“We’ll find an empty mooring, and tie up for a few minutes,” Jerry said. “I don’t think that anyone will mind. I want to show you the method we’ll use most of the time for getting under way.” He pointed to the anchorage area, or “holding ground,” as it was called, and Sandy noticed several blocks of painted wood floating about. They had numbers, and some had small flags on them. “Those are moorings,” Jerry explained. “They’re just permanent anchors, with floats to mark the spot and to hold up the end of the mooring line. Every boat owner has his own mooring to come in to. The people who own these empty moorings are probably out sailing for the day, and we won’t interfere if we use one for a while.”
Easing back on the oars, they let the sloop lose momentum and came to a natural stop near one of the moorings. They transferred the bow line from the dinghy to the mooring and made the sloop fast in its temporary berth. Then they climbed back on board and tied the dinghy behind them. Jerry explained that a long enough scope of line should be left for the dinghy so as to keep it from riding up and overtaking the sloop, as accidents of this sort have been known to damage the bow of a fragile dinghy.
This done, Jerry busied himself by unlashing the boom and the rudder to get them ready to use, while Sandy went below for the sail bags. These were neatly stacked in a forward locker, each one marked with the name of the type of sail it contained. He selected the ones marked “main” and “jib,” as Jerry had asked him to, and brought them out into the cockpit.
Making the mainsail ready to hoist, Sandy quickly got the knack of threading the sail slides onto the tracks on the mast and the boom. He worked at this while Jerry made the necessary adjustments to the halyards and fastened them to the heads of the sails. When this job was done, Sandy slid the foot of the sail aft along the boom, and Jerry made it fast with a block-and-tackle arrangement which was called the “clew outhaul.”
“Now,” Jerry said, when they had finished, “it’s time to hoist the mainsail!”
“What about the mooring?” Sandy asked. “Don’t you want me to untie the boat from it first?”
“Not yet,” Jerry answered. “We won’t do that until we’re ready to go.”
“But won’t we start going as soon as we pull up the mainsail?” said Sandy, puzzled.
“No,” Jerry said. “Nothing will happen when we hoist the sail. It’s like raising a flag. The flag doesn’t fill with wind and pull at the flagpole like a sail, does it? It just points into the wind and flutters. That’s just what the mainsail will do. You see, the boat is already pointing into the wind, because the wind has swung us around on the mooring. You look around and you’ll see that all the boats out here are heading in the exact same direction, toward the wind. When we hoist the sail, it’ll act just like a flag, and flap around until we’re ready to use it. Then we’ll make it do what we want it to by using the jib and controlling its position with the sheets. Look.”
Jerry hauled on the main halyard, and the sail slid up its tracks on the mast, squeaking and grating. As it reached the masthead, it fluttered and bellied loosely in the wind, doing nothing to make the boat move in any direction. Motioning to Sandy to take his place tugging at the halyard, Jerry jumped down into the cockpit.
The halyard ran from the pointed head of the sail up through a pulley at the top of the mast, then down to where Sandy was hauling on it. Below his hands, it passed through another pulley near Sandy’s feet, then back along the cabin roof. Jerry, from his position in the cockpit, grabbed the end of the halyard and hauled tight, taking the strain from Sandy. Then he tied it down to a wing-shaped cleat on the cabin roof near the cockpit.
This was done with a few expert flips of the wrist. The mainsail was up, and tightly secured.
“There,” Jerry said. “Now we’re almost ready. We won’t move at all until we get the jib up, and even then we won’t move unless we want to. When we want to, we’ll untie from the mooring and get away as neat as you please.”
They then took the jib out of its sail bag and made ready to hoist it. Instead of securing to the mast with slides on a track the way the mainsail had, the jib had a series of snaps stitched to its forward edge. These were snapped around the steel wire forestay, a part of the standing rigging that ran from the bow of the boat to a position high up on the mast. The jib halyard was fastened to the head of the jib, the snaps were put in place, and a few seconds of work saw the jib hanging in place, flapping before the mast. Then Jerry asked Sandy to pick up the mooring that they had tied to, and to walk aft with it.
“When you walk aft with the mooring,” Jerry explained, “you actually put some forward motion on the boat. Then, when you get aft and I tell you to throw the mooring over, you put the bow a little off the wind by doing it.”
