BY FEBRUARY THEY HAD launched Celia’s boat and Alejandro had settled on a final sea-farming model. It featured columns of scallop lantern nets and mussel socks, which were anchored by oyster cages on the sea floor. The whole thing was tied together with line, from which grew hanks of glistening kelp.
Alejandro seemed pleased with the design, pleased with the whole setup, and the intensity of those few months of experimentation had subsided. He was once again coming in for dinner at 6 p.m., pouring himself a mug of coffee and a mug of wine, and sitting down at the kitchen table, eyes twinkling and beard twitching: the peasant farmer, at peace in his home.
Shortly after the launch, Alejandro and Berg took out the Darr. She was a twenty-one-foot-long keel sloop, a stout double-ender with a six-foot beam. Alejandro had planked her with red cedar and pepperwood and he was very proud of her stern, which he considered one of the most difficult things he’d ever built. She was named after Harold Darr, an old cabinetmaker who used to live in Talinas. Harold was blind, stone blind, but Alejandro said he built beautiful cabinets.
“His hands were like living creatures,” he said to Berg. “They were always exploring the world around him, feeling, seeing for him.”
They tacked their way out of the mouth and headed north toward the ARC radio towers. The towers were the last remnants of one of the first transoceanic radio stations, Alejandro explained. For many years they served as the basis of ship-to-shore communications, broadcasting news bulletins, weather reports, and other information. Their last point-to-point service had been closed in 1973 and was, coincidentally, a connection with Tahiti.
As Alejandro explained these things, Berg sat with his back to the mast, looking out at the hills. It was a clear winter day and the coastal ridge was vivid and green. Thin streams of fresh water trickled over the cliffsides, down the beach, and out into the ocean, where a lone fishing boat idled near the shore, its outriggers spread wide like the wings of an insect.
“Uffa told me he’s thinking about heading out to New York for a little while,” Berg said.
“I heard that,” Alejandro said, nodding once.
“He’s doing it because of Demeter, obviously.”
“Uffa is never shy about following his heart,” Alejandro said. “A few years ago he flew to Italy to meet up with a girl who he’d done acid with, once, at a party on New Year’s Eve at the Dance Palace. She was passing through Talinas, traveling up and down the coast. Uffa really fell for her and they had this months-long romantic e-mail correspondence and then he decided to fly all the way to Rome, where she lived, to see her. Spent all his savings. Didn’t work out in the end. But I expect Uffa to come and go in that fashion. That is his way and we’ve reached an understanding about it.”
Alejandro eased the main and began to reach toward Bend Rock. They were getting closer to land now and, along the shore, Berg could see surfbirds and black turnstones and wandering tattlers. The ocean swells were green like old copper. Way out, on the curved lip of the horizon, he could see the Slide Islands.
“You ever sail out there?” Berg said, nodding toward the islands.
“Many times,” Alejandro said, breathing deeply through his nose.
“Garrett says it gets real rough.”
“Yes, you have to make sure to give the islands plenty of sea room. Many years ago, I got caught in a gale out there. It was foolish. I was very young. We had been out on the water for a few days, not keeping very good track of the weather. By nighttime the storm was upon us and we decided to heave to, instead of continuing onward toward the bar, where we would have had trouble. We were in an old Tancook Whaler, which is normally a good heavy weather boat, but for whatever reason, that night, it kept yawing or pitching into the wind. The seas were very heavy, the wind probably sixty knots. The masts were shaking so much I thought they’d snap the stays.”
He paused to adjust the mainsheet. In the distance Berg could hear the sound of the water battering the rocks.
“It was my own fault, really,” Alejandro continued. “When we’d built this Tancook, I’d recommended increasing the draft, but I hadn’t made any adjustments to the rudder. It wasn’t a problem in ordinary conditions, but with such high waves and so little headway, we lacked the surface area to force the hull to the wind. Eventually we were able to heave to, after we brought out more sail. And that was when the really big seas started to come. We went down below, is what I remember, and we were sitting down there, watching the sea through the window, when the boat was picked up and pitched end over end. The cabin revolved, gravity reversed, thousands of things fell down to the ceiling, including myself. I remember sitting on the ceiling, looking up at the floorboards and then looking over at the companionway, which was closed but still leaking water, and thinking that I was probably going to die.
“But the boat righted itself,” Alejandro continued, “with the help of another wave. We tried to head in after that. We ran warps off the stern and headed for the bar. I was very scared. Very scared and very wet and very cold. It was hours of sailing, and it was completely dark. I traded off with Orhan in one-hour watches. I had been in gales with my father, of course, but I’d never capsized like that. Knowing that the boat had already capsized once, that… that changed me. I hadn’t thought it was possible to capsize that thing. We’d sailed it to the Slide Islands scores of times. We thought it was invincible. That’s why we rarely even checked the weather before we went out. If we encountered weather, so be it—that just made it more of an adventure.”
They were almost at Bend Rock now. On a nearby beach, several sea lions were tanning themselves in the sun.
“That reminds me of a line from Szerbiak’s book,” Berg said.
Alejandro stiffened, seemed to drift somewhere far away, out of his body.
“Much more courage is required of the once defeated,” Berg said.
Alejandro said nothing for a moment, and then he nodded.
“That’s quite true,” he said.