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I have known Emily for over 4 years. When I was hired at Thompson & Wilson, she was the first girl I noticed. It wasn't hard to do, almost all of my female colleagues were either 20 years older then I was, or were greatly overweight.
I know that my brother kept saying that people usually fit with their jobs, but I simply couldn't accept that working in an office as a collection agent necessarily meant you had to be unattractive.
Part of his theory matched however. There are 3 main positions at Thompson & Wilson : scout, closer and account manager.
Everyone starts as a scout. There are no exceptions. That's where I met Emily: she was my primary closer. I would make calls to find the delinquent debtors and once I would have located one, I would transfer him to Emily who would negotiate a payment plan.
I quickly noticed that almost every closer was dynamic, healthy, relatively young and, well, attractive. The account managers were usually older man, while all of the younger kids and the older woman were still scouts, and would remain so until they would leave for other jobs.
I expected it would take me 6 months to get a promotion and be Emily's colleague. Emily predicted it would take me 8 months to do so. I was told by her account manager I wouldn't get a promotion until my first year anniversary.
Do you think that held me back ? After 3 months, I was a junior closer and was acting as one of the secondary closers for Emily's team. I still did a lot of scouting, but as soon as one of Emily's scouts got a call while she was already on the phone, I would get it.
In theory, we were two secondary closers assisting Emily, but Brian, my competitor on the ladder of success, was too slow for my reflexes.
Two months later, I became a primary closer and received my own team of scouts. By then, Emily and I were good friends, which sadly meant I got to meet her husband, Jake.
That's part of the frustration. You flirt with a girl for 5 months, only to discover she doesn't wear her wedding ring at work because she feels it would hinder her promotion chances.
But the biggest part is realizing you've been so wrong. That all your signals which told you she might be interested were just wishful thinking. She had only seen me as one of her close friends while I wanted to date her.
Not that I can complain, I met Bianca a year later and we've been happy together ever since. And with Bianca, I knew from the first moment I met her that she was interested in me since she clearly responded to my flirts. The fact we met in a gay bar didn't leave much confusion.
Oh, that's right, I forgot to mention that I am a woman. My name is Karen and I'm gay. Don't worry, it's not a disease and you won't get to hear about my sex life in his story, at least, not in much more details than what I have revealed so far.
So, anyways, Jake is a mechanical engineer. He works at a military factory designing machines to build machines for the navy. He cannot talk about the details, because it's top secret, but Emily tells me that he makes a lot of money.
Every year, Jake and Emily rent a big sail boat and sail to the Bahamas to spend a week on a deserted atoll they found a few years ago. They showed me pictures and it looked absolutely incredible.
So, this year, I took all my courage and after getting permission from my girlfriend, I asked them if Bianca and I could join them. I said we could contribute financially a little, but mostly pushed that neither of us made enough money to pay for a vacation of our own.
At first, both insisted it was a couple vacation, not a group vacation, and that they wanted to be alone, but am I the type of woman to go halfway ?
After a lot of pushing, they agreed and invited us for supper to discuss the details.
Jake had found a slightly bigger boat with two big bedrooms. The one they usually rented had a big master bedroom in the front, and a small single bed near the back. The new one had two real bedrooms and also had 2 bathrooms instead of a single one, which later proved practical with three ladies on board.
I went over the financial planning with Jake while Emily and Bianca looked at pictures of the previous years and talked about the weather in the Bahamas.
We would drive to Miami, each couple in their own car, so we also went over the driving directions. Everything was perfect, and the costs for Bianca and I were acceptable.
It was still expensive, but we had never been on a vacation together and we already had some of the money saved.
It's after dessert that Emily dropped the bomb.
During the entire cruise, both on the sailing toward the atoll and during the time spent on the atoll, both Jake and her would be nude, because they're going to do a nudist vacation. That's why they didn't want to invite us in the first place, but that now, they hoped it wouldn't bother us.
I immediately told them it was a great idea, that's I'd love to get a full body tan, but Bianca asked me to join her in the bathroom to talk.
We didn't really talk, instead, she yelled at me insisting I must be crazy to agree to that. Bianca made it clear in my mind that she had agreed to a vacation with them only because they looked like a normal respectful couple and not perverts who enjoyed hanging around in the buff. She even suggested that I was still eyeing Emily and only wanted to see her naked.
I did try to explain to Bianca that we did hang around in the buff a lot of time in our apartment, especially after a bath or a shower, but she kept insisting that being naked as a couple and being naked with others were completely different.
We barely spoke for almost a week, but with time, things got a little better between us. You could say that love conquers all, but I am not sure if love had a lot to do with it. You see, we only left for Miami four months later. During those four months, tension was indeed high between the two of us, but oddly enough, even Bianca admitted her sex drive was higher then usual.
Her guess was that all our fighting was producing more endorphins. My guess is that the prospect of being nude under the sun turned us on or at least, turned me on. At that moment, In my mind, nudity was a great aphrodisiac.
A few days before leaving, Bianca started packing, but I postponed to the last possible minute. I decided not to bring any clothes for the trip, wearing only what I had in the car. I had asked Emily at work and that was pretty much her plan too, but she still would bring backup clothes in case of problems. So what, she was scared, I wasn't.
Bianca packed 3 bathing suits, 2 dresses and a whole set of shorts and shirts. She also packed toothbrushes and other essentials, including serious amounts of sunscreen, which I must admit, was very nice of her.
