Rachel and her best friend, Paul, spend long summer hours sailing the shoreline of their New England village in the pram her dad built for her. Sensing deep ties to a nautical past, she often pores over dusty volumes in the village library suggesting that a pirate queen with the same last name once paid frequent visits to their sleepy village. Although he teases her about such notions, Paul is a willing first mate. The pair secretly decides to celebrate arriving at age fifteen by sailing across a tricky stretch of water to an island just off the coast. Their gray-haired friend and mentor, Captain Jensen, has promised them the use of his eighteen-footer, Seawitch, although they get nowhere at all in extracting blind permission from their parents. On the foggy evening of their birthday party, they find themselves immersed in an adventure they hadnt planned on.