Smitten Itten

Looking up, I saw her in the companionway—blonde, young, tanned, grimy and scared, in bare midriff crop top and dirty white shorts--as she quavered, "well, where're we off to?"

- - - - -

Walking down the dock in July of 2001, I pulled the little two-wheeled fiberglass cart behind me, loaded with a generous 10 days worth of food and supplies, for an early summer cruise. A single-handed cruise, thank God, for once. No friends begging for a day on the yacht, expecting me to wait on them, and slurping booze, just to retch or whiz in the cockpit when the motion got to them. Just time to do some quiet, paying work on my wireless laptop and to catch up on back reading and snoozing.

Rounding the corner, I looked over my little prize, the Smitten Kitten. She (all boats are 'she') was a 22' long catboat. Not a catamaran, built for speed, spray and splash. She was built for comfort under sail, and was about as simple as a watercraft could get. One very large four-sided 'gaff' sail, spooked steering wheel, large rudder and big centerboard. She was 10' wide and 22' long, with a draft (depth in the water) of 2 ½' minimum. Common on the East Coast, near Boston and Massachusetts waters, she was as out of place in the sunny Southwestern seas as feet on a fish.

But she suited me just fine. I could go in shallow water, but keep to the sea, out of sight of land, as needed. One person could sail and maneuver her, yet she could seat eight to 10 people in the cockpit. Two couples could slow dance there, if they didn't make any tricky moves and were really good friends. I had a cabin with two berths, one for a single and one for a double (if they were intimately good friends, of course). Others could sleep in the cockpit, in good weather. There was a toilet up front, with a holding tank, and a curtain to close it off, a small stove and oven; table leaves over the centerboard case and an icebox. Crouching headroom for a man. I had auxiliary power from a small diesel engine, and electricity from alternator-charged batteries, with kerosene and candles as a backup.

Stepping aboard, I unlocked the padlock, which moved easily. I checked the fuel level (full) and water tank, which was near empty. That was odd, but a few minutes with the dockside hose took care of it. I'd keep an eye on the bilges for a freshwater leak.

I started and warmed up the engine, disconnected the electric lines from the dock, cast off from the dock cleats, and backed my boat out of the slip under power. I motored out of the yacht basin, and outside to just off Harbor Island. The breeze off Point Loma was still fresh, and I motored into the wind, while I raised sail. Just one sail, a four-sided gaff sail with plenty of area. Then I rounded off onto a beam reach, and headed down the bay, planning to round the lighthouse point and head out to sea, the wind on my starboard beam, with landfall (eventually) on Santa Catalina Island, probably at the Isthmus, in the shallow water section. But I planned to spend at least one night--maybe two or three nights—at sea, lying to a sea anchor, with lights and radar reflector raised for safety.

I'd made the turn around Point Loma, past the Coast Guard lighthouse, and was standing out to sea about half an hour, when I heard that unexpected voice. There was a young, blonde beach-bunny on my bachelor boat! I stared, open-mouthed. How the hell did she get on board?

Over-carefully she braced herself against the boat's roll and pitch, arching her back, pushing out her little breasts and cocking up one leg. Studied seduction, I thought, but not practiced. So probably not a hooker, yet. She wore the dirty white shorts and a bare-midriff top, also conspicuously dirty, that I first mentioned. There were probably panties and bra, but I wasn't checking from this distance. Bare feet, also dirty. Overall, a scruffy little girl. A stray kitten.

Gathering my wits, with difficulty, I answered her question plainly. "Catalina, eventually, but right now, west into the Pacific Ocean. But I can turn around and get you back to shore. You need to decide pretty quick, though."

"Oh," she said, adding, "then you're not coming back to town soon?"

"Hadn't planned to, no."

She actually put her finger into her mouth and pretended to think hard, but I saw her look up quickly from under the rim of hair.

"OK, then, can I come along?" Her color was getting a little greenish, her jaw worked, and I saw her start gulping saliva. I started counting seconds to myself. I'd reached about 17, when she moaned, "Retchhhh. Ah, SHIT! Ulllp!" and bolted for the cockpit rail. I slipped the steering tackle onto the spokes of the wheel, and grabbed for the back of her shorts and top. Good thing, as the boat gave its expected lurch as she made it to the rail, and she would have slithered overboard. I held on, as she heaved up a little food and more mucous, took a breath, burped, and threw up some more. Then she quieted down to some miserable retching and coughing.