The drive to Miami was uneventful for Jake and Emily, but Bianca was furious at me that I refused to pack clothes. She insisted that I didn't even know if I would like being nude with others around. But hey, once again, I never do things halfway.
The boat was beautiful. Jake had calculated that the sailing trip would take a little more than 24 hours, so we arrived at the marina early in the morning.
The sailboat, called "Alizee wind" was beautiful. I asked the renter what the name meant, and apparently, it's the French name for the Trade Winds which circle the earth, which to him, sounded appropriate for a sailboat. Appropriate or not, the name was just lovely.
Jake and Emily's room was the biggest one, at the front, but our room at the back was still big enough for Bianca and I.
We left the port a little past 10 AM, with fresh food we had purchased in Miami, and sailed away to the Bahamas. After an hour or so, we were far away from the coast and Emily removed the bathing suit she had put on as soon as she had stepped on the boat. I took the opportunity to go back to my room and fold my clothes in one of the drawers.
When I came back outside, Jake was nude behind the wheel and Emily, in her birthday suit, was spreading sunscreen on his back.
Bianca was still wearing her bathing suit, seemingly unaffected by the group nudity.
After a light dinner, Jake went to bed leaving Emily to handle the wheel. Bianca , however refused to speak to me and instead, hung in the front of the deck, tanning on a beach towel. I hung with Emily in the back, who was rather worried by Bianca's attitude.
Eventually, I took a beach towel and laid down next to my girlfriend in the front of the boat without saying a word.
After an hour or so of silent tanning, Bianca took my hand in hers. After another thirty minutes, we turned on our front to tan our back, and Bianca untied her bikini top.
That when we started to talk about her feelings. She shared her fear of being judged, her hesitations, her feelings of being useless.
I can remember most of the words : "Karen, I have never been comfortable with my body. Perhaps because I never felt like I fitted with society or perhaps because I never liked boys and felt like I was broken. You are tall, slender and so beautiful but what am I next to you ? You don't see it because you love me, but it's not the case for Jake and Emily. I am afraid they would laugh at me or judge me. I know it sounds superficial, but that's how I feel".
Bianca and I talked a lot about it and I think that for the first time, Bianca showed a lot of her emotional fragility which she always kept bottled up. This managed to get us a lot closer and deeper in our relationship. My love and desire for her increase dramatically and I feel that it was mutual.
From the front of the boat, we couldn't see Emily, but since she was so silent, I ended up forgetting completely about her. I promised I wouldn't get into too much details about my sex life here because it's not really the place, but let's just say that even thought she didn't see us, she got to hear us rather well.
In fact, I wasn't surprised that Jake came outside shortly after we had finished. It's only then that I realized that we had been right on top of his bed.
In all cases, during our experience, I had removed Bianca's bikini and made her quite aware she wouldn't be putting it back on.
I was the first to go back inside the boat to go put my lover's bathing suit in a drawer and when I came back, Bianca was sitting on the bench next to Emily.
Bianca looked rather shy, keeping her legs firmly pressed together, but she was smiling. I sat down next to her, leaving her sitting between Emily and I.
Nobody said a single word for a good hour. I know Jake and Emily opened their mouths a few times as if they were going to talk, but in the end, It was me who broke the silence by asking Jake if I could help steer the boat.
Jake gave us a small lesson in sail boat navigation. There was a GPS onboard, with everything already programmed in. There was also a big compass right in front of the wheel.
Mostly, what the skipper had to do, was to make sure that the compass was still pointed to the intended degree, and that the current position was still on the red line.
Of course, he also had to ensure the sails were still well filled by the wind and that we were at the proper speed, but if something changed, we only had to call them at the back.
Jake and Emily spent an hour or two up front, either tanning or just talking to each other, leaving Bianca and I alone in the back. If they fooled around, we didn't hear it. Geez, what's up with me. I said I wouldn't mention sex that much. Sorry again.
I wouldn't say Bianca and I didn't talk to each other, but we didn't have long conversations either. She held the wheel a few times, either because I was tired, needed to put more sunscreen on her or simply needed to go to the bathroom.
Emily cooked us some pasta which we ate with appetite inside the cabin while Jake was handling the wheel. Emily got up the nerve to ask Bianca how she felt and got a simple "Good I guess" from her as a response.
But the evening went much better. Wind had picked up and it was starting to be a little chilly outside. Jake stayed nude, but the three girls put some clothes on. Bianca and Emily had some spare clothes, but me, the poor Karen had to wear the same clothes I had worn in the drive to Miami.
Bianca lectured me that I should have brought more clothes for chilly evenings, but I decided to hold my part and pretend I was all right.
To make matters worse, Bianca is 3 inches smaller than I am, while Emily is a good 2 inches taller. But, even if we could trade clothes, after all, Bianca's pants and shirts would simply be a little to small for me, my ego didn't want to admit I should have packed clothes.
There, I said it. Can we change the subject now?
Bianca and I went to bed around 11, when Jake went to bed leaving Emily in charge. I know he relieved her during the night, but neither of us heard anything.
Did you ever sleep on the sail boat at sea ? There is no motor making a loud noise, but the movement of the waves makes you feel like you are in a cradle.
I didn't wear a pajamas, but Bianca did. I presume she was the only who did, because the next morning when we woke up, both Jake and Emily were up deck once again in their Birthday suits.
