Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

eye on, plus a huge tanker with accompanying tugs, and a shrimper crisscrossing the water while dragging its strange-looking net in search of even stranger looking prey.
    “A boat with nets out has the right of way,” Jake said.
    “What does he think he’s doing in the center of the shipping channel?” Honor muttered, adjusting course.
    “Fishing. And he’s not in the center. He’s at the crotch of the Y where two shipping channels merge.”
    “What about the freighter and the ferry?”
    “They’ll miss each other. And unless the shrimper is nuts, he won’t push the right-of-way issue. Just like we won’t. We’re in the ferry’s danger quarter, but we’ll give way to him instead of vice versa. Man-made rules are one thing. The natural laws of mass and momentum are another thing entirely. There’s something known as being dead right.”
    Cold rain made the windows start to steam up. Jake reached past Honor and turned the defrosters on low. She flinched and jerked back when his arm brushed against her. He ignored it, adjusted the radar to reach out into the rain for miles in all directions, and studied the new display. No new boats showed up along the Tomorrow ’s course.
    “All right,” he said. “Imagine an old-fashioned clock. We’re at the center. Straight ahead of us is twelve o’clock, straight back is six o’clock—”
    “Three o’clock is ninety degrees to the right,” she interrupted impatiently, “and nine o’clock is ninety degrees to the left. Now what?”
    “Head halfway between one and two o’clock,” Jake said.
    Honor glanced uneasily at the closing gap between the freighter and the ferry. That was where Jake’s directions would take the SeaSport.
    “Do it,” he said flatly. “The longer you hesitate, the worse it will be.”
    While she changed course, he brought the radar back in to sweeping only the nearby water. The rain was letting up, but not the clouds. They were coming right down to sit on the ocean. Though the resulting condition wasn’t the same as fog, it had a bad effect on visibility.
    “Jake, I can’t see the—”
    “Look at the radar,” he interrupted, pointing to the screen. “That’s the ferry. That’s the freighter. That’s the shrimper. That’s the sailboat. That’s the Grand Banks cruiser. That’s the idiot in the skiff. You’re going here. Bring your speed up.”
    “What about the boats behind us? One of them is veering toward shore.”
    “Conroy. His Zodiac has a really shallow draft. The tide is low, but he’ll be able to scoot along the shoreline out of traffic. The rest of them can drop back or take their chances.”
    “What about us?”
    “At high tide we could get away with what Conroy is doing. But there are rocks that come within two feet of the surface at low tide. We need more water than that. The freighter and the ferry need a hell of a lot more. They’ll stay well inside the channel markers. We’ll stay just outside them. Watch for logs. Two currents come together right around here, which means debris collects. Remember what I told you about a log if you can’t avoid it?”
    “Steer into it, not away from it. Jake, that freighter—”
    “I see it,” he interrupted.
    What he saw was that the freighter wasn’t holding the expected course. It was staying in the Tomorrow ’s danger quarter, which meant there would be a collision unless one of them changed speed or course.
    Quickly Jake checked the radar. Instinct ran cold fingernails over his spine. Normally he would have cut back on the throttle and waited for the traffic to clear. It was the sensible thing for a small craft to do when playing with seagoing elephants.
    But if the Tomorrow slowed down now, they would be swamped by the oncoming ferry. The ferry’s captain would get a reprimand and an early retirement for not suspending natural laws by giving way to the SeaSport in the ferry’s danger quarter. Jake and Honor would get an early grave.
    “I’ll take over,” he said.
    If she had any objections, she didn’t get a chance to voice them. He pulled her out of the helm seat and dumped her in the pilot seat before she could open her mouth.
    “Hang on,” he said as he reached for the throttle.
    The second set of carburetor jets kicked in with a throaty growl of delight. Jake’s fingers danced over the controls as he set a new course, adjusted the trim, turned the defrosters onto high, and settled in for a short, rugged run through the narrowing