It was a bright sunny afternoon with a fresh breeze blowing from the northeast. The small sloop was
making a series of very short tacking maneuvers as it made its way gingerly up the narrow channel.
The forest marched down the steep rocky hillsides to abruptly meet the sea below on both shores. The
tiny but sturdy craft was tossed precariously by the rip tides created in the close waterway. The sole
occupant reset her grip on the tiller and brought the sloop around in yet another tack headed toward a
little niche in the eastern shoreline. She was kneeling in the boat's compact
cockpit watching carefully ahead for any
telltale clues on the water that dangerous rocks lay just out of sight below the surface. She held her
course on a starboard tack until she was just past a rocky spur which broke the forest cover and
actually spilled over into the sea.
When she was about eighty yards from the shoreline she abruptly swung the boat head to the wind
bringing it to an almost dead stop in the water. After loosing the sheets on both her jib and
mainsails, she quickly scrambled to the bow and let her anchor line out till she felt the anchor touch
bottom. She then expertly continued to pay out enough of the line to properly set the anchor, allowing
for both safe swinging room as the wind might shift and the expected change of depth as the tides came
and went.
She had been so occupied with the Business of sailing her small sloop, that she had not noticed that
she had an audience.
A tall slim young man in blue jeans, T-shirt and black leather bomber style jacket was sitting on the
rocky spur smiling with open admiration at the sailing skill of the woman skipper on the neat little
sloop. As she stood from securing the anchor and started to lower and tie down her sails, he arose and
quickly walked back up into the trees behind him. So she never knew that her arrival had been noted.
When the sloop was secured to her satisfaction, Katherine went below and put a tiny kettle on the
single burner in the diminutive galley. As she waited for the water to boil, she pulled a thick dog-
eared ring binder out of a shelf to the left of the companionway and opened it to the last entry. This
book served a dual purpose as a ship's log and personal journal. She noted her time of arrival and
location of the tiny sheltered anchorage, the weather which was close to perfection for a sailor and a
personal note that this seemed a great spot in which to write and create.