The first hour or so, Bianca wore her bathing suit, but suddenly, she just said "The hell with it" and threw it inside the cabin.
I hugged her, but opted against commenting about it.
When we reached the atoll in question, around 10:30 AM, Jake anchored the sail boat as close as he could from the shore, but that still put us a good half-mile away because of the slow incline in the sea-bed.
The water wasn't really deep, but we had to walk a long distance with a lot of supplies. To help us, Jake inflated a floating mattress which helped carry some of the heavier items.
Emily and I would secure both sides of the mattress while Jake did solo trips carrying items on his head.
I wouldn't say Bianca was useless, but she clearly had no idea what to do. Was it her nudity that paralyzed her ? Her lack of experience ? Her shyness ? I couldn't tell, but at least, she didn't hinder us in our movements.
Emily explained that since there were no facilities at all on the atoll, we needed to bring as much as we could to return to the boat only to sleep in it.
We needed to do several trips, bringing the food, water bottles and beach barbecue as well as foldable chairs, the umbrella and other "essentials": some beer, sun screen, beach towels and even a beach ball.
The atoll was relatively small, in more or less in the shape of a crescent. The boat was anchored just inside the two tips of the crescent, in front of what seemed at first to be the only beach of the atoll.
Behind the beach was a small wooden area which contained some coconut trees as well as a few mango trees.
I took a look inside the icebox to notice that a white mist emerged from the bottom. I closed it back and waited for the rest of the team to come back.
Jake eventually explained that the bottom of ice box contained dry ice, which is frozen carbon dioxide. He started using it the year before so that the food would remain cold even on the hot summer days.
The barbecue was fired up and Jake cooked us burgers directly on the beach. Meanwhile, us girls were enjoying swimming in the clear blue sea. We had to walk at least 200 feet to get enough water to swim ! Until there, you could only wade in the water.
We did see a lot of beautiful fish swimming by and I regretted not have brought a waterproof camera. Emily told me they had pictures back home from previous trips taken from a disposable camera.
We ate in our beach chairs, fully relaxed. After dinner, the only sound we could hear was the sound of the waves and of the wind.
Bianca and I gave our hosts a little privacy and laid down further away on the beach. After tanning a little more, Bianca actually thanked me with a kiss for forcing her hand to come. She said she was having a ton of fun.
At first, Jake and Emilie were swimming in the water, but when the sun started to get a little lower, they also laid down on their towels to relax.
Bianca was the first to hear the motor. At first, she didn't realize anything was wrong, but when the sound got louder, she insisted we warn Jake.
Emily told us that even thought the atoll was deserted, from time to time cruise ship personnel passed close to it while returning from their day of work at a private beach for cruises.
Only Bianca remained bothered by the fact we simply didn't bring any clothes from the ship in case someone came to talk to us. We promised to bring emergency clothes the next morning, but decided to start cooking supper, this time hot dogs.
The motor noise increased in the background, but no one really paid attention to it until it stopped and we realized that the small boat had docked with the "Alizee wind".
Bianca started yelling : "They're stealing our boat ! Jake ! Emilie, Karen ! Do something !"
Jake stopped all he was doing and started running toward the boats but sadly, the people from the small motorboat had already started the motor on our own sailboat and were moving away from the atoll with all our possessions on board.
Bianca and Emily started crying while Jake was still shaking from the swim he just did, Leaving me in charge for the moment. I kept repeating in my mind, "Karen, you can do this".
Sure, you'll most likely say that it's easy to recollect the story with me being the only calm one, but that's usually how things happens. I see my life as a series of objectives and I don't let anything, including emotions, get in the way.
At that moment, my objective was that all four of us would reach civilisation safely, but until then, we had to survive.
If we rationed ourselves, we had enough food and drinks to last a few days, but no means to contact civilisation and no way to navigate outside of the Atoll.
No one knew our location with the exception of the boat thieves. It's only later during the evening that Emily realized that had the pirates decided to land on the atoll, we would have been defenceless. Fortunately, Bianca wasn't within earshot or panic would have resumed.
Jake and I started a fire on the beach, to help increase our visibility, but due to the remote location, our chances were slim.
Emilie gathered some coconuts and mangos while the rest of us gathered wood for the fire. The juice and milk from those fruits would help us fight dehydration once our water would run out while providing some well needed sugar.
By the time the sun had set, all four of us had cuddled by pair around the fire.
The beach chairs weren't comfortable enough for us to sleep, so we used our towels to make an improvised double bed near the trees.
During the long equatorial night, both couples alternated between guarding the fire and sleeping. Well, that was the plan, but Bianca managed to fall asleep in her beach chair and Jake kept me company while I was the only person awake in front of the fire.
It's only after a few hours that he shared with me that he had a plan and that he would start working on it early in the morning without sharing any details.
Bianca had a few nightmares, but otherwise was the person with the most energy the next morning. After all, Jake had barely slept for two nights in a row and both Emily and I stayed fully awake during our watch.
None of us had worn any clothes for now almost 24 hours, but Bianca seemed a lot more relaxed then the previous evening.
She admitted to us that for the first time in years, she didn't feel any pressure. We were lost, in the middle of nowhere, without anyone telling us what to do.
I guess not everyone reacted the same way, but somehow, Bianca's speech improved general morale.