Sandy untied the bow line from the mooring, and walked to the stern of the boat, holding the mooring float as he had been told. Then, when Jerry said “Now!” he threw the mooring over with a splash.
“With the jib flying and the boat free from the mooring and no longer pointing directly into the wind,” Jerry said, “the wind will catch the jib and blow our bow even further off. At the same time, I’ll steer to the side instead of straight ahead. As soon as our bow is pointing enough away from the wind, the breeze will strike our sails from one side, and they’ll start to fill. When the sails have caught the wind right, I’ll ease off on the rudder, and we’ll be moving ahead.”
By this time, the morning haze had “burned off” and the light breeze had freshened into a crisp, steady wind. As the head of the little sloop “fell away” from the direction from which the wind was coming, the sails swelled, the boat leaned slightly to one side, and a ripple of waves splashed alongside the hull. Sandy looked back and saw that the bow of the dinghy, trailing behind them, was beginning to cut a small white wave through the water.
“We’re under way!” Jerry cried. “Come on over here, skipper! You take the tiller and learn how to steer your boat while I handle the sails and show you what to do!”
Sandy slid over on the stern seat to take Jerry’s place, and held the tiller in the position he had been shown, while Jerry explained how to trim the sails and how to go where you wanted to go instead of where the wind wanted to take you.
“I’ll take care of the sail trimming,” Jerry said. “All you have to do is keep the boat heading on the course she’s sailing now. The wind is pretty much at our backs and off to the starboard side. You have to keep it that way, and especially keep the stern from swinging around to face the wind directly. It’s not hard to do. Just pick a landmark and steer toward it.”
He looked ahead to where a point of land jutted out some miles off the mainland. A lighthouse tower made an exclamation mark against the sky.
“Just steer a little to the right of that,” he said, “and we can’t go wrong.”
“What if the wind shifts?” Sandy asked. “How can we tell?”
Jerry pointed to the masthead, where a small triangular metal flag swung. “Just keep an eye on that,” he said. “It’s called a hawk, and it’s a sailor’s weathervane.”
“With one eye on the lighthouse and one eye on the masthead,” Sandy laughed, “I’m going to look awfully silly!”
He leaned back in the stern seat with the tiller tucked under his arm. The little sloop headed steadily for the lighthouse, steering easily. Every few seconds, Sandy glanced at the hawk to check the wind. He grinned and relaxed. He was steering his own boat! The sail towered tall and white against the blue sky above him and the water gurgled alongside and in the wake behind where the dinghy bobbed along like a faithful puppy.
“This is the life!” he sighed.
Jerry pointed out a handsome, white-hulled, two-masted boat approaching them. “Isn’t that a beauty?” he said. “It’s a ketch. On a ketch, the mainmast is taller than the mizzen. That’s how you tell the difference.”
“How do you tell the difference between the mainmast and the mizzen?” Sandy asked. “You’re going to have to start with the simplest stuff with me.”
“The mainmast is always the one in front, and the mizzen is always the one aft,” Jerry explained. “A ketch has a taller main; a schooner has a taller mizzen; a yawl is the same as a ketch, except that the mizzen is set aft of the tiller. Got it?”
Sandy shook his head and wondered if he would ever get all of this straight in his head. It was enough trying to learn the names of things on his own boat without worrying about the names of everything on other boats in the bay.
As the ketch sailed by, the man at her tiller waved a friendly greeting. The boys waved back and Sandy watched the big ketch go smoothly past, wondering how much harder it might be to sail a two-masted boat of that size than it was to sail a relatively small sloop such as his own. Certainly it could not be as simple as the sloop, he thought. Why this little sailboat was a whole lot easier than it had seemed to be at first. As a matter of fact....
“Duck your head!” Jerry yelled.
Not even stopping to think, Sandy dropped his head just in time to avoid being hit by the boom, which whizzed past barely a few inches above him! With a sharp crack of ropes and canvas, the sail filled with wind on the opposite side of the boat from where it had been a moment before, and the sloop heeled violently in the same direction. Jerry grabbed at the tiller, hauled in rapidly on the mainsheet, and set a new course. Then, calming down, he explained to Sandy what had happened.
“We jibed,” he said. “That means that you let the wind get directly behind us and then on the wrong side of us. The mainsail got the wind on the back of it, and the wind took it around to the other side of the boat. Because the sheets were let out all the way, there was nothing to restrain the sail from moving, and by the time it got over, it was going at a pretty fast clip. You saw the results!”
