A Tidal Tale
Sarah
sat on the edge of the wooden dock, dangling her feet in
the chilly water. The summer sun warmed her back.
Skrawk! A sea gull sailed across the blue Maine sky. Sailing. Sarah sighed. That was just what she wished she were doing. Her sailboat, Whisper, bobbed quietly against the dock. Sarah’s parents had given her the dinghy for her twelfth birthday last June. As waves lapped against Whisper’s gleaming white hull, the slender aluminum mast swayed back and forth. Sarah licked her index finger and held it up to check the wind.
“Ten knots out of the south. Perfect.” She stepped across the dock and into her boat.
“You’d like to go, too, wouldn’t you, Whisper?”
Whisper strained against her dock lines almost as if she were answering.
“You can’t go sailing, Sarah. Mom’s not home,” called Jimmy, Sarah’s eight-year-old brother, from the shore.
“Who made you boss?” Sarah asked rudely. She knew the rules—no swimming or sailing without telling one of their parents first. “You’d probably tell anyway. Tattletale.”
“I’m not a tattletale,” Jimmy protested. “But you know—”
“I know!” Sarah said. “Leave me alone, please.”
She heard the underbrush rustle as Jimmy climbed the path back to their cottage. Sarah hadn’t planned to disobey the rule, but Jimmy’s warning lit a spark of rebellion inside her.
The Junior Sailing Club’s championship meet was this Saturday, only two days away. The competition in the regatta was tough, and Sarah needed practice. She yearned to have her name engraved on the polished silver trophy.
“Just one quick sail around the cove,” she thought. “I can’t tell Mom if she’s not home.”
Her conscience bothered her, but Sarah pulled her life jacket out from under the seat and strapped it on. Then she took the mainsail from its sail bag and hoisted it up the mast. It flapped and fluttered in the breeze. After untying the dock lines, Sarah pushed Whisper away from the dock and jammed down the centerboard. Whisper’s jaunty white sail caught the wind, and they were sailing.
With one hand on the tiller to steer and the other holding the mainsheet rope to trim the sail, Sarah balanced her weight to keep Whisper on an even keel. Over the waves they skimmed. Glints of sunlight bounced off the water’s rippled surface as Whisper’s bow sliced through the sea.
Sarah laughed aloud. The wind rushed against her face. Beneath her feet, she could feel the water gurgle as they surged forward. It was as if she and Whisper were one, a creature of sea and air.
A huge bay lay beyond the shelter of Crab Cove. Small islands that looked like fuzzy green gumdrops dotted the horizon.
Clang! Clang! The sound of the big red bell buoy echoed across the water. It marked the channel, a safe passage between rocks and sandbars out to the Atlantic Ocean.
Sarah didn’t want to go back yet. “I’ll just sail to the buoy, then turn around,” she decided.
She
was outside Crab Cove now. The wind began to weaken, then
disappeared. Whisper’s sail drooped listlessly.
The little boat drifted in the water, motionless.
“Uh-oh,” Sarah muttered. She reached under the seat for the small oar, and started paddling back. After a while her arms grew stiff and sore, but the shore didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
Sarah realized that Whisper was being carried backward, in the direction of the ocean. “The tide!” she gasped. When the tide went out, it sent millions of gallons of water draining into the Atlantic, and it created powerful currents, too strong for even an adult to row against. She and Whisper were caught in one now.
“If the wind would only come back,” Sarah thought desperately. With a little breeze, she would be able to sail against the current. Remembering an old sailor’s superstition, Sarah tried to “whistle up the wind.” But her mouth was so dry with fear that she managed only a few weak “phweets.” She and Whisper were going to be washed out to sea!
The rumble of a motor in the distance caught Sarah’s attention. It was a lobster boat. She stood, braced her feet, and holding the mast with one hand, waved frantically with the other.
They saw her! As the boat approached, Sarah recognized her neighbor Mr. Garner at the helm, and beside him, her brother, Jimmy. They pulled up alongside, and Jimmy threw Sarah a line, which she secured to a cleat on Whisper’s bow. Then she climbed over the side of the rescue boat, and they chugged slowly toward shore.
“Thank
you for coming, Mr. Garner,” Sarah said. Her voice
was shaky.
“Got to watch your tides, Sarah,” Mr. Garner said kindly. “Especially in an offshore breeze. Dies right out when you get away from the land. You might have been in a heap of trouble if young Jim hadn’t come to fetch me.”
Sarah turned to Jimmy. He looked worried. “Sarah, I’m sorry I was a tattletale, but I got scared when I saw you getting farther and farther away.”
“You weren’t a tattletale,” Sarah said, smiling gratefully at him. “You were trying to keep me out of trouble. But thanks to you, I learned a good lesson today from this tidal tale.”
