Working title: “Slow Boat, Bitter End”

A Rony Boston Mystery by RJ Stewart

(A couple of things, dear Readers: This is a work of fiction, which means the author makes up stuff. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination of are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is incidental to the main theme of this work, if it has a theme at all. Secondly, no other “artificial intelligence” is writing these words apart from the author’s own brain, which could in a sense, from time to time, occasionally be called artificial intelligence. However comma the author occasionally uses google search, Wikipedia and Perplexity to learn about stuff like capstans or whether the moon was full on April 9, 2023. It wasn’t.)

CAPTAIN YUSEF BEGAN in Turkish, speaking what I presumed to be Islamic phrases appropriate to the moment. I surveyed the crew for guidance and mimicked their behavior as best I could. He finished quickly and turned to the crew with a command to push the sandwiched corpse into the sea. It all seemed so cruel, but what about death isn’t harsh? With a splash the ceremony was over. We all stood silently, searching the vessel’s wake for the coffin we had dropped. In a moment, we saw it bob to the surface, and I murmured a phrase from my Presbyterian days, “… and with your spirit … ”

The crew disbanded, the gangway was raised to sailing position, and the diesel ground us ahead. A breeze picked up, and I hoped the sails might be raised. As beautiful as a gulet is, its sails are not used when calm seas prevail. I asked the captain if I might take a turn at the wheel, but he said he could not allow that. We chatted for a while, his English broken but not so bad. He was eager to move from the topic of the accident, and I did not press.

Standing at the helm, I could see the bow bounce majestically in front of me. I decided to go forward, but first I went below to get a fleece pullover. I noticed the berth had not been tidied up and realized I might be my own attendant for the duration of the trip.

When I returned topside, the Wyoming couple, Neil and Barbara, sat next to each other on the bed-like lounges at the stern. No one else was around, so I edged along the gunwale to the bowsprit. I would make a poor Leonardo DiCaprio, so I did not try the conceit of pretending to hug Kate Winslet at the end of it. I did inch out cautiously, so I could get a better look at the anchor. It was pulled tight against a metal plate placed there for the purpose of protecting the hull from the anchor’s jostle when under weigh. I followed the chain attached to it through a hawse pipe that guides the chain onto and off the deck while also protecting the bow timbers. The chain tracks along a wooden channel across the deck, through a device I assumed was a safety stopper, and around the wildcat at the foot of the capstan. I could imagine a crew member hoisting the anchor from the seabed as the captain uses the diesel engine to inch the vessel forward to loosen the tension. I supposed that bigger vessels would require bigger anchors and bigger capstans to accomplish the job. Like so much of a sailing vessel’s rigging, I was impressed with the ingenuity of it all.

I knelt to examine the way the chain links fit into the wildcat. Instead of a smooth reel as one might use for a fishing line, this has cogs that the chain links lock into. Without an orderly method of pulling the chain on board, the chain could twist and cause serious problems when paid out. Once the chain is pulled around the wildcat, it is channeled below deck into a locker. I wanted to go below to see how it all was arranged, and I was thinking of doing just that when I looked up to see Vasil standing above me.

What are you doing?

Oh, nothing. Just curious. All my sailing experience is with small, recreation vessels. I was interested in how this works. It’s amazing to me that so much has been innovated over the centuries. People have been drawn to the sea forever, and much of the accumulated knowledge and technology might have come with tragic disaster. Do you think the girl somehow got caught in this or did she just fall overboard? I wonder how it happened.

Accidents happen, he said.

I rose and looked into his eyes.

Yes, they do.

He moved slightly closer, expecting me to move backward, but I did not. Then he turned, took a few steps, turned, looked back at me. His pause was brief but seemed long. He walked away. I brushed it off. To hell with him and his intimidating presence.

I knelt by the capstan again and examined the wildcat. I looked for any pieces of clothing, hair or flesh that might have been trapped between the chain and the wildcat. I would have benefited from a professional’s investigatory toolkit, if I had any idea how to use all that stuff. Instead, it was just eyesight and imagination. I found nothing. I pulled a few links from the locker onto the deck since these would been the closest to the anchor. Nothing. For the remaining length that was in the chain channel on the deck, an examination was easy. Nothing. From the spurling pipe to the anchor itself, close examination was not possible unless I wanted to risk falling overboard. I’d need a line to belay me if I were to try that. Instead, I leaned out as far as I could. Nothing.

So, the question is how did Aylin become impaled on the point of the anchor? Did something mechanical flip her body onto the anchor while it still was held to the ship’s bow? The angle from deck to anchor would have made that impossible, because the hull slopes away from the deck toward the water line. Maybe she grabbed the stainless-steel railing as she was falling, lost her grip, and then fell to the waiting sharp point of the anchor.

The problem with that theory is that Gungor was hollering for help to raise the anchor. How did the anchor with Aylin’s body on it get into the water in the first place? Gungor didn’t appear to know anything about the capstan operation, or he would have been using it to hoist the anchor. Instead, he was in a panic trying to lift her out of the water. I was stumped – for now. An investigative reporter for an important New York City newspaper can’t just let these things lie; at least that was the fantasy that had begun to loop in my head. I was getting quite interested in this story.