Free Suddenly Overboard by Tom Lochhaas

just brought the sheet back in some when the next gust hit.
    â€œLet out the sheet!” Shannon shouted. Steve looked at the line in his hand as the boat started to heel, and then Rusty was sliding across the cockpit bench, nails screeching on the fiberglass as he banged into Steve. Holding the sheet firmly, Steve lost his balance as the boat heeled and pitched leeward on top of Dave.
    Steve’s hand had a death grip on the mainsheet, and the weight of his body pulled the sail in all the way.
    Feet braced across the cockpit, her weight now the only ballast to windward, Shannon instinctively pulled with all her strength on the tiller to fall off before the boat went over. There was no time for the awareness to sink in that with the main tight, it would’ve been better just to turn into the wind. But it was already too late. Steve was struggling to hold on as the rail went under, Rusty was flailing against the leeward lifeline, Dave was trying to grab Rusty before the water washed him off, the cockpit was flooding, and the rudder had no bite as it lifted out of the water and they went over.
    It happened so fast and the water was so cold that when she broke the surface a moment later she was utterly confused, unsure where she was. Where was the boat? Treading water, she twisted and found it behind her. It had not bounced back upright as it should have but had settled on its side like a seagull with a broken wing.
    Abruptly she was shocked into awareness. In his PFD, Dave was beside the hull, holding on to something with one hand, fumbling in the water with his other. Beside him Rusty scratched at the hull with his front paws, trying to climb up the smooth fiberglass.
    Then Dave was shouting “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!” and she saw the handheld radio at his mouth. A moment later, Rusty gave up on the hull and tried to put his paws on Dave’s shoulders—as they had played so often in the water—and then Dave wasn’t shouting and she couldn’t see the radio anymore.
    The water was really, really cold and she couldn’t think.
    Then Dave swam to her side and pulled her back to the boat, but it had settled much lower in the water and seemed to be going down. Sailboats aren’t supposed to sink, she thought dully. They always say just stay with the boat until rescue comes. But somehow this one was filling with water and sinking.
    Suddenly she realized she hadn’t seen Steve. There he was, farther along the hull, his head barely held out of the water by the life jacket. His eyes were open and slowly blinking, his face pale; he was just floating, not speaking. At least he seemed okay.
    â€œHere!” Dave was shouting in her ear. “Take it—put it on!” She turned back to him as he shoved his life jacket to her. “Put it on—I can swim forever.”
    She realized then that she was barely able to keep treading water, her arms and legs moving slowly. Water splashed in her mouth and she spat it out, then she grabbed the life jacket and hugged it to her chest, grateful just to hang on for a moment.
    Dave was calling for Rusty as he swam off. She turned slowly in the water. The boat, her boat, was gone!
    Only with difficulty could she see Steve, still bobbing silently in place.
    But you’re supposed to stay with the boat, she kept thinking, so it’s easier for the rescuers to see you. The rescuers. How would they see them now? Then a sickening realization: Dave had not had time to tell them where they were.
    Out of the morass of cold and confusion and growing terror came a thought: her cell phone. In her pants pocket. Inside a ziplock bag to protect against spray and splashes.
    She had to get the life jacket on first so she could call. The rescuers didn’t know where they were. She had to tell them. She had to get the life jacket on.
    She fought to get one arm through, her head going underwater. But it hung up on her jacket, she couldn’t get her other arm