The sea can freeze solid enough to crush a wooden hull into kindling long before the morning rescue boats can even clear the ice from their own glass windows.
The tiny glass thermometer hanging outside the harbor master office window was dropping so fast that you could practically see the silver line shrinking down toward the bottom of the tube. Sarah Vance stood close to the woodstove, her hands wrapped around a tin mug of boiling water as she listened to the unusual, sharp cracking sounds echoing from the water down below. The front door flew open with a violent bang, and a local fisherman named Robert stumbled inside, his wool cap completely covered in a white sheet of hard frost.
"Sarah, you need to get down to the stone breakwater this very second!" Robert shouted, his voice crackin
