The Last Airship Read Online Free PDF Page B

way to beat the nightmares from his past. He could never avoid it.
He had to return to where he belonged. Where, deep down, he knew it was the
only place he felt truly comfortable.
    The
ocean didn’t care who your father was, or how rich you were. Out on the ocean,
you were only as safe as the sea allowed you to be. Out there, you were just
another one of the sea's trillion lifeforms, no more or less important than any
other.
    As
Manly harbor came into view, Sam made his final tack before leaving Sydney
Harbor and then he turned due south, toward a cold hell.
    Sam
sailed alone.
    There
was no way he could explain to anyone why he chose to sail solo. His father,
the only person to whom he didn’t have to explain it, understood exactly why he
made this choice, as would only a fellow solo yachtsman. His mother never would
understand, and he himself didn’t quite understand it either. It was something
he was driven to do. He had to do it, just like the salmon returning to the
same creek of its birth to spawn; he was searching for a resolution to a
problem which he’d spent the better half of his life trying to fix.
    It
would take Second Chance two days to reach Bass Strait. Then, when the
storm was at its worst, he would take her through the strait, south around
Tasmania, before returning. All told, he would be gone for no more than a week.
    Will
I find the answer in this one or at the bottom of the sea? He didn’t take the question lightly.
    He
loved these trips as much as he feared them.
    The
challenge of solo sailing was rewarded by the sole ownership of the
achievement. A yacht, with its sails trimmed to perfection, its course
correctly synchronized with the swell and the current, was the easiest thing in
the world to manage as a solo sailor. Second Chance was 68 feet in
length and carried more than a thousand feet of sail. A head sail, stay sail,
main sail, and mizzen, could be controlled by a six-year-old child, if managed
correctly.
    In
truth, if he had done his job as skipper, he would have little else to do but
enjoy the journey.
    The
sea, he knew, was as kind as it was unforgiving.
    Over
the course of the next twenty-four hours, little changed. The swell had risen
to fifteen feet, but it was a following sea and comfortable enough to sail
with. The wind then increased to 35 knots. It was enough to worry a weekend
sailor, but only just enough to start to see the full potential for which Second
Chance had been engineered.
    Not
enough to create any misgivings in his mind.
    Sam
wasn’t one of those sailors who felt that he needed to round the Cape of Good
Hope in a dingy using traditional methods of navigation and hand steering the
entire way, simply in order to prove his seamanship. For him, it was all about
being there, in the middle of one of nature’s most violent spectacles, sharing
in its power without being overcome by it.
    Sam
had no misgivings about using all the wonders provided by modern science .
Second Chance certainly wasn’t a production yacht. She was built for one
purpose only, chasing storms.
    She
was the product of years of development by the finest shipwrights, naval
architects, engineers, and actual sailors. Built with the kind of money that
could hardly be spent in a single lifetime; the sort of family wealth into
which Sam had been born.
    Her
hull was fiberglass with carbon fiber chine and a full keel, making her
exceptionally light, strong, and stable. Equipped with state-of-the-art
autopilot, GPS navigation, IAS, radar and satellite phone and internet, some
might argue that Sam wasn’t a real sailor.
    Fortunately,
as his eyes carefully perused the advanced instruments at his navigation table,
he really didn’t give a shit what people thought he was doing out here; as far
as he was concerned, this journey was for him alone.  
    It
was 8p.m., and although the sun had set more than an hour ago, the bright full
moon gave a seductively clear view of the ocean around him.
    This
was his real