Jerry adjusted the mainsail to a better position relative to the wind, trimming it carefully to keep it from bagging, then he went on to explain. “A jibe can only happen when you’ve got the wind at your back. That’s called sailing downwind, or sailing before the wind, or running free. It’s the most dangerous point of sail, because of the chance of jibing. When the wind is strong, an uncontrolled jibe like the one we just took can split your sails, or ruin your rigging, or even snap your boom or your mast. Not to mention giving you a real bad headache if you’re in the way of that boom!”
“I can just imagine,” Sandy said, thinking of the force with which the boom had whizzed by. Then he added, “You said something about an ‘uncontrolled jibe,’ I think. Does that mean that there’s some way to control it?”
“I should have said an accidental jibe instead of an uncontrolled one,” Jerry said. “A deliberate or planned jibe is always controlled, and it’s a perfectly safe and easy maneuver. All you have to do is to haul in on the sheet, so that the boom won’t have any room for free swinging. Then you change your course to the new tack, let out the sail, and you’re off with no trouble.”
Sandy grinned. “I’m afraid that description went over my head as fast as the boom did—only a whole lot higher up!”
“Things always sound complicated when you describe them,” Jerry said, “but we’ll do a couple later, and you’ll see how it works.”
“Fine,” Sandy agreed. “But until we do, how can I keep from doing any more of the accidental variety?”
“The only way to avoid jibing,” Jerry replied, “is never to let the wind blow from the same side that the sail is set on. This means that if you feel the wind shift over that way, you have to alter your course quickly to compensate for it. If you don’t want to alter your course, then you have to do a deliberate jibe and alter the direction of the sail. All it means is that you have to keep alert at the tiller, and keep an eye on the hawk, the way I told you, so that you always know which direction the wind is blowing from.”
“I guess I was getting too much confidence a lot too soon,” Sandy admitted, shamefaced. “There’s obviously a lot more to this sailing business than I was beginning to think. Anyway, a jibe is one thing I won’t let happen again. I’ll stop looking at other boats for a while, and pay more attention to this one! There’s more than enough to look at here, I guess.”
Once more, Sandy cautiously took the tiller from Jerry. Then he grinned ruefully and said, “Just do me one favor, will you, Jerry?”
“Sure. What?”
“Just don’t call me ‘skipper’ any more. Not for a while, at least!”
“Just keep her sailing on this downwind course,” Jerry said. “Head for that lighthouse the way you were before, and keep an occasional eye on the hawk. As long as the wind isn’t dead astern, we shouldn’t have any more jibing troubles. As soon as we get out into open water, we’ll find an easier point of sail. We can’t do that until we’re clear of the channel, though. When we are, we’ll reach for a while, and then I’ll show you how to beat.”
“What’s reaching?” Sandy asked. “And what’s beating? And how do you know when we’re out of the channel into open water? And how do you even know for sure that we’re in the channel now? And how....”
“Whoa! Wait a minute! Let’s take one question at a time. A reach is when you’re sailing with the wind coming more from the side than from in front or from behind the boat. Beating is when the wind is more in front than on the side, and you have to sail into it. Beating is more like work than fun, but a reach is the fastest and easiest kind of a course to sail. That’s why I want to reach as soon as we’re out in open water where we can pick our direction without having to worry about channel markers.”
“How come reaching is the fastest kind of course to sail?” Sandy asked. “I would have guessed that sailing downwind with the wind pushing the boat ahead of it would be the fastest.”
“It sure seems as if it ought to work that way,” Jerry said with a grin. “But you’ll find that sailboat logic isn’t always so simple or easy. When you’re running free in front of the wind, you can only go as fast as the wind is blowing. When you’re reaching, you can actually sail a lot faster than the wind.”
“I’m afraid that I don’t understand that,” Sandy said. “How does it work?”
Jerry paused and thought for a minute. “You remember what Quiz said about the sailboat working like an airplane? Well, he made it sound pretty tough to understand, what with all his formulas and proportions, but actually he was right. A sail is a lot like an airplane wing, except that it’s standing up on end instead of sticking out to one side. Well, you know that the propellers on a plane make wind, and that the plane flies straight into that wind. You see, the wind that comes across the wing makes a vacuum on top of the wing surface, and the plane is drawn up into the vacuum. You get a lot more lift that way than if the propellers were under the wing and blowing straight up on the bottom of it.”
