began to think of myself as a modern day Robinson Crusoe. By that time I had checked the radio and found that I still amazingly had some battery power. I also found that the boat's generator still ran and that the fuel tank was still nearly full. I took stock of what I had on hand. The clothes I had worn on board were gone, washed no doubt into the sea, so I was going to be a nudist until somebody delivered new clothes. The food supply had not been damaged by the storm nor had any of my good Scotch been lost. So, I could gorge myself on food and drink myself into a stupor. Oh, happy me!
I set my priorities and after I had built a lean-to out of the mainsail, I moved the food and the booze into it. I kept a rifle with three boxes of ammunition on board in case of, well I really didn't know in case of what, but I thought they might come in handy in my present situation--no telling what kind of wildlife was present on this island. The radio and generator had to remain with the boat since I had no way of dismantling and carrying them and the fuel tank to the lean-to. I gathered some firewood and lugged it down to the lean-to just as the sun was disappearing behind the hills and trees to the west of my camp.
After all this had been accomplished, I was sweaty and hot so I decided I needed a quick swim in the ocean to cool me down. I dived into the water and settled into a slow crawl that took me out a ways from the beach before I turned to go back in. As I neared shore, I thought I saw a person near my lean-to, but when I called there was no answer and no further sightings. I traipsed up to the lean-to and dropped down on the blanket I had salvaged from my boat letting the breeze and the warm sun dry my skin.
When I went to get something to fix over the fire for my supper, I discovered that one of the boxes had been opened. I had thought that I had seen somebody while I was out swimming and now I knew for sure that I had. As I ate I tried to figure out how to protect the remainder of my somewhat limited supplies and still manage to get some sleep. The thief had the advantage in that he could strike at any time--or not strike. I had taken a flashlight and a pistol from the storage space in the cockpit during my last trip to the boat.
The flashlight's batteries were brand new so the light would be quite bright. The pistol was an old Colt .45 calibre, what the Army called the M1911A1, that came from my prized collection of military pistols and was in perfect condition. It had a round in the chamber and a full clip in the handgrip with three more clips laying on a box close to hand. Right after supper I laid down with my head against a mound of sand piled up beneath the blanket and went into a light sleep.
Sometime after dark, I heard a noise but didn't move except to make sure I had the flashlight and pistol close to hand. The person who was sneaking up on my camp was not doing a good job of it and actually tripped over the rope I had strung about twelve inches off the ground. When I heard the body go thump, I quickly turned on the flashlight and aimed the pistol at the person on the ground. I wasn't expecting what I saw.
Laying there in front of me was a totally naked woman who looked as if she was in her mid-20s and who had a rather small body to kill for with a nice ass, long legs that ended in a furry vee where they joined, and a pair of tits that any man would die for just to get a taste of them. If she weighed over 110 pounds, she hid it well. She stared at the light like a deer being spotlighted and threw one arm over her eyes to shield them from the sudden brightness.
"OK, who are you and what are you doing taking my supplies?" I got no answer to my question as the girl picked herself up and started to leave.
"Stop right there! Alto! Halt! Arrêtez!" She froze sometime during my order to stop so I didn't know which of the four languages she spoke.
"Turn around." I repeated it once again in Spanish, German, and French and she turned around in time with a different language so I still had no clue which one she spoke.
I looked at her from head to toe and back again. Her two lovely cone shaped breasts were heaving with the exertion of falling and picking herself up off the ground--and maybe with a little bit of fear as I let the muzzle of the pistol move into the light of the flashlight where she could see it. She was blonde headed and the hair covering her mound was the same shade as the hair on her head, almost white in the light of the flashlight.
