Coral and Ty’s story came out a year ago and it’s a finalist in the National Readers’ Choice Awards. Let’s celebrate!
I’m offering the ebook for free for a limited time. As usual, it’s taking some retailers longer to switch over the pricing. So far it’s free on Kobo and Nook and my Payhip Store. I’ll announce when the others join, and would love it if you could spread the word!
Once you have the ebook [virtually] in hand, can you visualize Coral’s home aboard their family schooner, The Peaceful Seas?
I don’t own a schooner and rarely sail, so back in October 2011, I visited the Annapolis Boat Show to inspect a schooner–and other boats. With notes & photos from my visit, an excellent beginners book and the help of my niece who has been a sailing instructor, I was able to fit Coral onto her shipboard home.
Come for a visit! Lost Whisperer of the Seas opens with The Peaceful Seas docked in the harbor of Tern Bay, just like the Woodwind II was docked in the Annapolis Marina.
The sails have been stored and the Seas parents are preparing to go on holiday, leaving Coral under the supervision of her sister in town and, less-so, her brother, Salm, who has his own story of this same week in Keepers of the Sea Cliffs.
From the bow: Salm ducked under the beam of the foremast and stepped onto the low edge of the bow. For a second, he perched with his boot tips hanging in midair. Then his wings unfurled through the slits in his shirt and he leaped.
The helm in the stern.
Turning around, you come upon the hatch that leads below: Coral heaved a sigh and rounded the deck cabin to the hatch leading to their living quarters. She carried Skipper down the companionway ladder and set him on the floor in the dark salon.
the salon with built-in seating 
the salon with built-in seating
Salm ducked through the bulkhead and propped himself on the end of the built-in sofa while buttoning a leather waistcoat over a clean linen shirt.
A bulkhead is mentioned several times and becomes a fun problem in my story. Not all ships have this divider between compartments that keeps water from flooding through all the rooms, but it looks like this:
Coral found Ma in the galley. Ma’s flowered sundress swirled as she stowed the last of the breakfast dishes and, as quick as a cleaner wrasse, latched the windows in the ship’s polished wooden walls.
“Salm?” Ma called after him. “I’m shifting the power to charge our storage batteries.” She crossed to the navigation desk and peered at the console controlling their wind turbines and solar panels, human technologies that ran the ship’s instruments and household appliances. “Change it back when you need electricity.”
Beyond the salon & galley living quarters, the fore and aft contain the bedrooms–the cabins and larger stateroom. I put the stateroom in the stern of The Peaceful Seas, accessed by a ‘passageway’ not a hall!
“Coral?” Ma walked in from the stateroom, wrapping her robe closed, her long, sandy-brown hair loose about her shoulders. “Why are you up?”
The smaller cabins seemed to be tucked into odd corners in the ships
Coral stays the week in her sister’s guest room, a treat because: A double bed, huge to a girl who slept in the smallest cabin on The Peaceful, with only a bunk, clothes storage and enough space to turn around.
If you’re curious, like me, you’re wondering about the bathroom, or head as it is called on a ship.
Lost Whisperer of the Seas has no mention of the head, but Keepers of the Sea Cliffs does, as Salm stays on the ship. “Towels are in the cupboard in the head. We have the same on-demand water heater Windborne landlubber homes do, and our freshwater tanks are full, so take as long as you wish.”
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The week Coral stays in Tern Bay is quite eventful, but she and Ty make it back onto the ship several times. I’ll leave you with Ty’s introduction to The Peaceful Seas in Chapter 13, Showing Off the Schooner:
“How big is she? Seventy-four feet?”
“Her length is ninety feet.” They had arrived at The Peaceful Seas’ gangway. “Ma and Pop bought her when they bonded, so they’ve owned this schooner nearly thirty years.”
“Was it new then?”
“Used, like one Salm has his eye on. A local builder crafted her in the 1960s based on a classic ’30s design, but modernized the keel for speed and stability in rough seas. A double-masted is sailable by two, but easier with a crew of three to four.”
“They must have known what they were doing. How old were they?”
“Twenty, but both had come from sailing families. Pop’s older brother Ray and his partner stayed alongside them for a month or so. That’s what we did with Wind and Bass—my oldest sister and her partner—when they first got their sailboat a few years ago. Come aboard.”
Instead of turning on the power, Coral lit kerosene lanterns for them with the box of matches they kept in a cabinet near the helm. As she thought he might, Ty liked the old-time accessories that went with the original schooners, though they certainly didn’t use whale oil.
She took him from stern to bow. It soon became clear he knew the name of every part, through book learning and the tour ships he’d been on in Florida. Of course, he’d been restricted by the rules on those tours. Tonight, he was free to open every hatch, ease along the polelike bowsprit, inspect their wind turbines mounted off the railing and sort how the lines and pulleys raised the sails. She laughed, finding herself strangely drawn by his enthusiasm.
~~~
If you’d like to learn more about the small sailboats Coral and Ty sail, please see this second blog post.
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The winners of the National Readers’ Choice Awards will be announced tomorrow, July 18, 2020, in an online video on the OKRWA Facebook page at 2:00 p.m., Central time. Wish Lost Whisperer of the Seas luck!
Pick up your free ebook, and if you are able, please leave a review–no matter how short!–on the retailer site. Every review helps me reach new readers.
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