Coincidence - Alan May [2]
And she was a sailor. Sailing had always been part of her life. As a scrawny, crop-haired six-year-old she had spent a winter with her family on a thirty-foot sailboat gunk-holing from island to island in the Bahamas. They had returned through the Intracoastal Waterway to her home in Pickering, Ontario, some two thousand miles away. The only thing she could remember about the trip was standing on an upside-down pail to steer the boat, and calling herself the captain.
She had taken sailing lessons at the local yacht club and by grade eleven had attained the second-highest racing level possible, the silver. She had been reasonably successful in many regattas, including the National Youth Championships, sailing a singlehanded thirteen-foot Laser Radial sailboat. She’d be a natural in a program like the one portrayed in the movie; she was sure of it.
The next morning she phoned her friend Stephanie to tell her all about White Squall. Wouldn’t it be just super if they could spend a year of high school sailing on a ship like that?
But Stephanie’s reaction was lukewarm at best. She had a friend, Johanna, who had taken a similar trip just two years earlier, sailing around the world while completing grade twelve. Stephanie had not found her description of the trip appealing. As far as she was concerned, the final year of school was difficult enough already, what with maintaining your grades and applying to university. Why would anyone want to add the extra pressure of crewing an old-fashioned sailing ship? Did Melissa even understand how much work that was?
But Melissa was undeterred. She got Johanna’s phone number and called that afternoon, only to find that she was away at university. She was disappointed that she couldn’t pump Johanna for information right that minute. She did manage to get the phone number for the program Johanna had attended—the Blue Water Academy in Montréal. But by then she was thwarted again. It was Sunday and no one answered the phone.
For the rest of the day Melissa could think and talk about nothing else. Phoning Stephanie again, she gleaned just enough information to further fuel her enthusiasm. Johanna’s class had started their voyage on the east coast at Halifax, going on to cross the Atlantic, cruise the Mediterranean, and then head down through the Red Sea and across the Indian Ocean, stopping in Australia, then crossing the South Pacific to Hawaii, ending in Victoria on Vancouver Island.
The thought of it all boggled Melissa’s mind. This called for more investigation.
2
The investigation, as it turned out, was her father’s responsibility. As Melissa got out of the car at the school the next day, she threw her backpack over her shoulder and reminded him one last time.
“Dad, please, please, please don’t forget to phone Blue Water Academy.”
Saying no to his exuberant daughter was not one of Craig Jordan’s talents. The young-sounding woman who answered his call once he got into the office explained that the program was for grade eleven and twelve students who would continue their education while sailing to different parts of the world on a large ship that they would crew. She agreed to fax a copy of the brochure to him immediately and to put an application package in the mail.
“Well?” Melissa demanded the moment she entered the car when he came by for her after school.
She couldn’t wait to get home and see the brochure. She read it from cover to cover again and again, from the Mission Statement (“drawing upon the social dynamics of life and work in the microcosm of a sailing ship and first-hand explorations in the macrocosm of the planet, Blue Water Academy students forge new standards in leadership, personal development,