In honor of Lost Whisperer of the Seas‘ anniversary and Free download week (Didn’t know? Haul in your catch here or at my Payhip Store!), let’s show off the smaller sailboats featured in the story.
I shot these photos for research at the Annapolis Boat Show in 2011 to help me visualize the sailing portions. I’m only an occasional sailing student, so I figure this might help readers who are also in the same boat. 🙂
Coral of the Seas and her brother Salm live on a schooner, but that’s not a ship a sailor can handle alone. (see my post of schooner research photos here) To conduct their dolphin training, the Seas siblings use their sunfish sailboat, a small boat with one sail that one person can handle.
The sunfish is also the boat they teach lessons in. A newcomer to this port, Ty Sterling, needs lessons for ocean sailing: Ty wasn’t the raw beginner she’d expected. Not once had he called a line a rope. He’d even properly referred to the line controlling the mainsail as the mainsheet. He’d handled the Sunfish’s sail and tiller with no mistakes—or instruction—in his helmsman position opposite her.
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Later in the story, they use a larger sailboat, a 420 class that is commonly used for racing: Luna joined them and took the helm of her family’s boat, the Midnight Marauder. It had a mainsail and a jib, like he’d used on the 420 sailboat at home, but was several feet longer, so nicely sized for four.
On a 420, Salm can drape himself across the bow, with Luna beside him, and spy through his binoculars. When things get rough: Water hurled into the boat, Ty smashed into Coral and they crashed to the cabin bottom.
In this boat, the cabin is the open space where sailors sit or place their feet in small boats.
In a larger boat, the cabin is the enclosed living space below the deck.
Two more sailing features from the novel:
The hiking strap is rope or nylon webbing strap secure to the bottom of the boat that a sailor can use to prevent falling out when they want to lean over the gunwale: She hooked a foot under the hiking strap and leaned over the hull.
The boom is the horizontal pole extending from the mast that supports the bottom edge of the sail in some riggings: She ducked under the boom and scampered forward, where she and Salm exchanged a few words, punctuated by Coral’s retorted, “Stow it.”
Hope these tidbits help you enjoy the story more!
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Again–this week only!–my Lost Whisperer of the Seas ebook is free on all retailers and internationally. Download it here. If some international retailers are slow to load it free, please get it through my Payhip Store.
This book and all my novels come in beautiful paperbacks as well. Ask your library to carry them so you and others can read for free!
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