Stories

Days under sail

The day starts before anyone has decided what it’s for.

Someone is always up first. The kettle, the creak of the companionway, a halyard tapping the mast until it’s made fast. By the time the others surface the sail cover is off and the question isn’t whether to go, only which way.

Children learn a boat faster than adults do. They know which lines are for pulling and which are for leaving alone, where to sit when she heels, how long you can hang off the swim ladder before someone calls you in. Nobody teaches them this. They watch.

Lunch happens wherever it happens, at anchor or in the lee of somewhere nobody remembers the name of. The afternoon goes slower. Sunglasses pushed up, salt drying white on a sleeve, an argument about whose turn it is at the wheel that nobody really wants to win.

Coming back in, everyone is quieter. That’s how you know it was a good one.