The Wandering Island Factory by TR Nowry Page A

I'm too tired to think about something like this, right now."
    He tempered his excitement and frustration with his calmest voice, "I've made up my mind on this, Gina. I. . . I just don't think I can stay here. But, I'm very much in love with you. I don't want to leave you, and I don't want to leave your family in a lurch by just selling my car and disappearing one night. I want you all to come with me. I think we can do this, I really do. I'd like to leave this spring." He had clearly upset her, so he cut his argument short. "There are plenty of cities and towns that are hundreds of feet or more above sea level. I can google you a list of them after work, but I'm sure at least one of them we can call home." But telling a surfer girl to live inland was a tough sell. "Gina, Gina Gina. . . Gina. I—" but he just kissed her instead. "When it isn't just the very rich who see their oceanfront homes wash away, but when it's happening to everyone, that's when it'll be too late. Come with me this spring. Just, just think about it."
    They cuddled for a while until she fell asleep, and he got up for work.

[Chapter 14]
    Jason was working fourteen-hour days when his car finally sold that spring. The family held a yard sale that weekend and sold Gina's Honda a few days later. All the overtime he had been putting in let him put a down payment on the boat months ago and have it paid off before the ad for his Yaris was even placed in the local paper.
    Nobody in her family wanted to leave, but they couldn't afford to stay without his income, and they were all smart enough to know he was right about the waterlogged writing on the wall.
    The 'boat' consisted of one main floating slab, a little bigger than a flatbed tractor-trailer, with a steel shipping sea-box as the living space. Two outriggers prevented it from flipping in bad weather while providing a wide and stable platform for the sail.
    Inside the box were the simplest accommodations, one bathroom, a tiny kitchen, and several crudely cut windows. Above the box was a small closet-sized room that contained all the riggings for steering and controlling the parasail and rudder. It was the simplest of simple, but that didn't mean it was easy. It was all manually controlled, bicycle pedals and gears made wrestling the mammoth sail and large rudder difficult, but possible. It featured an electric assist, but the three car batteries were drained within the first four days, and the propeller-style charger off the stern could only keep up demand when the boat was moving faster than twenty knots, which it rarely did.

    Fortunately, Nathan knew a lot about parasailing, their main method of motion; he just wasn't used to this scale.

    Their first week at sea, Jason couldn't stop smiling. He was on his own mini wandering-island. But that excitement quickly wore off.

    Gina cranked on the fishing line as she wrestled a young shark to the stern where Ava readied the sword-like harpoon. The youngest sister hesitated as it twisted and tried to keep up with the speeding boat, but she plunged the blade into its back like a seasoned pro. Pulled onboard, it flopped briefly before Gina lobbed off its head in a single swing. The head and guts would be kept for bait, but the rest would make a fine dinner. And just in time, too.
    The boat was moving slower than expected, averaging less than ten knots an hour, and they needed to supplement their meager food supplies. Fortunately, ten gallons of kerosene would let them cook every day for a year, if needed, but they planned for only a month, two at the most, and most of their cooking needs were met by a solar oven. They had gone through all their canned meats and soups and were down to their stocks of dried rice, beans, peas, and a few bags of flour. Nobody would starve, but everyone was sick and tired of rice and beans.
    Worst of all, they were down to their last carton of smokes. And unfortunately, everyone in this family smoked.
    GPS put them on course, but far