There are three stages to seasickness. First, you get terribly sick, and just have to throw up. That's pretty bad, but then you go to stage two, where you think you're gonna die. Some miserable time passes, and you slip into stage three ... where you imagine that you won't die, that this will go on and on and on, forever. Then you start to feel a little better. My stowaway companion had probably passed stage one in the cabin, and was well into stage two.

I reached into the cabin, and got her a bottle of water from my stores. She forced some down, and it came right back up again. I reached around to the end of the mainsail halyard (rope) and tied it around her waist, tightly. That way, if she puked herself off the deck and into the ocean, she'd be trolled like live bait for a few moments, but wouldn't part company with my boat or me.

I offered more water, and she weakly snarled, "fuck you ... uuurrrrllpp!"

I briefly, graphically and obscenely described the dry heaves, and that the water was to give her something to throw up, plus some hydration to replace what she was loosing every few minutes. Then I went down to the first-aid kit, and pulled out an alcohol prep pad and a motion-sickness patch. Coming back up on deck, I swabbed a distinctly dirty spot behind her ear, let it dry a moment, and applied the patch. Maybe I could short-circuit stage three.

I covered her with a blanket from the under-seat storage bin, and then moved back to my post at the boat's wheel, very obviously taking control of the boat's heading, and staring intently out to sea. No sense causing trouble, as someone in stage two or three is usually acutely aware that they are making grand fools of themselves, and—"Ah shit! Urrrrppp. Fuck you! Belch. Retch. Groan. Urrpp, slop, get the mop!"—are helplessly unable to do anything about it. Women in particular.

After a time, when the patch started working, the sounds of retching and choking decreased to heaving sobs, and then to crying, and then to little snores. I tied the wheel again, and made her comfortable on the other side of the cockpit, and tacked to keep that side in the shade of the sail. Rolled comfortably in the blanket, she snored into a deep sleep.

- - - - -

Meanwhile, I pondered on just how I got a traveling companion. A young female traveling companion. Was I boating alone with the seagoing version of San Quentin quail (underage runaway)? No way to tell. But I did know that she was going to wake up thirsty and ravenous.

Setting the boat on a broad reach, I tied the wheel again, and quickly checked out the cabin. Sure enough, my little minx had been living there, while I was gone on my last assignment. The emergency food was all gone (that explained the empty water tank), the blankets were used, no toilet paper in the head. Head holding tank full to overflowing. Ah, shit (no pun intended).

I checked for a purse, and found a pitiful little pouch of belongings. An empty lipstick, broken comb, a mostly used compact of birth-control pills, less than a dollar in change, and an equally pitiful little yellow polka-dot bikini (no joke), fraying at the edges. A couple of tampons. Plus one equally-frayed beach towel, and a pair of sandals, one with a broken strap. An old scrap of a card, indicating seating for a single parent at a Mission Bay High School graduation, this year. No ID or any other papers.

I gave a little prayer of thanks, as high school graduates were usually 18 or over. So she was probably not a minor. I wondered at the high school graduation day pass. And what was she doing on my boat, just out of high school, scavenging and living like a homeless person? How did she get through the padlock, anyway?

Back to the cockpit, I checked the sail and wheel. My boat steered herself with the wind on the beam, if there wasn't much of a sea: otherwise, I had to be by the wheel. I also check on my little stowaway. Pulling back the blanket, she didn't stir. I checked for body fat and found damned little. I could see her ribs, and her tummy was concave, but not from being in the gym. If she'd been living on my emergency supplies, she hadn't been eating well or much, for a while. No trace of makeup, or nail treatment, and her hair was raggedy and long. It had been some time since she'd been in a salon.

I could fix that, I chuckled. One pot meals a bachelor specialty, particularly at sea.

I could fix a lot of other things, I thought with an evil leer. Two jerks on her top, one pull on her shorts, a little lube on my cock first and I could be banging into her body. No one would hear her if she screamed, or care, or believe her if she told.

Luckily, that thought was fleeting. Rape isn't my thing, beyond the usual bachelor fantasies. Sex deprivation would just have to wait some more, until a girlfriend came along. Just no more wives. I'd rather continue regular gigs with Freddy Feel Good and his Funky Little Five-Piece Band, thank you very much.

