The Island of Dragons (Rockpools Book 4) Gregg Dunnett (desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📖

actually quite a bit bigger than the average Lornea Island yachts, perhaps forty foot long, with two wheels for steering, one either side in the cockpit. A man is bending over on the foredeck, struggling to move a coil of ropes.

“Wow.” I say. “She’s beautiful.”

“Yes. She is. But she’s not particularly fast, unfortunately. Least not the way Dad sails her. Come on.”

She grabs hold of one of the stays, the metal wires coming down from the mast, as she swings herself aboard. I do the same.

“Hey Dad,” she calls out. “This is Billy. I told you about him.”

The man stops what he’s doing and straightens up. He’s quite slight, and he’s wearing a blue knitted sweater with holes in it. He looks more like a fisherman from Holport than a billionaire. There’s no monocle either.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hello there!” He replies, and he walks back down the side deck, stepping carefully, until he’s level with me. “Nice of you to join us.” He shakes my hand.

“Billy’s my expert sailor friend,” Lily tells him.

“Really? Well, I certainly hope so. We’re going to need every advantage we can get. I trust Lillian has explained the mission for the day?”

“Um, yeah, sort of. You have to beat her uncle, in a race?”

“Best of three races actually, but that’s the general idea. Her uncle, my brother, he can be – over competitive, and I don’t want to spend the entire winter listening to him bragging. So yes. Consider it a matter of life and death.” He says this with a grin, so I know he isn’t serious, but at the same time, I can sort of sense he is as well.

“First start is at ten, so I want to get out there. Do you want to go stow your gear?”

Lily takes me down below, and it’s beautiful down here. Bigger than any yacht I’ve been in before, and fitted out in wood that’s so well polished it glows like gold. There’s a man and a woman, a bit older than me sitting at the navigation table, fiddling with the chart plotter. Another woman, older but elegant, walks in from a stern cabin, she smiles in expectation.

“Mum, David, Emily, this is Billy, I told you he was coming.”

“Hello” I say, to Lillian’s mom, because it seems most polite to greet her first. She takes my hand and tells me to call her Clara.

“David’s my brother.” Lily goes on, “and Emily’s his girlfriend.” I shake more hands. It didn’t occur to me that the entire family was going to be here.

“Hi Billy, Lill’s told us about you. You’re going to be our secret weapon huh?” David’s has a voice like a drawl, I can’t tell if he’s serious or not.

“Erm.”

“I sure hope so, because Dad gets so mad when he loses. He’ll probably throw you overboard.”

“David,” Lily’s mom says. “Don’t scare the poor boy. It must be frightening enough meeting the whole family like this.”

“They’re just friends mum,” David says, in a way that I can tell means he’s mimicking something Lily must have said before. I don’t know how that makes me feel. I have no idea if I’m here as a friend or not. Well I guess I do know now, I guess I just hoped it was somehow something more.

Not long after we go on deck, and Lily’s dad gives us instructions while he gets the boat ready to leave the mooring. I’ve done this a thousand times, but it’s still a bit tense sometimes, because boats can be hard to move in small spaces. You usually get a sense of how confident the person in charge is, and actually Lily’s dad seems quite relaxed, issuing instructions calmly, and the others do what they’re told equally calmly. But there’s an energy in the air too. It’s not just us leaving the shelter of the marina, there’s a steady stream of yachts leaving, each with crews on deck busily removing sail covers and preparing rigging, and the breeze is fresh too. We motor for a few minutes, but then we hoist up the sails, and immediately begin heeling over at a sharp angle as we cut through the water. Lily’s dad is steering, and he points us towards a moored motor boat. Around us, other boats also put their sails up. Mostly they’re white, but one boat has black mylar sails, to match its black-painted hull.

“That’s Abigale.” Lily pokes me in the ribs, though the sailing jacket I’ve been lent. “My uncle’s boat. It’s the same boat as this, but he had his made lighter, just so he can beat dad.” She looks at me and raises her eyebrows.

I look over at the boat just as it changes direction onto a new tack, the great black sails start to spill their wind, until they’re flogging as the bow glides right through the wind, and then fills in from the new side, and they press taut again. The hull surges forward, slicing through the water, now no more than fifty yards away. There’s a man steering, and I see him turn to face us. Only not us, even from this distance it’s obvious he’s staring intently at Lily’s Dad. I glance at him too, looking back, his face unreadable. Again I get the sense this is more serious to Lily’s dad than he’s prepared to admit.

I realize pretty soon though, that I’m not really here as the expert sailor after all. As we get towards the start line for the first race, David synchronizes his watch with the signals from the start boat, and as he and Lily’s dad exchange instructions and tactics, and they don’t ask me anything. I’m quite relieved actually. All that ‘expert’ stuff was just Lily winding me up. But that doesn’t mean I’m just here for the ride, on a boat this big there’s still plenty for me to do. Every time we change from one tack to another – which is a lot, while we’re jostling for position, one boat