Drawn from Water

Chapter 3

 Louis:

"I thought you said you fixed the mast Hector?" Louis said over the radio to his friend Hector who was back in Puerto Rico.

"I did! It's not my fault you break everything you touch!" Hector replied.

Annoyed, Louis decided not to argue with him, he is just lucky he finished his dive before the thing broke or else he would've been screwed.

"It's fine Hector, I'm not that far from Mona I'll just crash there and see if I can find parts to fix it."

And with that he said his goodbyes to him over the radio and turned it off. Louis walked to the deck to see what he could do to get the sail to work without a working mast. Luckily, he's been doing this for a while, so he doesn't really stress over it.

Opening the sail and tying off to his other sails line seems to be his only option. After a few minutes he was slowly sailing towards the small island of Mona. Looking at it from a distance he could see the colorful buildings and homes going up the hill, the smalls streets looking like veins.

Once he got close enough to the dock he leapt off and began to tie off his boat when he heard a voice call to him from behind.

"Hola Amigo!"

Louis turned to see a small, stocky man walking up to him, he wore a yellow shirt that had one too many stains on it with black swim shorts.

"Having boat troubles?" he asked

"What made you guess?" asked Louis with a bit of annoyance in his voice.

"Well, we don't get too many single sail boats here other than tourist boats, so lucky guess" the man said with a smile. "The names Juan, by the way." Juan said as he extended his hand out to shake Louis's

Louis firmly grasped Juan's hand and shook it as he introduced himself. He relaxed a little seeing this man was probably just trying to help. "Yeah, the damn mast broke on me when I went diving just a few miles from here." answered Louis, "I don't suppose you have a parts store here or somewhere I can get some spare boat parts do you?"

"Of course! It's a bit of a walk though, by the time you get there it will be closed."

Great. Thought Louis

"If you'd like amigo, I can go in the morning for you and get the part you need, I know what a pain boats can be." Juan said as he pointed to a worn down boat up towards the front of the dock.

Louis took him up on his offer and with that Juan left him to finish tying off his boat. As he watched him leave, he looked to the front of the dock and saw a small shack-looking building just off the beach. As he looked, he could see a woman walking from the small structure, making her way up the hill towards the homes.

Looking back on his boat he completed tying off for the night Louis climbed back on the deck and made his way below to the cabin. Trying to get comfortable in a small space was always a struggle for Louis, he'd prefer setting up his hammock on deck only if he hadn't lent it to Hector before he left for what was supposed to be a short trip. After tossing and turning Louis finally got into a comfortable position and fell asleep.

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The next day, Louis woke up to Juan yelling for him on the dock asking him for what pieces he needed for the damaged mast. Louis wrote up a list and gave it to Juan who assured him he'd be back in a few hours since he had other errands to run, and the parts store was on the other side of the hill.