Different Circles

They ate and then, while Laura did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen, Jake went and took his own shower. After toweling off, he pulled on a pair of baggy swimming trunks and a t-shirt he had bought in Bar Harbor. He then picked up the backpack he used when traveling—it was currently empty—and threw his wallet into it. Inside of his wallet was more than six hundred dollars in cash he had also picked up in Bar Harbor. Using your ATM card to make purchases had not quite made it to most of the state of Maine outside of Bangor or Portland yet. And it certainly had not made it to Rockwood, Maine.

Their dry suits were hanging on a rack on the lower deck on the aft side of the boat. This was where the two Kawasaki JS750 jet skis were secured. It took them about five minutes to completely gear up for the trip to town. They pulled on the dry suits, put water shoes on their feet, donned their life vests, and then Jake put the backpack on and tightened the straps as much as he could. He then locked up the door that allowed entry into the boat and put the key in a little pocket on the dry suit that was designed just for that purpose.

“You ready?” he asked Laura.

“Let’s do it,” she said with a smile of pleasant anticipation. The jet ski had scared her at first but now she had fallen in love with riding it. And she had gotten quite good at it as well.

The so-called “keys” for the jet skis were actually just plastic pieces that plugged into a slot and allowed the ignition circuit to complete and the engine to run. These keys were attached to lanyards that they secured to their wrists. In the event of a fall—and they had both fallen a lot when they were learning to ride—the lanyard would yank the key out of the slot and kill the engine instantly, thus preventing the watercraft from continuing on its merry way without its rider. You then just had to swim after the machine and remount it.

Jake untied the skis and they climbed aboard, settling in on their knees and then pushing away from the boat. They plugged in their keys and fired up the two-stroke engines, which sent clouds of fragrant exhaust into the air.

“Lead the way!” Laura told him. She had a terrible sense of navigation outside of cities or towns (and it was not that great inside of them either). She could probably find her way out of the cove—since there was only one way to escape and it was plainly visible—but after that, she did not even know which way they should turn to get to town.

“Try to keep up!” Jake returned playfully. He did have a superb sense of direction and navigation, even in unfamiliar places, and always effortlessly led them back to the cove without the use of a map of any kind, or even a compass, no matter where they went out on the large lake. Of course, he was greatly assisted in this impressive feat by the fact that Mount Kineo, where they were anchored, was visible from anywhere in the range of the jet skis.

Jake pulled on the throttle just enough to get moving and steered around in a circle until he was facing the exit to the cove. He then throttled up, putting on some speed. As the jet ski moved faster and became more stable in the water, he slowly stood up until he was standing tall on his own two feet. He glanced over his left shoulder and saw that Laura was keeping station with him, just behind and to the left, where his wake would not catch her. She too had assumed the standing position.

The water was mostly calm as they exited the cove and turned to the right, with no wind-driven waves at all and only a few wakes churned up by the sparse boat traffic that was motoring about here and there. The Yamahas could easily go forty-five miles per hour, maybe even fifty, but Jake did not go balls to the wall. He kept the throttle at around eighty percent or so and they cruised at around thirty-five to forty miles per hour. They cut through the water smoothly, feeling the wind in their faces, occasionally getting splashed a bit when they hit one of the rolling boat wakes. The trip took only five minutes to complete and neither of them fell off. They pulled up to the Rockwood Town Landing boat ramp, maneuvering over to the fuel dock and then shutting down.

They stepped from the jet skis onto the dock—Laura almost falling into the water but catching herself at the last second—and tied up. Jake turned his back to her and told her to get into the backpack and pull out his wallet. She did so.

He peeled off a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to her. “You fuel us up,” he said. “I’ll hike in and grab the groceries.”

“Sounds good,” she said.