Jake did have a plan and while we ate a small breakfast, he explained that with the various knives we had, he would saw a few trees to build a raft. The metal frame of the chairs would be used to fasten the logs while the umbrella would serve as a mast.
Jake got right away on his plan, using the steak knives we had with us to cut down some of the trees leaving us the three girls on our own.
Bianca was still floating as if she was on opiates so I put her in charge of gathering all of the fruits she could find, while Emily and I did our own survey of our possessions.
What quickly came to the conclusion that we needed a way to carry some cargo on our future improvised raft. We still had the ice box, but it was impractically small so Emilie and I surveyed the natural resources the island had to offer.
With plenty of long leaves, the two of us began trying to mend woven baskets to attach on the raft. After a few failed attempts, Bianca joined us and actually provided several positive ideas.
With six hands, we managed to make our first basket and use it to store Bianca's first fruits delivery. In excitement, the two of began kissing and Emilie left to gather fruits as an excuse to leave us alone.
Sadly, shortly after, Emilie yelled in pain, causing Jake and I to run toward her, only to be joined by Bianca shortly after.
There was no way around it. Emilie had sprained her ankle on a hole in the sand and was unable to walk back to the beach.
Jake carried her in his arms and laid her on a beach chair where the four of us inspected the damage. Emilie has small delicate ankles so it's easy to see the problem by comparing both of them: it was clear that a ligament was torn in her left foot and we all knew that would mean forcing Emilie to lay down for a few days.
Bianca quickly proposed to make an improvised cast using some of the large leaves while Jake cut a small block of dry ice to help with the swelling.
We quickly realized that since the dry ice itself was way too cold for direct usage, we needed for Bianca to slowly finish her cast to serve as an isolation layer.
Emilie begged Jake and I to continue working so we could get home and for once, I obeyed her, leaving her in the care of my beautiful girlfriend.
I saw the progress from Jake and became depressed. He was still on his first tree and his steak knife was already having problems.
Small trees were easy to break in half if you pushed hard enough on them, but weren't big enough to build a raft. Bigger trees however, were notoriously hard to cut: you had to cut a V shape wedge in them to cause them to collapse and that took hours.
I proposed to use another knife on another tree to double the sawing efficiency, but as I began tearing apart the wooden fibre, I mentally calculated the necessary width of the raft.
A very narrow raft would need a minimum of 8 tree segments. Jake took over 2 hours to get perhaps 40% of the cutting done on his tree, meaning that perhaps it would take 5 hours per cut.
His tree could easily provide three segments. My tree, which is a little smaller, could provide two. If Jake can tore the top branches off easily, that means that to get our first 5 segments would require another 23 hours of sawing over, I presume, at least 2 days.
That would mean being isolated on the beach for another 3 days at least.
I didn't know how fast a raft could travel, but if we say only 2 days of navigating in the water until we find civilization, that would mean a minimum of 5 days on our own with our current resources.
Even if we gathered all of the mangos and coconuts from the island, I wasn't sure it would be enough.
I shared my thoughts with Jake who sadly pretty much agreed with my evaluation, adding to the problem that even if we decided to use smaller trees, we don't have enough binding material. He proposed to drag the floating coconuts behind the raft in a makeshift net but I explained that if we did, it would slow down the raft furthermore.
So, we continued cutting in silence, only to get interrupted by a delivery of fresh mangos from Bianca who thought about us.
I realized that while Jake and I were over-stressed, Bianca was radiant. Her skin had marvellously tanned and I had rarely seen her smile as much, especially since the boat was stolen.
When I initially fell in love with Bianca, I loved her carefree attitude toward life. She never seems to get slowed down by problems and she used to see everything in a good light.
I was her first girlfriend, her first serious partner in a lesbian relationship. She had a few short term boyfriends in the past and had made casual encounters with other girls, but when we met, something clicked in her. I could see myself in her eyes and I loved what I could see.
Initially, our relationship was weird. I felt like I was the only adult in the relationship and she was behaving like a spoiled child. I made the decisions, I paid the bills and I did the groceries, while she redecorated our apartment every 2 weeks and moved our furniture around two or three times per weeks, with no long term plans or destinations.
Our wardrobe would completely change on a monthly basis, not that she necessarily bought new clothes, but she would stand in the closet and pack half of our clothes in boxes and bring back old boxes items.
One month we would only wear dresses while another it would be jeans, jeans, jeans. One week we would wear lingerie under our clothes while the next she would hide all of the panties. At first, it irritated me but once she learned to not touch my work clothes, I got used to it and simply went with the flow.
Often, she would buy new clothes or rather, used clothes from the salvation army or other such places, which she would sometimes fix or change in radical new ways. A pair of elephant jeans would became sexy cut offs or a dress with an ugly turtle neck would become a skirt.
Soon, she became the major source of madness in the house, using it to spread joy and happiness and I grew used to it. I brought the seriousness and the stability and we managed to find a perfect middle ground.
Today however, I could see in Bianca's eyes that she was back to herself, as if being in front of unbearable adversity had caused her to simply stop caring about the future and once again live rigorously and superficially in the present.
She even found a flower to place in her hair, as if she intended to prove to us that we were still on vacation.
She left us to work humming a song in her breath and it caused me to work even harder until I finally heard Jake yell "Timber!"