“I see that,” Sandy said. “And a propeller blowing under a wing would be pretty much the same as a wind blowing at the back of a sail. Right?”
“Right!” Jerry said, looking pleased with his teaching ability. “Now you have the idea. When you have a sail, like a wing standing up, the air that passes over the sail makes a vacuum in front and pulls the boat forward into it. Actually, the vacuum pulls us forward and to one side, the same as the wind from the propeller makes the plane go forward and up. We use the rudder and the keel to keep us going more straight than sideways.”
Sandy shook his head as if to clear away cobwebs. “I think that I understand now, but it’s still a little hazy in my mind. Maybe I’ll do better if you don’t tell me about the theory, and I just see the way it works.”
“Could be,” Jerry said. “There are lots of old-time fishermen and other fine sailors who have absolutely no idea of how their boats work, and who wouldn’t know a law of physics or a principle of aerodynamics if it sat on their mastheads and yelled at them like a sea gull! They just do what comes naturally, and they know the way to handle a boat without worrying about what makes it run.”
Still heading on their downwind course, they passed several small islands and rocks, some marked with lights and towers, some with bells or floating buoys. They seemed to slide by gracefully as the little sloop left the mainland farther behind in its wake.
“Before we get out of the channel,” Jerry said, “I want to show you some of the channel markers and tell you about how to read them. They’re the road signs of the harbors, and if you know what they mean and what to do about them, you’ll never get in any trouble when it comes to finding your way in and out of a port.”
He pointed to a nearby marker that was shaped like a pointed rocket nose cone floating in the water. It was painted a bright red, and on its side in white was painted a large number 4.
“That’s called a nun buoy,” Jerry told Sandy. “Now look over there. Do you see that black buoy shaped just like an oversized tin can? That’s called a can buoy. The cans and the nuns mark the limits of the channel, and they tell you to steer between them. The rule is, when you’re leaving a harbor, to keep the red nun buoys on your port side. That’s the left side. When you’re entering a harbor, keep the red nun buoys on your starboard side. The best way to remember it is by the three R’s of offshore navigating: ‘Red Right Returning.’”
Sandy nodded. “I understand that all right,” he said. “But what are the numbers for?”
“The numbers are to tell you how far from the harbor you are,” Jerry said. “Red nun buoys are always even-numbered, and black cans are always odd-numbered. They run in regular sequence, and they start from the farthest buoy out from the shore. For example, we just sailed past red nun buoy number 4. That means that the next can we see will be marked number 3, and it will be followed by a number 2 nun and a number 1 can. After we pass the number 1 can, we’ll be completely out of the channel, and we’ll have open water to sail in.”
“Do they have the same kind of markers everywhere,” Sandy asked, “or do you have to learn them specially for each port that you sail in?”
“You’ll find the same marks in almost every place in the world,” Jerry said. “But you won’t have to worry about the world for a long while. The important thing is that the marking and buoyage system is the same exact standard for every port in the United States and Canada.”
“What’s that striped can I see floating over there?” Sandy asked, pointing.
Jerry looked at the buoy. “That’s a special marker,” he answered. “All of the striped buoys have some special meaning, and it’s usually marked on the charts. They’re mostly used to mark a junction of two channels, or a middle ground, or an obstruction of some kind. You can sail to either side of them, but you shouldn’t go too close. At least that’s the rule for the horizontally striped ones. The markers with vertical stripes show the middle of the channel, and you’re supposed to pass them as close as you can, on either side.”
Another few minutes of sailing brought them past the last red buoy, and they were clear of the marked channel. From here on they were free to sail as they wanted, in any direction they chose to try.
For the next hour they practiced reaching. With the wind blowing steadily from the starboard side, the trim sloop leaned far to the port until the waves were creaming almost up to the level of the deck. Jerry explained that this leaning position, called “heeling,” was the natural and proper way for a sailboat to sit in the water. The only way that a boat could sail level, he pointed out, was before the wind. With the boat heeling sharply and the sails and the rigging pulled tight in the brisk breeze, Sandy really began to feel the sense of speed on the water, and understood what Jerry had told him about speed being relative.
After they had practiced on a few long reaches, Jerry showed Sandy how to beat or point, which is the art of sailing more or less straight into the wind.
