The Squall Off the Point

Ines had watched the sky darken over the point for the last twenty minutes, telling herself it was probably just a passing shower. By the time the wind shifted hard from the north, she knew she had waited too long to decide.

"Reef the main, now!" she called to Rhys, already moving toward the halyard herself. The boat heeled sharply as the first gust hit, spray coming clean over the bow.

Rhys scrambled to the mast, fighting the flapping sail as rain began hammering the deck sideways. "How far out are we from the harbor?"

"Four miles, but we're not running for it in this," Ines said, judging the whitecaps building around them. "If we turned downwind now, we'd be overpowered before we got halfway there."

Once the reef was set, the boat steadied slightly, though it still pitched hard against the swell. Ines held the tiller with both hands, watching the compass rather than the horizon, which had disappeared into gray.

"There's a cove just east of the point," she shouted over the wind. "Sheltered, if we can reach it before this gets worse."

Rhys nodded, bracing himself against the cockpit rail as another wave broke over the side. "You've sailed in here before?"

"Once, years ago. I remember the entrance is narrow, but it's deep enough."

They tacked twice against the wind, the boat groaning with each turn. At last the cliffs of the cove rose ahead of them, cutting the worst of the wind. The water inside calmed almost immediately, the roar behind them fading to something more distant.

Ines dropped anchor with hands that were only now beginning to shake. "That was closer than I'd have liked."

"You read that squall better than I would have," Rhys said, wringing out his soaked jacket. "I'd have tried to outrun it."

"Running would've been faster, if it had worked," Ines admitted. "It's the 'if' I wasn't willing to bet on."

They sat in the sheltered water until the worst of the storm passed overhead, watching the point they'd nearly rounded disappear behind curtains of rain.