We had our first tree down. I helped Jake to drag it back to the beach, a non-simple task, but when we arrived I could see Bianca kneeling behind Emilie's chair, braiding her hair.
I don't know if it's because both girls were naked and thus, exciting me or rather if it's because of the childish innocence of the scene, but even in thirty years, I will not be able to forget such a breathless simple scene.
We were stranded on an deserted island miles away from civilisation and struggling to survive, and Bianca was braiding Emilie's hair.
Jake seemed equally stunned as we stayed motionless until Bianca saluted us, unaware of her effect on us.
Emilie and Bianca proposed to cut the tree using the other 2 steak knives to help us move forward and I realized that this was the solution to our problems.
Jake and I would cut the trees down and our girlfriends would help divide the segments, a much simpler task since they wouldn't have to fight gravity. We moved Emilie's chair closer to the tree and helped her get installed.
Jake and I returned to the woods but this time, I was left alone to my tree since Jake picked for his second tree one out of my sight.
I did yell "timber" a few times for nothing when I thought I had seen my tree move, but eventually, without giving me the chance to issue a warning, it fell in a big thump not far from my left foot. A few inches closer and Emilie wouldn't have been the only girl stuck in a chair.
Once again, Jake helped me drag the log back to the beach but this time, I joined the other girls on the splitting team by working to split mine in two, allowing us to talk a little while Jake resumed working on bringing the last tree down.
Bianca was really in a good mood while Emilie was affected by the pain. If you add that I was exhausted from all of the work so far under the hot sun, it leads to weirdly personal discussions which caused us to erupt in laughter a few times.
Emilie was sitting in her chair. I used another chair, but Bianca insisted to sit directly on the tree, sawing between her legs. She insisted it provided the best position to force and the subject quickly dragged on additional personal discussions. Hey, I am trying to keep my promise about not talking about sex, even if we were just talking about it at that moment.
Jake choose to join us while we were laughing of a joke told by Emilie on his subject, while we were half exhausted from the long day of work.
I knew we would work after supper, but this would be a welcomed break for our muscles. We compared our work: I was the last one to start, so obviously, I didn't get very far but Bianca was more than half done.
She had decided to use a different technique: instead of making a V cut to get the knife deeper, she decided to cut deeper and deeper in a single line until her knife was almost vertical in the wood.
She then simply continued to saw slowly to circle the log. Each new cut was harder to do, but she managed to get a lot more done, while leaving only a tiny wooden core in the center which Jake would be able to break by placing the tree above another one and jumping on it.
Bianca admitted she had no idea what to do and she thought it was the best solution without even bothering to talk to us about it.
Jake approved and after a quick supper, the three girls began using Bianca's technique with great efficiency.
By the time Jake got through the third tree, Bianca was done and helping me on my cut while Emilie was making great progress.
Soon enough, the last tree was on the beach and Bianca began attacking it while Jake easily broke Bianca's initial cut in two, yielding us our first official segment for our raft.
By the time the sun set, Emilie's cut had been broken off and my cut, which was continued with Emilie's help, was roughly 80% done.
Jake's last tree had two cuts in progress, one handled by Bianca and the other by Jake himself. The most surprising at first was that Bianca was faster that Jake, but then again, she had not sawed as long as he had done during the day and she had more experience on this type of cut.
Jake and Emilie slept on one side of the logs while Bianca and I cuddled on the other. We could hear each other, but at least, we couldn't see each other, providing us for a little intimacy for the night for the first time since the theft.
Bianca and I whispered in our ears for a few minutes on how much we loved each other, but I swear, that's all we did. Well, did kissed, but we were simply too exhausted for anything else.
In a way, I wasn't filled with desire anyway. I liked the simplicity of spending time nude with friends without it having anything to do with sex. I was liberating in a way. It was, well, I know I am repeating myself, but it was simple. Uncomplicated, innocent.
I slept like a log, but when I woke up Bianca was no longer next to me. I raised my head to see her silently sawing the tree next to us, continuing her previous cut which was interrupted by the night.
She smiled when she saw I was awake and waved at me after placing her index on her lips to remind me that our friends were still asleep.
After exchanging a morning kiss, I sat on the same tree and began digging into Jake's unfinished cut. I sat opposite to Bianca so while she still could see our bed place, I had a direct view to Jake and Emilie cuddling nude and visibly deep asleep.
What caught my attention however, was the large blue mark on Emilie's ankle which showed that perhaps her spraining was more serious than we thought and that the leaves cast visibly didn't last the night.
Eventually, Emilie began to stir and waved at me and Bianca, but when she tried to get up, she collapsed on Jake, waking him up in a panic.
After a lot of reassuring, Jake agreed to let Bianca redo the cast while he replaced her on the sawing. I won't bore you with the details, but by mid-morning, all of the sawing was completed and the various segments were laid side by side to form the general outline of the raft.
I helped Jake use all of the material we had to fasten the logs, using the metal frame of the beach chairs to hold them securely in place. We also needed to tear apart the towels to use ropes to further secure everything.
It was a lot more complicated and time wasting than we thought but fortunately, thanks to Bianca's technique, we were ahead in our schedule.
By mid-day, Jake and I did our first test in the water near the beach and after a few adjustments, we had a floating raft.
Emilie could only stay on the beach on a bed of leaves to look at us working, but the remaining three of us didn't stop other than for occasional lunch breaks on fresh mangos or coconut prepared by Emilie.
