Billy has a failing ice machine and a twelve hundred mile drive ahead of him. He’ll be heading in while the rest of the fleet is still in mid-trip, and he’ll make port just as they’re finishing up. He’s two weeks out of synch. Ultimately, one could blame some invisible contortion of the Gulf Stream for this: The contortion disrupts the swordfish, which adds another week or two to the trip, which places the Andrea Gail on the Flemish Cap when she should already be heading in. The circumstances that place a boat at a certain place at a certain time are so random that they can’t even be
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