Free Merciless Charity: A Charity Styles Novel (Caribbean Thriller Series Book 1) by Wayne Stinnett Page B

forward speed to increase both the apparent wind speed and direction. Glancing at the knot meter, she was amazed that Dancer was skimming along at sixteen knots, heeled over only ten degrees.
    As the day wore on, Charity began to turn more and more westerly, following the curve of the Florida Keys, staying between the chain of islands and the great Gulf Stream to the south. The Stream flowed east though the Florida Straits, then north up the Atlantic Seaboard. Sailing in its current would cut her speed drastically.
    At noon, she set the autopilot and engaged the computer’s winch controls, allowing the boat to find its most optimal course and sail arrangement. The winches whined, moving the sails in and out, until the computer was satisfied.
    Charity checked the knot meter and saw that the boat’s speed hadn’t changed all that much, over what she had done manually. This gave her a small sense of satisfaction. It’d been some time since she’d sailed a boat of this size. For the last few years, she’d been keeping her skills sharp, sailing a much smaller twenty-four-foot San Juan sloop.
    Checking the radar once again and seeing nothing ahead, she went down to the galley to make lunch. She quickly threw together a sandwich and took the ripest mango from one of the nets, cutting it into thin slices before returning to the cockpit.
    This is going to be my life for the next few days , she thought, sitting back down at the helm and placing her plate beside her. All day and all night at the helm, with few breaks, sleeping right here for an hour or two while letting the computer sail the Dancer .
    The more westerly her course became, following the sweep of the Keys, the broader the reach of the sails. Though the wind was holding at fifteen knots, by midafternoon, her forward speed had dropped to just ten knots, running before the wind.
    Late afternoon found her just off Key West. Beginning to doubt her ability to sail straight on through the night, catnapping at the helm, for five days, she decided to take advantage of the last anchorage before crossing the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dry Tortugas. In November, there probably wouldn’t be anyone else at the old fort sixty miles west of Key West. If there was, she’d anchor outside the harbor on the lee side of the Fort Jefferson ruins.
    Approaching the old fort just after ten o’clock, with the moon directly overhead and slightly astern, she couldn’t see any boats in the anchorage. Relieved, she started the engine and furled the sails. Thirty minutes later, after circling around to the north approach, Wind Dancer motored sedately into Bird Key Harbor. Charity chose this spot over the more popular anchorage on the east side of the fort, just in case another boat arrived during the night.
    After the anchor dropped with a splash and Charity killed the engine, the silence of the night was overwhelming. Only the slightest sound of the tiny ripples in the harbor tickling the hull could be heard.
    “Yeah,” she said aloud, breaking the stillness of the night. “I’ll get a good night’s sleep and start fresh tomorrow.”
    It wasn’t in Charity Styles’s nature to second-guess her decisions. But, throughout the day, the ocean seemed to get larger and larger and the boat smaller and smaller. She’d covered two hundred miles of ocean in nineteen hours.
    Only eight hundred more to go , she thought. Even at seven knots, she could cover that in five more days.
    “What’s an extra day?” she said aloud, talking to herself again. A gull on Bird Key Bank answered her, its laughing cry punctuating the doubt she was feeling.
    “Fuck you,” she shouted to the anonymous gull. “Bet you’ll never see the Mexican coast.”
    Double-checking the anchor, Charity went below, closing and securing the hatch for the night. She’d eaten an hour earlier and wasn’t hungry, so she took a quick shower under the cold fresh water, just to get the salt off her skin. It was a