“Of course you can’t ever sail straight into the wind,” Jerry said. “The best you can do is come close. If you head right into it, the sails will just flap around the way that they did when we were pointing into the wind at the mooring. You’ve got to sail a little to one side.”
“Suppose you don’t want to go to one side?” Sandy asked. “If the wind is blowing straight from the place you want to get to, what do you do about it?”
“You have to compromise,” Jerry replied. “You’ll never get there by aiming the boat in that direction. What you have to do is sail for a point to one side of it for a while, then come about and sail for a point on the other side of it for a while. It’s a kind of long zigzag course. You call it tacking. Each leg of the zigzag is called a tack.”
Sailing into the wind, they tacked first on one side, then on the other. Each time they came about onto a new tack, the mainsail was shifted to the other side of the boat, and the boat heeled in the same direction as the sail. The jib came about by itself, just by loosening one sheet and taking up on the other one. Soon Sandy was used to the continual shifting and resetting of the sails, and to the boom passing back and forth overhead.
Suddenly Sandy pointed and clapped Jerry on the shoulder with excitement. “Look!” he cried. “There’s a whole fleet of boats coming this way! They look just like ours! And they’re racing!”
Jerry looked up in surprise. “They sure are racing! And they are just like this one! I guess I was wrong when I said they didn’t race this kind of boat. This must be a local class, built to specifications for local race rules. Boy, look at them go! I was wrong about not racing them, but I sure was right when I said that she looked fast!”
The fleet of sloops swept past, heeling sharply to one side, with the crews perched on the high sides as live ballast, and the water foaming white along the low decks which were washed over completely every moment or so. The helmsmen on the nearest of the boats grinned at them and waved an invitation to come along and join the regatta, but neither Jerry nor Sandy felt quite up to sailing a race just yet.
As they watched their white-sailed sisters fly down the bay, Sandy felt for the first time the excitement that could come from handling a boat really well. He turned to his own trim craft with renewed determination to learn everything that Jerry could teach him, and maybe, in due time, a whole lot more than that.
The next few hours were spent in happily exploring Cliffport Bay and trying the sloop on a variety of tacks and courses to learn what she would do. Eventually, the sun standing high above the mast, they realized almost at the same time that it was definitely time for lunch.
Jerry took the helm and the sheet while Sandy went below to see what the boat’s food locker could supply. In a few minutes, he poked his head out of the cabin hatch and shook it sadly at Jerry. “It looks as if Uncle Russ didn’t think of everything, after all. There’s plenty of food all right, but there’s not a thing on board to drink. The water jugs are here, but they’re bone-dry, and I’m not exactly up to eating peanut butter sandwiches without something to wash them down!”
“Me either!” said Jerry, shuddering a little at the thought. “Of course, we could settle on some of the juice from the canned fruits I saw in there, but we haven’t taken on any ice for our ice chest, and that’s all going to be pretty warm. In any case, we ought to have some water on board. I think we’d better look for a likely place near shore where we can drop anchor. Then we can take the dinghy in to one of the beach houses and fill up our jugs.”
“Good idea,” Sandy agreed. “And that way we can eat while we’re at anchor, and not have to worry about sailing and eating at the same time.”
Several small islands not too far away had houses on them, and the boys decided to set a course for the nearest one. As they drew near, they saw a sunny white house sitting on the crest of a small rise about a hundred yards back from the water. Below the house, a well-protected and pleasant-looking cove offered a good place for an anchorage. A floating dock was secured to a high stone pier, from which a path could be seen leading up to the house. It looked like an almost perfect summer place, set in broad green lawns, with several old shade trees near the house and with a general atmosphere of well-being radiating from everything.
They glided straight into the little cove, then suddenly put the rudder over hard and brought the sloop sharply up into the wind. The sails flapped loosely, and the boat lost some of its headway, then glided slowly to a stop.
On the bow, Sandy stood ready with the anchor, waiting for Jerry to tell him when to lower it. As the boat began to move a little astern, backing in the headwind, Jerry told Sandy to let the anchor down slowly.
“You never drop an anchor, or throw it over the side. After all, you want the anchor to tip over, and to drive a hook into the bottom. It won’t do that if it’s just dropped.”
When Sandy felt the anchor touch the bottom, he pulled back gently on the anchor line until he felt the hook take hold. Then, leading the line through the fair lead at the bow, he tied it securely to a cleat on the deck.