I worked on creating paddles from the branches broken off by Jake while he worked on using the umbrella as a mast.
Bianca who was in an even better mood, going to far as to almost openly flirt with me, worked on finding ways to store the cargo on the raft.
My work was simply wood working: finding a way to make a paddle was more a process of trial and error and I had the floating mattress to test my prototypes.
Fixing the mast was a serious problem which Jake insisted on solving alone. His breakthrough occurred when he lodged the mast between two of the logs and it stuck in place. The rest was just a matter of solidifying it properly using the rest of the pieces of the beach chairs.
This inspired Bianca to use wood sticks and lodge them between the logs, increasing the tension on the metal frame and thus the solidity of the raft, which she used to create a box made of short branches pushing against the sticks.
She was overly excited at her discovery, jumping in the air like a child, but we were all sceptical. Once the bottom was filled with coconuts, it was rather stable and allowed to fill with a lot of mangos as well as preventing the ice box from sliding in the water. In short, Bianca once again saved our ass.
It did cut on our "living space", but like Bianca said: "We can always cuddle to save space and keep warm".
Eventually, my tests on paddles was cut short as Jake needed pieces of the floating raft to make the sail, but I was partly confident I had succeeded.
There was a debate on whether the barbecue would help us or put the raft on fire and once again, it is Bianca which solved the issue by proposing to carry parts of the remaining floating mattress and use is as an isolation blanket to protect the raft. At worse, we could throw it overboard.
Bianca and I did a last review of the beach to ensure we had everything while Jake pushed the raft, with Emilie on board, toward the sea.
Once we knew we had everything, Bianca and I ran, hand in hand, until the four of us were finally sailing to civilisation.
1 ) The dominant winds were blowing in that direction
2 ) The currents also pushed us toward the deep Atlantic
3 ) He knew there was a massive island in the East between us and the ocean, ensuring we would touch land before being lost at sea.
Sadly, the makeshift sail barely worked and my paddles weren't strong enough compared to the weight of the raft. Both helped to get away from the atoll, but in reality, the current did most of the work once we reached the sea.
It was rather scary and both Jake and I were on the verge of panicking as we frantically paddled away. Emilie was trying to stay calm through the pain.
What did my lovely Bianca do in the mean time? She was signing "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream". My first reaction was to yell at her to shut up, but at the same time, how can you be angry when you sexy naked girlfriend is smiling and visibly having the time of her life?
Eventually, Jake and I gave up and let the current carry us. It was a major disappointment but we had another test to approach: using the barbecue.
At first, Jake tried to follow Bianca's suggestions but after a few minutes of arguing, she took command, installed it safely, lighted it and even cooked us a wonderful supper consisting of half a hot dog sausage each in a half coconut shell, cut in small pieces and mixed it with some ketchup and of course, pieces of mango and coconut.
It was a weird mix of flavour, but since we had to conserve our reserves, it was perfect. More importantly, it was prepared with a lot of love and attention to the look, something we were beginning to lose focus of.
By the time we finished our meal, we could no longer even see the atoll, attesting that we were indeed moving, but at a slower pace than we had hoped.
At the same time however, we realized that our sail was slowly getting filled by the gentle evening breeze. Perhaps there had simply not been enough wind when we set course and now, we had the impression of slowing gaining speed, helped by Jake's paddling.
I tried to help him, but I didn't feel like I had that much energy left in me and I was slowly beginning to feel cold, preferring to get close to Bianca.
We all watched the sunset and soon enough, the three girls decided it was better to simply all cuddle together for warmth, with Jake joining us once he grew tired of paddling.
I know, you will probably think that in my dirty mind, I saw the opportunity to cuddle the naked past object of my desires in a weak moment, but I will be perfectly honest with you.
Despite all my past horniness, that moment, on the raft, with Emilie and Bianca, was filled with pure innocence. We weren't attractive girls naked for a sexual reason. We were more like kids camping outside under a tent during a sleepover.
It's only later that I really understood naturism intellectually, but that evening, my emotions were perfectly aligned. I understood that nudity and sexuality were two different intersecting concepts.
You could have sex with some of your clothes on and you could be naked with other nude people without being in a sexually charged atmosphere.
I wouldn't say it was the same thing as if we were cuddled with our clothes on, because there was definitely an intimate mood, but it wasn't a couple's intimacy. It was the intimacy that could be shared between a mother and her daughter or the calm reassuring hug that your best friend could give you after scrapping your knee from a fall.
Bianca whispered in my ears to sleep: she would stay awake to watch over us and would wake me up to replace her. It was a rare occasion to see her take charge on something important, so I let be. Perhaps this was just an as important mind opening experience for her and I didn't want to ruin it.
I wouldn't say I fell asleep quickly, but it certainly didn't take a long time. I had very weird dreams I still remember vividly about walking naked in a field of tall sunflowers, lost and afraid of not being able to find my way while hearing Bianca sing with a beautiful voice to calm me down and show me the way.
I guess I wasn't fully asleep, because Bianca later admitted was indeed signing in a low voice to keep herself awake.
But it wasn't my girlfriend that woke me up. It was the approaching boat.
We were all standing up excited when we realized that a small motorized boat was approaching. Well, not all of us since Emily couldn't stand on her feet, but she did look up.
It didn't even cross our mind that we were all naked. We just wanted to get home. We had been naked for so long now I guess it was our new natural state.
