7.14.17

After all these months, the sailboat is home to port.  Don and a friend spent yesterday morning sailing her up from dry dock storage in Dayton, 25 miles down the lake.  She started out under sail, spent some time propelled by the motor, then back under full sail while I watched from the dock and they brought her into the mooring ball.   It really was just grand.

I am pretty much back to port myself, one week after the Whidbey celebration.  There was one day this week in which the heat wave released its grip and I was home alone all day to relish in it.  I hung sheets on the clothesline in a coolish breeze, washed dishes while a mother robin zoomed back and forth under the porch eave, and watched hummingbirds alight on the flowers in the window box.  A spotted Bambi came walking up the grass with his mother.  I puttered at my chores, listening only to the lapping waves and birdsong out the doors and windows.  Everyone should have a day like that to transition from a holiday.

When it gets cooler this evening, I’ll have my own maiden voyage on the Coup de Vent.  I’ve had a walkabout, seeing how it is to move around the boat whilst holding on to life lines, and a tiny introduction to the dizzying array of nautical terms for parts and functions I must come to understand.  All the people in my life know that I would be content to gaze out at her, just tethered to the mooring ball, with sunlight shining on her bow in the morning, and golden drops of water dripping from the line at sunset.  But, I’d like to be a sailor….      

“I’d like to be a sailor – a sailor bold and bluff, Calling out, ‘Ship ahoy!’ in manly tones and gruff. I’d learn to box the compass, and to reef and tack and luff; I’d sniff and sniff the briny breeze and never get enough. Perhaps I’d chew tobacco, or an old black pipe I’d puff, But I wouldn’t be a sailor if The sea was very rough.”       

C J Dennis