A couple hours later, long out of sight of land, I looked toward her, when I heard a 'glugging' sound. A liter bottle of water was rapidly being emptied into a no-doubt parched young throat. This was followed by a wary inward look, as she tried to determine whether the liquid contents were going to be contributed to Father Neptune. The patch apparently worked, because stage three seasickness never arrived.

Her hair was blonde (naturally, because I saw no dark roots on my earlier inspection), but her eyes were black and piercing. She used that glance on me as her hand moved around under the blanket, apparently checking on the state of her body. Finding no violation or dried semen, she just looked at me and then out to sea to left and right, and behind.

So I said, as casually as I could, "with this wind, and with the boat going this direction, we make about four or five knots. That's about six to seven miles an hour. Seems slow, but moving air is free, last time I checked. It's been about three hours since we met, so San Diego is about 15 to 18 miles away. The wind is falling, and we won't make as good a time from now until tomorrow. I can sail at night, but I'd rather not, so we'll have to drop the sails down and drift much of the time. But I'm pretty tired right now. So how would you like a sailing lesson, so I can get us both some food and take a quick nap?"

Her eyes opened wide, as she gulped, and said, "Food? Yes! But me? Sail a boat? I don't know how. I never..."

Cutting her off to stem the rising panic, I announced, "Guess it's time you learned, then. Come on back here, and I'll do the first lessons. Maybe we can talk a little, start with names, and stuff like that."

I added, "My name is Jan Bryng, That's 'Jan' as in 'Yawn.' My dad was Swedish, and my mom wasn't. I know you've been living here on the boat a while. No place else to go, right?" I got a nod. "And you haven't been eating well or living safe. So you need to know that I'm not mad or anything like that. We've got food and I'm set to buy some more, when we get to the Island. When you get back, you can stay aboard if you want, or we can figure some other safe place for you to live. No conditions, no strings," I added, "I pick up little stray kittens, too. What's one more, hey?"

I got a sort of considering, sideways, eyes-lowered glance at that. Speaking in a low tone, she answered obliquely, "I'm Britt. Can we leave it like that for a while, huh?"

"Sure thing," I replied. So, I showed the compass, told her about the compass course I was mostly on, and told her to keep the sail full of wind, steering away from the course a little to do this if she needed. Biting her lip a bit, she took the wheel. A couple of minutes later, we went into 'irons,' the sail flapping uselessly. I talked her through the self-rescue procedure, and how to get back on course, and she tried again. She accidently tacked the boat through the wind, and I talked her through the procedure for getting back on course again, with a 2nd tack. Then I went 'below' to make up a couple of sandwiches and soft drinks.

I advised her to nibble slowly, and drink a lot, since she'd been starving for a while. I made sure to turn away before she could embarrass herself by saying, "yeah." Finished eating, I continued some simple lessons about sailing boats. Then, crossing my fingers out of her sight, I rolled up in her blanket and surprised myself by falling instantly asleep.

I came awake by late afternoon, to discover my new first mate was having considerable trouble keeping on course. The wind had dropped to a gentle breeze. I took the wheel, fixed up a new course, let out the sail, and we struggled on until near dusk. The breeze dropped still more, to near nothing, and I lowered sail, leaving the little catboat pretty much becalmed. I noted to her that this might be a good time for a swim, and set the boarding ladder over the transom (back end). She went into the cabin, and emerged a couple of minutes later in that yellow polka dot bikini.

Wow!

My eyes begged for permission to admire her, as I crossed my legs to try and hide a quickly growing erection. Her eyes gave me a tentative, arms-length consent. I saw a lithe, slender little person, about 5' 4" tall, and I couldn't tell weight, but not heavy. Tanned, but with definite bikini lines. Face that shape called 'elfin,' Slender waist, actually too slender, with definite outlines of her bones and ribs. She stood straight, letting me look. The she grinned, stuck her tongue out at me, and slowly turned around, letting me see a tight little butt, and delicious, somewhat contained boobettes.

I came back to no-touch reality after a minute or so.

Then she shocked me by saying, "OK, now it's your turn."

"Huh?"

"Come on, it's only fair. Now I get to have an eyeful. Stand up, get over here and let's see what you have."

Blushing furiously, I stood in the cockpit of my own boat, and slowly turned around. Ah, SHIIT, my cock chose this moment of all times to go rigid, right in my loose shorts, tenting them out. Hoping she wouldn't notice. No luck. She finished her inspection of my middle-aged body with her eyes fixed on the bulge in my shorts, and her mouth open a little. I heard a long, low whistle from her lips.

