Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

quarters and began pacing the Tomorrow as it headed out into the San Juan Islands.
    Jake looked, but didn’t see the Olympic. Nor did the Bayliners come close enough for him to identify passengers.
    “Can we outrun them?” Honor asked.
    “Probably, but why waste gas? The bite won’t be on for a while.”
    “The bite?”
    “The time when fish bite. We’re supposed to be going fishing, remember?”
    “To hell with fishing,” she said tightly. “Teach me how to use the electronics and drive the boat.”
    Jake clamped down on his temper. As he had feared, she still thought a few quick lessons were all that stood between her and the freedom of the open sea. Ms. Donovan needed a dose of reality therapy. For starters, they would work on knots.
    “Boating, huh?” he said. “Okay. There’s some spare line in the back cupboard. Bring me two pieces.”
    After a minute Honor reappeared with a piece of red line and a thinner piece of blue. She looked at them doubtfully. “What good will two little pieces of rope do?”
    “On a boat it’s line, not rope. It’s for tying in knots. We’ll start with a bowline.”
    “A what?”
    “A basic knot every boat driver should know. You do it like this.”
    Jake let go of the helm and took the blue line. Like the well-designed little craft that it was, the SeaSport continued to streak happily over the water, holding true. Reassured, Honor watched closely as he took one end of the blue line in each hand, did something fast and mysterious, and the rope- line -flipped into a tricky-looking knot. Unlike most knots, it was asymmetrical and unattractive.
    In fact, the bowline had more than a passing resemblance to a hangman’s noose.
    “Now you do it,” he said.
    “Sure. Right after I walk on water.”
    “Use the blue line as a guide.”
    “But I—”
    “But nothing,” he interrupted, turning back to the helm. “You wanted to learn. I’m teaching you. Knots are the easiest part of running a boat. While you do that, I’ll explain some of the most basic aspects of boat handling, so you’ll know what to expect when you take the helm for something more demanding than trolling.”
    Honor set her mouth in a straight line, looked at the blue knot, and tried to make one just like it. The first knot fell apart. So did the second. And the third.
    Meanwhile Jake kept up a steady lecture that included the location of the pivot point on a powerboat versus a sailboat. Then he went on to the responsiveness of the helm under varying conditions of speed, trim, thrust, wave, wind, current, and the most common combinations of those elements.
    The knot Honor was trying to tie kept falling apart. Her lips became thinner and thinner. Spots of color burned on her cheeks. She knew she had a good visual imagination, but she couldn’t visualize where the little loop came from, the one that held the whole big loop of the knot together.
    “Here,” Jake said finally. “Try a different knot. This is a double sheet bend. You use it to tie two lines together. It doesn’t slip, even with synthetic line.”
    His hands moved swiftly. First the knot in the blue line—the one she had been trying to copy—came undone. Then another one appeared with astonishing speed. He handed the blue line to her and took the helm again.
    She eyed the new knot in disbelief. It looked like the blue mother of all night crawlers had doubled back and looped around itself. If it had been a design, she would have chucked it into the trash.
    “I thought knots were beautiful, like macramé,” Honor said.
    “Two lines that stay tied together when you need them are beautiful. The rest is aesthetics, and aesthetics won’t save your butt when a pretty knot comes undone.”
    Honor turned the knot over and over in her hands, trying to trace which end of the line was which where the knot came together. Just when she thought she saw the pattern underneath the chaos, Jake started talking again.
    “Remember when you’re coming up to a dock, you always check wind direction, currents, and the general ‘feel’ of the boat before you commit to docking. There aren’t any brakes on a boat, so if you’re going too fast you have to put it in neutral and then wait a second and put it in reverse. Of course, unless your helm is dead center, going in reverse will pull you off course. Remember that, because that’s how you suck the stern over next to the dock when—”
    “Stop,” Honor said loudly. “It’s much too much,