Loosening the halyards, they dropped first the jib and then the mainsail, rolled them neatly, and secured them with strips of sailcloth, called stops. Jerry pointed out that it was not necessary to remove the slides and snaps. That way, he explained, it would only be a matter of minutes to get under way when they wanted to. With the last stop tied and the boom and the rudder lashed to keep them from swinging, the sloop was all shipshape at anchor, rocking gently on the swell about fifty yards from the end of the floating dock.
“Let’s row the dinghy in to the dock and see if we can find somebody on shore,” Jerry suggested. “Of course, with no boats in here, there might not be anyone on the island right now, but I think that I saw a well up by the house, and I’m sure that no one would mind if we helped ourselves to a little water.”
But Jerry was wrong on both counts. There was somebody on the island, and he looked far from hospitable. In fact, the tall man who came striding down the path to the float where the boys already had the dinghy headed was carrying a rifle—and, what was more, he looked perfectly ready to use it at any minute!
“Turn back!” he shouted, as he reached the edge of the stone pier. “Turn back, I tell you, or I’ll shoot that dinghy full of holes and sink it right out from under you!” He raised the rifle deliberately to his shoulder and sighted down its length at the boys.
“Wait a minute!” Sandy shouted back. “You’re making a mistake! We just need to get some water to drink! We don’t mean any harm!”
The man lowered his rifle, but looked no friendlier than before. “I don’t care what you want,” he called, “but you can just sail off and get it some other place! This is my island and my cove. They’re both private property, and you’re trespassing here! Now turn that dinghy around and get back to your sailboat and go!”
This speech finished, he raised his rifle to the firing position once more and aimed it at the dinghy.
“All right, mister!” Jerry yelled back at him. “We’ll get going! But when we get back to the mainland, you can bet that we’re going to report you to the Coast Guard for your failure to give assistance! I’m not sure what they can do about it, but they sure ought to know that there’s a character like you around here! Maybe they’ll mark it on the charts, so that sailors in trouble won’t waste their time coming in here for help!”
As the boys started to turn the dinghy about, they heard a shout from the man on the pier. “Wait a minute!” he called. “There’s no need to get so upset. I’m sorry—but I guess I made a mistake after all. Row on in to the float and I’ll get you some water.”
Not at all sure that they were doing the wisest thing, but not wanting to anger the strange rifleman by not doing what he had suggested, they decided to risk coming to shore. After all, Sandy reasoned, he hadn’t actually threatened to shootthem—just the dinghy—and he couldn’t do much more harm from close up than from where they were. Besides, both boys were curious about the man and his island. They rowed to the floating dock and made the dinghy fast to a cleat.
“I’m sorry, boys,” the man with the rifle said pleasantly. “It’s just that I’ve been bothered in the past by kids landing here for picnics and swimming parties when I’m not here. They leave the beach a mess, and one gang actually broke into the house once, and stole some things. That’s why I don’t like kids coming around. I thought you were more of the same, but I figured you were all right when you said that you’d report to the Coast Guard. Those other kids stay as far away from the Coast Guard and the Harbor Police as they can.”
He smiled apologetically, but as Sandy started to climb up from the dinghy to the floating dock, his expression hardened once more.
“I said that I’d get you some water,” he said, “but I didn’t invite you to come ashore and help yourselves to it. You just stay right where you are in that dinghy, and hand me up your water jars. I’ll fill them up for you, and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
More than a little puzzled, Jerry and Sandy handed up their two soft plastic gallon jugs. Their “host” took them under one arm, leaving the other hand free for his rifle which he carried with a finger lying alongside of the trigger. Without a word, the island’s owner walked off.
“I wonder what’s the matter with him,” Jerry said.
“I don’t know,” Sandy replied, “but whatever it is, we’d better do what he says, or something pretty bad might be the matter with us!”
Halfway up the path to the house, the tall man stopped, turned back, and looked hard at the boys before continuing on up the hill.
“Mind you do just what I said!” he shouted back over his shoulder. “You just stay in that dinghy, and don’t get any fancy ideas about exploring around. If I find you ashore, I’m still as ready as ever to use this gun!”
Unpredictable as the wind, the man was all smiles when he returned with the two jars filled with water. But he still had his gun.
“I’m glad to see you stayed put in your dinghy,” he said. “I kept an eye on you from the hill.” He handed down the plastic jugs to Sandy and added, “Sorry I acted so gruff, but you know how it is. I live all alone out here, and even though the island is only a little over a half mile from the mainland it’s a pretty isolated spot. I have to be careful of strangers. But I should have seen right away that you boys are all right.”