When a flashlight was pointed in our direction, we waved and motioned to get closer. When the boat finally stopped its small motor, we saw it was longboat filled with what appeared to be bricks wrapped in brown paper. Two men were aboard, one in the front with the flashlight and another one at the back manning the motor.
We quickly realized they were armed with AK-47s and we all panicked.
"Do you have a problem folks? You're all naked on a home made raft in the middle of nowhere"
Jake spoke, the rest of us were too terrified.
"Our sailboat was stolen as well as our clothes and most of our things. Can you help us?"
"I wish we could, we are sailors and the code says we should try to save you, but where we are going, they will kill you if you are in our boat. We have a rather sensitive cargo."
"Can you find a way to help us anyway?"
The man in the back picked up a container of water, drank a sip, passed it to his colleague who also drank before giving it to Jake.
We thanked them and each drank a little water as their boat left, our first contact with civilization since the "Alizee Wind" was stolen. At least, they were kind and didn't use their weapons for hurting us.
I was restless so I decided to do my watch, letting everyone else get back to sleep. I admit it, I ate a mango and I drank a little more water, but I needed something to stay awake.
The pale moon light gave me a good view of my three friends sleeping close together but I couldn't see any piece of land on the horizon or even hear anything over the sound of the waves, of the wind and of the raft moving on the water.
I did stick my foot in the ocean a few times, only to realize that we were indeed moving. Each time, it took me a long time to reheat myself in the icy wind but my anxiety demanded it.
Emily woke up from a dream, a recurring theme on a raft it appears, and I left her in charge as I spooned my sleeping girlfriend who was already spooning Jake for warmth.
I am not sure I really slept but I didn't feel the time pass. I guess you can count that as sleeping.
Once again, we were awakened in surprise, this time of a more catastrophic nature: We hid a rock and the raft slip in multiple pieces.
We were yelling and panicking as we each tried to hold on to something as, in almost complete darkness caused by big clouds now obscuring the night sky , everything we had was sinking into the water.
The barbecue was gone. The umbrella turned mast was gone. The metal frame holding the logs was mostly underwater. Some of the logs were still next to us but the majority was already drifting away, or worse, hitting us with the waves.
The water container from the drug runners was still in Emily's right hand, which was itself wrapped over a log. Bianca was holding to the same log but Jake was sitting on the top of the rock we hit, trying to grab the log to prevent us from drifting apart.
I was myself swimming toward the log in question, not having successfully grabbed anything yet. I could hear Emily panicking and Jake grunting as he tried to pull the log toward him.
I saw the floating ice box drifting away but I missed it before it disappeared into the night.
I quickly got to the salvation log and recognized it as coming from my own tree. I could see my sawing marks staring right into my face as I approved it and finally grabbed it, ensuring that at least the three girls wouldn't get separated during the wreck.
Jake managed to pull the log close enough to the rock to try and lift it, so I moved toward him with Bianca so the three of us could pull it to safety, giving us time to regroup.
Soon enough, the four of us were sitting on the uncomfortable rock, passing the bottle of water to help us stay hydrated. We didn't know if we were far from the island, but it was clear we had to wait until the morning before swimming to safety.
Emily explained that she saw the rock at the last minute and that she grabbed the water as a reflex, but didn't have time to warn us.
Jake tried to reassure us. "If there is a rock, land must be close. There aren't any rocks in the middle of the ocean. We must be a few hundred feet from the land at most. We'll have the log to help us stay together and afloat."
Our eyes could make up what seemed like a land mass not far from us, but in the darkness, we judged it wise to wait for the sun rise.
Bianca sang to keep us, or even just herself, calm, and Jake kept looking at that shape we could see more and more as the horizon behind it began to get lighter, indicating morning.
A few minutes later, an expedition was underway: the four of us were clinging to our sole possession we had managed to keep from the atoll, the piece of log salvaged in the shipwreck.
Emily was unable to swim with her pain so she sat on the log itself and held the water container to relieve us from thirst.
We left the safety of our rock to gently swim toward what was more clearly appearing to be an inhabited island.
Not only could we see a beach, we could even see boats and in the distance, buildings. One of our logs was eventually visible on the beach with a few of our coconuts which had drifted in the night.
The sun was still low over the horizon when we set foot on civilized ground.
Emilie was in no shape to walk and no one wanted to be left alone, so we got split up in two groups once more: Bianca stayed with Emilie on the beach while Jake and I could try to get some help.
Near the marina the office was still closed with no one around to help us. There was no public pay phone anywhere. Don't you hate the cellphone era?
We walked toward the "city", if you can call a few houses a city, and realized that there was no store, no police station and no commercial areas.
This was most likely a fisher town and as such, we had to resort to knock on private house doors.
The first few didn't even say anything, as if they were empty. The fourth house simply yelled at us "Leave us alone". Eventually, an elderly man opened his door with a shot gun and looked surprised to see us.
"Go away perverts", he simply yelled before closing the door.
Almost the same encounter repeated itself two more times, each time with an older man with a shotgun or a hunting rifle calling us names and slamming the door in our face.
We yelled to call the police, but no one acknowledged us. We had the impression of having fallen into an ghost town straight out of a horror movie.
We eventually gave up and joined our girlfriends on the beach, announcing the bad news.
We drank another round of water as morale was at it's lowest. Even Bianca had stopped smiling and was rather worried.