"Uh, little girl, it's not what you think, you're still ..." She cut me off, commenting with a giggle, "If you'd been in a raping mood, I'd be tied to the mast or something, and fucked until I bled. I wasn't, and you didn't. I know what you want. When things are right, I think I'll let you have it."

Then she turned and jumped off the transom into the sea. I watched her swim, and dive and sing a little. She demanded I come in with her, and was amused when I insisted that I have a line tied around my waist. I told her obscenely how easy it would be for a little breeze to move the boat away faster than we could swim. She relented, and then swam rings around me. Think of a personal watercraft swarming around an old barge.

Both of her hands went to the clasp of her bikini top, and pulled it off, quickly followed by a brief thrashing, as her suit bottom followed. She swam up to me, and more gently pulled off my shorts, throwing all the clothes over the rail and into the cockpit. My erection, deflating in the cold water, surged again, as she brushed up against me again and again. I felt her hands close over the stiff length, and do several slow strokes.

She shushed me with one finger when I started to speak, whispering in my ear, "It's almost time, just let me get ready. And no, I don't have to, you told me. And yes, I want to, pretty soon. Besides, I want to see it go in and out. Please don't say 'no' or lecture me. I like your penis and it's attached to a pretty good guy. I want to get to know both."

We climbed aboard, and I gestured to her to stand still, and not use her old beach towel. Then I got out a cake of my own salt-water soap, and I lathered her from forehead to toes, working quickly (Ok, so I lingered a bit on her nipples, pussy and ass). Then she did me (she lingered on my cock and balls; I almost shot off on her body). We both went over the side again, me still with my waist tied line on, to wash off the lather. Finally, I had a clean little kitten.

Back on board, I gestured again for her to stand, as I went forward to the mast to get the black seven-gallon tank of fresh water and the spray attachment. The water was almost hot from being in the sun all day. Taking a couple of minutes to pump up the tank, I gave her the shampoo, and rinsed the saltwater from her hair. Sighing with pleasure, she soaped up, twice, and rinsed twice. Her eyes opened wide when I handed her the hair conditioner. Then I rinsed down the rest of her nude body. Then she did me, just for a rinse. There was just enough water and sunlight for a final hair rinse, before the tank ran dry.

"I haven't had a proper shower, or soap, or anything for a month," she whispered.

"All that's over now. You're adopted, I suppose, whether it's official or not, so regular showers and meals are on the schedule. If I got, you got. Still no conditions or strings, you understand."

In the last of the twilight, I did some chores: tied up the sail, tied down the boom, and set the parachute sea anchor. At this last action, she raised her eyebrows. I explained, "If we just drifted, the wind would push us along, and we'd loose a lot of the distance we made today. So the sea anchor 'grabs' a big bite of water, like a parachute in air. The boat tries to drift, and pulls on the sea anchor rope. When it's set, we only go where the relatively slow current takes us, and the boat always points the bow (the pointed end) into the wind. Got it, little nude girl?"

"Got it, bare ass Skipper!" she answered.

"You get a baked turkey pie, some boiled potatoes, and something green to crunch on for dinner. To drink, there's water, soft drinks, beer and wine."

She looked at me, still nude and lovely. My erection, having gone up and down several times, raised its lusty head again. She answered, "Could I have wine? It makes me fuzzy and horny and wet. I want to be horny and awfully wet for you, tonight. Please?"

We ate, sitting naked, side-by-side in the cockpit of my drifting catboat, on a calm sea, only the slightest breeze ruffling the water, finishing the wine. At night, and at sea, all the stars were out and we could see forever. After a time, she looked out over the empty expanse of sea, and said, "I've got a pretty good buzz now, but I know what I'm doing. And I'm really horny. Here, let me show you." She stood and took my hand, pressing it into her delicately furred pussy. I fingered the cleft between her outer lips, and felt the liquid wetness saturating my probing finger. Slowly, I pressed the entire length of two fingers up into her body, and felt the heat flowing into my hand. She moaned, "Ahhhhhhh, that was so sweet, please, Skipper, keep it inside there." She rocked against my hand for a time, the opened her eyes and looked down at me, my naked cock straining up from my lap, jerking and twitching from my pulse and involuntarily-moving hips. "Ohhh, that's so nice. I've just got to do this, right now."