“Thanks,” said Sandy. “And thanks for filling our water jugs. We’re sorry we bothered you.”
They cast the dinghy free, rowed quickly back to the sloop and, as fast as they could manage it, raised the anchor, hoisted the sails and skimmed out of the cove. As they rounded the rocky point that marked the entrance to the cove, they looked back to where the island’s lone inhabitant was standing on the dock, watching them out of sight, his rifle still held ready at his hip.
“Boy, that’s a strange one!” Sandy said. “I wonder what he’s hiding on that island of his—a diamond mine?”
“You never can tell,” Jerry replied, “but it’s probably nothing at all. I guess the kind of man who would want to live all alone on an island away from people is bound to be pretty crazy about getting all the privacy he can. And as far as I’m concerned, he can have it. From now on, if we need anything, let’s head for the mainland!”
Dismissing the mysterious rifleman from their minds, they set out once more to enjoy the pleasures of a brisk wind, blue sky and a trim boat.
The afternoon went swiftly by as Sandy learned more and more about handling his boat, and about the boats they saw sailing near them. Jerry pointed out the different types of boats, explaining more fully than before that the ones with one mast were called sloops, the two-masted boats were called yawls, ketches and schooners. Telling one from the other was a matter of knowing the arrangement of masts. The ketches had tall mainmasts and shorter mizzens behind them. The yawls had even shorter mizzens, set as far aft as possible. Schooners, with taller mizzen than main, were relatively rare.
Jerry also pointed to varied types of one-masted boats. Not all of them, he told Sandy, were sloops, though most were. The sloops had their mast stepped about one third back from the bow. Cutters had their mast stepped nearly in the center of the boat. In addition, they saw a few catboats, with their single masts stepped nearly in the bows.
Learning all this, plus trying to absorb all that Jerry was telling him about harbor markers, sail handling, steering, types of sails and conditions under which each sail is used, Sandy found the time flying by. Almost before he realized it, the sun was beginning to set and the boats around them were all heading back up the channel to find their moorings and tie up for the night.
Everywhere they looked, the roadstead of Cliffport Bay was as busy as a highway. Sailboats of every description, outboard motorboats, big cabin cruisers, high-powered motor racers, rowboats, canoes, sailing canoes, kayaks, power runabouts, fishing excursion boats and dozens of other craft were making their way to shore.
The afternoon, which had started so brightly, had become overcast, and the sun glowed sullenly behind a low bank of clouds. The breeze which had been steady but light during the late afternoon hours, suddenly picked up force and became a fairly hard wind. It felt cold and damp after the hot day. Joining the homebound pleasure fleet, Sandy and Jerry picked their way through the now crowded harbor, back to Cliffport Boat Yard.
They arrived in a murky twilight, just a few minutes before the time when it would have become necessary for them to light the lanterns for the red and green running lights demanded by the International Rules of the Road.
The boys decided to drop anchor in the boat yard’s mooring area, rather than tow the boat back to the float where it had been tied. This would make it unnecessary to tow the sloop out again for the next day’s sailing, when they would start on the long trip home.
They dropped the sails, removed their slides and snaps on mast, boom and forestay, and carefully folded them for replacement in the sail bags. These were stowed below in their locker just forward of the cabin. Then Sandy and Jerry turned their attention to getting the boat ready for the night.
Sandy helped Jerry rest the boom in its “crutch,” a piece of wood shaped like the letterY, which was placed standing upright in a slot in the stern seat. This kept the boom from swinging loose when the boat was unattended, and thus protected both the boat, the boom and the rigging from damage. All the running gear was then lashed down or coiled and put away, the sliding cabin door and hatch cover were closed in place, and the sloop was ready to be left.
“That’s what’s meant by ‘shipshape,’” Jerry said with satisfaction.
As the boys rowed the dinghy back to the float, they felt the first fat drops of rain and they noticed how choppy the still waters of the bay had become. Jerry cast a sailor’s eye at the ominously darkening sky.
“That’s more than evening coming on,” he said. “Unless I miss my guess, we’re in for a good storm tonight. To tell you the truth, I’m glad we’re staying ashore!”