We had reached civilization but were not still out of the woods. The island wasn't big enough to have a second village but we were able to see a bigger island on the horizon and wondered if we shouldn't simply swim toward it.
With Emilie still hurt and the unknowns of the open water, we decided to simply wait until later in the morning. Perhaps someone would be kind enough to help us.
For the third time since we arrived at the atoll, it was the sound of a motor from a small boat which interrupted our thoughts. We looked around and noticed that from the bigger island, a boat was approaching.
As it got closer, we noticed that it was a police boat and Jake and I ran to the marina dock to wave at it. Finally, the authorities were here!
When the boat accosted, one of the three officers jumped out with his gun drawn, ordering us to place our hands on our head.
Fortunately, they helped Emily with her injury and on the boat, let her hands free. Towels were placed on our naked bodies to hide our nudity.
None of the officers wanted to talk. Bianca and I tried, one after the other, to explain the situation but it was clear they didn't want to hear us. Eventually, we were even told to keep quiet.
Back on the bigger island, we were docked next to a police station and other police boats were moored to the dock. It was still early in the morning but there was some activity.
In the station, Jake, Bianca and I were led to an empty interrogation room where orange jumpsuits were waiting for us. We were un-cuffed and we all dressed back but were worried about Emily.
Bianca seemed almost disappointed to put the jump suit, but perhaps it was simply because she didn't like the color.
As soon as we were dressed, an older black man wearing plain clothes joined us and introduced himself as Lieutenant Grover.
The lieutenant said: "If I were to show you a map, could you point to the atoll in question?"
Jake agreed and soon, a police officer in uniform was unrolling a map on the table.
After looking for a few minutes, Jake found the atoll in question and pointed to it, immediately asking "Now, where is my wife?"
"Emily Jackson has been send to the hospital to treat her wound. You will be able to see her shortly."
"She told you her name?", Jake replied.
The police officer simply placed on the table three American passports. He opened them and we were able to see that they were our passports. "We already gave Emily her passports for the hospital admittance."
"How did you get our passports?", I asked.
It was odd to hear the Lieutenant refer to the boat as a She, but we were all relieved to hear they had our things.
Jake asked: "Why were we arrested?"
"We had to be sure. There is a lot of drug smuggling around"
Eventually, we were brought ton of paperwork to review and were told to read everything but we were also told that our consulate asks us not to sign anything until a representative comes by.
We were led to the boat, where we were allowed to each change but not to take anything else. Jake also had to pick clothes for Emily. The thieves had apparently not taken anything, including our wallets and the GPS. It appears they did a theft of opportunity and that they had not pre-planned their act.
Once we were ready, a police car sent us to the hospital where Emily was still waiting to get seen by a doctor. Jake helped her change in a bathroom while Bianca and I took the opportunity to talk in private.
"What a vacation!", I simply said.
"Yeah, best ever", Bianca replied, surprising me.
"Yeah. I felt so alive. Last night on the raft, with all of your asleep, I felt free for the first time in my life. It's hard to describe. I never realized it before but I always lived for others. I dress for others, I decorate for others, I acts for others. Stay quiet Bianca, hold your head up high Bianca, think of that the others will think, Bianca. For the first time, I felt like I wasn't hearing my mother nagging into my ears. I felt like I was myself. I want to do that again"
"You want to build another raft?"
"We could go camping at a naturist campground, would that work?"
"Sure. I don't mind. I want to live. I don't want to remain the nagging bitch I used to be or the empty headed bimbo I was when I kept the nagging in check. I want to push my limits. I think I always forced myself to be the perfect little girl and that included sometimes acting like a bitch and other times to not care about anything"
"You weren't that bad Bianca"
Jake and Emilie came back and soon enough, Emilie received a proper orthopedic boot to help her ankle heal. I think Jake had to pay upfront for the treatment but now that he add his insurance papers and credit card, it wasn't a problem.
We met the embassy man who helped us fill in the police papers and who confirmed that we would be available to leave as soon as everything was signed.
Within 6 hours, we were back on our boat, hesitant as to what we would do.
Jake commented that we still had 2 days left on our vacation time and that one had to be used to get back home. After a long discussion and a stop at the grocery store, we simply decided to take the long route home and slowly get back to Miami.
The four of us enjoyed more time nude on the sailboat, as if nothing had ruined our vacation. In a way, Bianca was right. We were completely out of touch of civilisation for a few days, and that was the best vacation one could hope for.
We arrived a little early in Miami and returned the boat to the leasing agency. Each couple retrieved it's own car and we soon began the long drive home.
Bianca was surprisingly silent, as if she was lost in her thoughts but I couldn't blame her: we went through a lot together and formed a bond with another couple which we hoped would never break.
Over the next few days, nudity became more or less the norm at home, as if we were trying to recapture the mood of that fateful week.
We began seeing more often Jake and Emilie, who healed perfectly by the way. Hanging out with them at either of our places usually occurred in the nude.
Bianca and I went back with them on their cruise the next year, but it wasn't as magical. Instead, on the following vacations, we picked a naturist resort not far from our city and lived in a rented tent, cooking our meals over a fire.
Thanks to the new laws, Bianca and I got married, at the naturist resort, with Jake and Emilie as our witnesses.
We are happy and even have kids now, but we'll never forget those few days on the deserted beach which changed our lives.