Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

Under such rare conditions, wing drag might have more influence on an inflated buoyancy compensator vest, which floats mostly atop the water, than on a data-marking buoy, which floats mostly beneath it.

Hurricane Florence formed quickly, swirled out to sea and vanished. Gordon had an impact on the Atlantic coast, though it was a hurricane for only about a day while southeast of the North Carolina Outer Banks. Most of its havoc was wrought as a tropical storm, its driving rains producing flooding and mud slides, which were particularly deadly in Haiti. Estimates of the death toll ranged up to two thousand. In Florida, seven deaths were attributed to Gordon, and there was significant agricultural damage.

If judged by similar elements, factors that can be consistently measured and recorded, the effect of the two hurricanes on the Gulf of Mexico, however, was negligible-unless you were one of three people out there in a gyre, floating and alone, being swept away.

At 7 P.M. on that moonless, windy night, Michael Sanford heard Janet make an abrupt mewing sound, then heard her scream, “Hey! My God, where’d the boat go?”

Moments later, the anchor line he and the others were holding was ripped away.

The anchor line had been in his left hand. In his right, he’d been holding Grace Walker, had her spooned against his body, trying to comfort her. Was trying to find some comfort himself, too-there was reassurance in the act of reassuring. When the boat went down, the anchor line snatched him under, vibrating with the intensity of a piano wire. He let go instinctively and stroked his way toward the surface, up through the blackness… and felt Grace sliding down his body, clawing at his abdomen, then legs, her fingernails gouging into the flesh of his feet as the boat dragged her toward the bottom, 110 feet below, while he ascended.

Gracie!

Even before he reached the surface, he understood what had happened. To make Grace feel more secure, he’d tied a conventional life jacket to her BCD, and then he’d looped a bight of the anchor line into the life jacket. She been terrified of losing her grip on the rope and drifting away. What would happen if he fell asleep? Who’d come get her? Being tied to the life jacket and the anchor line seemed to calm her.

But now the Seminole Wind, the boat he’d help design, the boat that was a favorite symbol of the lifestyle he embraced, had belched the last of the air pockets floating its fiberglass hull and was finally sinking, pulling the anchor line and Grace down with it.

Still underwater, Sanford deflated his BCD by yanking the dump valve cord at his right shoulder, then jackknifed downward, eyes open in the black water, seeing only the iridescent streaks and swirls of phosphorescence. A couple of yards below him was a strumming, greenish light that he hoped was the anchor line, and now he swam wildly toward it.

With his fingers outstretched, he found the line and clamped his left fist tight around the rope, while, with his right hand, he fumbled for the stainless-steel dive knife in the plastic scabbard strapped to his ankle. Ironically, the knife was a birthday gift from Grace, an expensive blue tang made by Underwater Kinetics.

He drew the knife-nearly dropped it-then severed the anchor line with three fast sawing strokes and was instantly catapulted to the surface by the buoyancy of Grace’s inflated vest. Came up right beside her, the two of them already wrapped tight in the other’s arms, both of them coughing water and vomiting, each calling the other’s name, while Janet and Amelia, from out of the darkness, shouted, “Michael? Grace? Michael? Gracie? Where are you?!”

Sanford yelled, “Here! We’re over here!” then began to inflate his BCD again, holding the valve open with his trembling fingers, blowing into the valve, seeing nothing but black waves, canyon-sized, and Grace’s silhouette floating beside him, his heart panicking inside his ribs, as he heard her scream, “I’m scared, Mikey! I’m so scared, and I don’t want to be here anymore. Please take me home. Please!” The childlike quality of her voice was so touching and painful that he groaned, groaned again, then began to shake uncontrollably between breaths.

When his vest was inflated and he could speak, he hugged Grace tight to him, as she whispered over and over into his ear, “You saved me, Sandman, you saved me!” and him not hearing because he was speaking into her ear, whispering: “I’m so sorry about this, Gracie. I’m so goddamn sorry about this I could cry.”

Then he did.

Amelia had left them. Intentionally or accidentally, they didn’t know. For the last half hour, she’d been right there at their side, one of four gray shapes in the darkness, a hand to grasp as, together, they battled their way toward the flashing light that fired on the horizon.

If they were riding a cresting wave, they could see the light clearly: a detonation of white, every four seconds. The light was about three miles away-Michael told them that. Not such a far swim, Amelia kept telling them that, too. Told them that when she was in high school, their swim team workouts had sometimes been five, even six miles. “Three miles,” she said. “That’s nothing. We’ll just take it steady and easy.”

They talked back and forth that way, shouting over the whistle of wind and keening waves, trying to bolster themselves with lies no one really believed: The swim would be easy. There was no danger. Sooner or later, a boat would come along and pluck them out. Michael kept saying the Baja California was a popular wreck. It attracted a lot of fishing and diving traffic. This would be a funny adventure story to tell their grandchildren. Some day, they’d all look back and laugh-no one really believed that, either.

Only Janet seemed to have any real confidence as she said over and over: “We’re going to make it. They’re going to find us. If we stick together, we’ll all make it.” Once she told them oddly and without explanation, “This evil doesn’t stand a chance against my prayers. Trust me. It doesn’t stand a chance.”

It was very slow going. They were southwest of the light tower. The wind was blowing even harder now, whistling into their faces out of the northeast. Waves rolled toward them from that direction, so it came to seem as if each wave was a purposeful attack, one after another, intentionally blocking them from their destination.

At first, they tried to swim individually, but that didn’t work. Janet and Amelia still wore fins, but Michael and Grace had lost theirs when the boat swamped. There was no way that the barefooted swimmers could keep up. It was Amelia who suggested that she and Janet each give the other two a fin to wear. “We’ve got to share!” she yelled. “None of us are going to make it at this rate!”

But that wouldn’t work, either. Both women wore full-footed fins, Amelia’s fins expensive and made by Force, Janet’s a much cheaper set made by U.S. Divers. Janet was a size 6, Amelia a size 7. Grace was a big woman, and Michael was a very big man. The fins wouldn’t fit them.

They juggled the order, getting mauled by waves, and finally settled on a method that was at least better than what they’d tried before. Michael and Grace, arms locked, floated on their backs, kicking, while Amelia at one end and Janet at the other used their fins to paddle their tiny human raft along.

The four of them would battle their way several yards up a wave, only to be smashed back that distance or more by the wave’s crest. Worse, their inflated vests, while keeping them afloat, were also acting as effective sea anchors, slowing their progress. Wearing an inflated BCD in those conditions was like being strapped to a small parachute in a wind tunnel. It was maddening. It was exhausting. In time, as they one by one realized how unlikely it was that they were going to make it to that far tower, the situation became terrifying.