They lifted the dinghy from the water, turned it over on the float and placed the stubby oars below it. Then, picking up their sea bags, they ran for the shelter of the shed as the first torrential downpour of the storm washed Cliffport in a solid sheet of blinding rain.
Later that night, after a change of clothes, dinner, and a movie at Cliffport’s only theater, the boys sat on their beds in the hotel room and listened to the howling fury of the storm. Raindrops rattled on the windowpanes like hailstones, and through the tossing branches of a tree they could see the riding lights of a few boats in the harbor, rocking violently to and fro. As they watched, the wind sent a large barrel bowling down the street to smash against a light pole, bounce off and roll, erratic as a kicked football, out of sight around a corner.
“It’s a good thing we anchored out,” Jerry said, watching this evidence of the storm’s power. “The boat could really have gotten banged up against the float if we had tied it up where it was before!”
“Do you think it’ll be safe where it is now?” Sandy asked anxiously.
“Oh, a little wind and water won’t bother a good boat,” Jerry answered. “After all, it was made for wind and water! Still....” He scowled and shook his head doubtfully.
“Still what?” Sandy said with alarm. “Is there something wrong with the way we left it?”
“Not really,” Jerry said. “I’m just worried about one thing. We’re not tied to a permanent mooring, the way the other boats around here are. That means that we might drag anchor in a storm as bad as this one, and if we happen to drag into deep water where the anchor can’t reach the bottom, the boat could drift a long ways off until it hooked onto something again. And there’s always the chance that it could get washed up on the rocks somewhere, first!”
With this unhappy thought in mind, the boys stared out the window for some time in silence as the storm continued unchecked. Finally, knowing that worry couldn’t possibly help, and that a good night’s sleep would prepare them to meet whatever the morning would bring, they turned out the lights and went to bed.
But, for Sandy, bed was one thing—sleep was another. Although Jerry managed to drop off to slumber in no time, Sandy lay a long time awake staring at the shadows of the tossing tree on the ceiling of the hotel room.
His mind was full of the events of the crowded day. It had been quite a day, starting with the ride in his uncle’s sports car, and proceeding to the new boat and learning to sail. Then the mysterious man on the island, keeping guard with his ever-present rifle, and concluding with a night of powerful storm. He reviewed all this, and mixed with his recollection his new worries about the safety of his boat. A series of images crowded his mind—a vision of the smart sloop lying smashed against some rocky piece of shore was mingled with a memory of the pleasures of his first day of sailing; and somewhere, behind and around all of his thoughts, was the unpleasantly frightening memory of the man with the gun, waiting on his hermit’s island.
All of this mingled in his mind with the sound of the storm until Sandy slipped into an uncertain, restless sleep—a sleep filled with vague, shadowy dreams, connected only by a sense that somewhere, something was wrong.
The next morning, when Sandy and Jerry awoke, the storm that had lashed Cliffport had vanished as if it, too, had been a bad dream.
Cliffport’s Main Street, which fronted the bay, was washed clean, and sparkled in the bright morning light. The bay waters themselves even looked cleaner than before, freshly laundered blue and white, with silver points of sunlight sprinkled over their peaceful surface. It was, in short, a perfect sailing day, and the boys could hardly wait to get down to the boat yard to see if the sloop had ridden the storm at anchor.
They dressed hurriedly in their sailing clothes—blue jeans, sneakers and sweat shirts—and bolted breakfast in the hotel coffee shop. Then, sea bags slung over their shoulders, they raced down the street to the Cliffport Boat Yard, rounded the corner of the main shed and, at the head of the gangway, came to a stop.
Sandy felt a sick, sinking feeling as he scanned the mooring area, searching vainly for a sight of his sloop. But where she had ridden at anchor the night before, there was only a patch of calm blue water.
It hardly seemed possible that she wasn’t there. The storm, on this bright, sunny morning, seemed never to have happened. Other boats rode peacefully at their moorings, apparently untouched by the night’s wild work. Life in the boat yard and on the bay went on as if nothing had occurred. But Sandy felt as if it were the end of the world.
Slowly and silently, the boys walked down the gangway to where their dinghy lay like a turtle, unharmed. They anxiously scanned the bay on all sides, searching for a mast that might be theirs, but to no avail. Then Jerry straightened up and clapped Sandy on the shoulder.
“Come on,” he said. “There’s no use standing here moping. The only thing to do now is to take out the dinghy and start to hunt.”