I gripped the rope railing hard and was about to retort with something, when gratefully he moved off. He made it sound like I was a eunuch or something!
The truth was I'd been attracted to a lot of women in the past seven years. Staying at sea for long periods of time had helped, but not cured the problem through the years.
The problem with this girl was that somehow with just a few smiles she'd completely worked her way under my skin and gotten up close and personal, which was awful!
No one understood. They thought it was just guilt that held me back from being romantically inclined with another woman and perhaps in a small way it was, but it wasn't the primary reason. If I was to involve myself with another woman it would have to be for real with all systems a go. I couldn't do a relationship any less than to give it my all, but to do that I'd have to let go of the past entirely and embrace the future and whatever it may hold.
The thought of doing that and leaving the comfort of my memories was petrifying and yet it seemed like I was being pushed into doing just that.
I didn't want things to change and that was final!
I let my eyes take in the craft that I found myself on for the first time. It was modeled in a way after a catamaran of sorts. There were two runners held together in a parallel orientation by a crisscross framework of beams that culminated in a central mast supported over the seawater by the adjacent twin narrow hulls that appeared as enclosed dugout canoes.
The mast was rigged with a sail that appeared to be made out of thinly scraped leather, which hung idly in the calm that we seemed to be caught in. Between the two dugout canoes was stretched a netting made of some ropelike material that was borne up by the underpinning that supported the central mast. All in all it was a rather seaworthy vessel and I was impressed with its construction greatly.
Trailing behind the catamaran was the dinghy. I glanced back to the girl who was moving around busily. Truthfully she wasn't exactly a girl, as I placed her somewhere above twenty, but just barely.
She was strong. Somehow she had tugged all of us out of the dinghy and onto her craft. How had she managed that by herself?
I weighed in at just over two hundred pounds and Jim had another forty or fifty pounds on top of my weight.