She took a deep breath, inhaling a little spindrift along the way, and sneezed. It knocked her off balance and she slipped on a deck that rejoiced in maintaining a surface halfway between ice and slime. "Shit!" she yelled, and caught at the railing on her way down. Her hip hit hard, the rubberized plastic of her rain gear caught and almost tore. She was back on her feet in an instant.

An unfriendly grin split the bearded face of the deck boss. Kate flipped him off, and he gave a short bark of laughter. "I'm going to grab something to eat!" she yelled over the sound of the waves.

He shrugged and gave a grudging nod. She groped hand over hand across the tilting deck to the galley's starboard door and fought her way inside. The boat heeled over into the down side of a swell and Kate waited, bracing herself against the bulkhead, until the Avilda righted herself and began a swing in the opposite direction. Using the listing motion as impetus she staggered across the galley floor, barely catching the handle of a cupboard with one wildly flailing hand. Drawing herself upright, she reached in and pulled out a box of Cheerios. Great. Oat bran. Just what she needed, food the manufacturer swore wouldn't give her cancer, might even in fact cure it. At the moment developing a nice little inoffensive cancer somewhere on dry land seemed infinitely preferable to what she was grimly convinced was soon to be her death by drowning way too far out at sea.

But they were the first edible thing that came to hand, they were calories, so far as she knew there were no moose steaks on board, and in the prevailing seas she wouldn't have been able to keep a frying pan on the stove long enough to cook them anyway.