"What time is it?"

In the companionway Andy glanced at his watch. "Ten past eight."

"Set a course and intersect it on a straight line into Portland," Mitchell said.

Andy took a step down on the ladder.

"Andy."

"Yeah?"

"Keep it simple, okay?"

"Okay."

The foredeck disappeared and then the mast as the sloop melted into fog. Moisture caressed Mitchell’s face, he glanced at the compass and looked ahead but there was only fog.

"Come to seventy-five degrees," Andy said and climbed up. He checked the knotmeter and his watch and blew a warning with the signal horn.

Mitchell watched the compass card as he drew the tiller until the sloop came on course. "How far?"

"Seventeen miles to the new tack."

"We need more sail."

Andy eased the main sheet and the boom swung out over the starboard rail. He trimmed what he could see of the genoa. Mitchell felt sick to his empty stomach so he sat up straight in the hope that a more attentive posture would ease his mind. It didn’t. He glanced at the compass and the knotmeter. Andy watched aft as if something might appear. Something might. If another sailboat cut them in half it would happen suddenly, unheard until the moment of impact.

"Let’s eat," Mitchell said.

"Yeah, right," Andy laughed nervously.

"I’m serious."

"I’m not hungry."

"I am. Bring it up into the cockpit. Let’s keep doing the things we do."

Andy climbed below while Mitchell watched ahead into the fog. Not even a hot meal he thought. If we had more money, more time to prepare. I should have explained it to the yard manager, asked him to trust me for expenses and the dockage. We worked so goddamn hard. There just wasn’t enough.

Andy climbed up to hand Mitchell a sandwich and Mitchell noticed the grime caked under Andy’s fingernails and in the callouses on his palm. "Thanks," Mitchell said.

Sea murmured on the hull, the gear creaked. Confined in white silence they sailed for hours in an indifferent cloud of wet vapor, two men with nothing in common except a growing apprehension that time was running out. Mitchell’s face and clothing were wet with moisture. He wiped the side of his hand across the droplets in his beard around his mouth. Nothing to look at, nothing to say. Andy sat with his back against the cabin bulkhead and blew horn warnings at regulation intervals, the only interruption to the monotony and the fear. He checked his watch and blew a warning then turned his anxiety outboard again.

Mitchell kept the watch ahead. He looked at the compass and up to the sails and then into fog. "Get a harness on and check the rigging forward." The words came out like steel.