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At the marina in Cherbourg, John threaded the Opel between rows of car abandoned by sailors eager to get onto their boats. He parked, and Philippe parked nearby. They all emerged from the cars, and they all shouldered backpacks stuffed with windbreakers and lunch. The small troupe of writers and their significant others followed John and looked around them, soaking up the details of boats, masts, ropes, water, sky. They walked along pier after pier with sailboats and motorboats bobbing in their slips.
A man sitting on a canvas chair, in the spacious cockpit of his motor-yacht, hailed John and tipped his glass of champagne to him. He’s celebrating the ultimate success, thought John—ownership of a boat. And I’m about to lose mine. He sniffed the salt air as if it were his last breath on earth.
The whole crew followed John to the floating dock where the Grey Skies had been waiting patiently for them.
On the bulkhead, the last bit of solid land, at the top of the gangplank that led to the floating dock, John looked out over the harbor. Boats were tied up—a dizzying number of boats. Thousands. He was glad the boats were in their berths and not out in the Channel, where he would soon be. The fewer the boats out there, the better it was for him. But it meant he was taking a risk, going out when others chose to stay snug in their slips. Here he was again, taking a risk. Being just a bit loony. He hoped it didn’t turn out like his venture in silver had.
A healthy breeze was blowing, even in the protected harbor. A few sloppy skippers had failed to tie down their halyards—the metal lines for hauling up the sails that ran to the tops of the masts. Out of the thousands of boats in Cherbourg harbor, a few hundred had steel halyards that slapped in the wind against steel masts, making a chiming noise.
He felt the ebullience that arose in him whenever he was near boats, near fellow sailors. Life opened up to him in a marina. He could sail around the world. He could say goodbye to all his troubles and harness the wind to take him to exotic ports of call. He would some day.
He descended the gangplank to the floating dock, that liminal space between land and sea. The writers’ circle and their family members trudged down it, too. John strode along the bobbing dock to the Grey Skies’ berth. His boat bobbed and tugged at its various spring lines, which kept it centered in its slip instead of bashing against the pilings.
“How big is your boat?” Philippe asked, knowing that John would love to tell him.
“It’s forty-five feet long,” John said to his crew. “It has a jib—well, two jibs,” he said modestly, “—and a mainsail, all self-furling. One mast, so it’s a sloop.” He ignored the bigger ketch with two masts tied up next to him, and instead opened the clasp of the lifelines. They began to step across the gap between dock and sloop.
It’s a lovely boat, thought Carol as she stepped aboard. It’s the opposite of that Opel. What is going on here? The deck rose and fell gently under her feet, disorienting her, and she grabbed for the teak handrail attached to the cabin’s roof. The wind rearranged her hair. She stepped down into the cockpit and dug in her pocket for a hair tie. She quickly gathered her hair into a messy bun, and then Louise’s curls, too.
Through his feet and legs, Philippe felt the boat tug at its spring lines, as if it anticipated its freedom and the sail they were about to take. This was quite the pleasure craft, he thought, euro signs spinning before his eyes. I’d better enjoy this today, because I’ll never own anything like this. And I’d better be a good sailor, so he’ll invite us out again.
John unlocked the cabin and clambered down its steps. Dozens of tasks stood between him and departure. Having all these neophytes on board meant so much responsibility and work for him. As he clicked the GPS, the anemometer, and the depth finder on, he fervently hoped nobody would be seasick.
“Okay, crew!” he said as he climbed up the steps and into the cockpit. “We have good weather, so let’s take advantage.” He took the binnacle cover off of the compass. He had already memorized the coordinates of his course.
He was all over the boat, showing people how to handle the ropes—“they’re called lines on a boat,” he told them—when he gave the order to cast off. He took the strings off the halyards that kept them from clanking against the mast in harbor, and started the motor.
“Okay, ready?” he shouted to Philippe in the bow.
“Aye aye, skipper,” Philippe shouted back.
Carol was on the stern, Anjali and Meredith on the starboard and port spring lines, respectively. Emily was reading to Louise in the cabin, keeping out of the way. Elodie was sitting in the cockpit, praying for survival.
John whispered “Good luck” to himself as a gust of wind slapped his face. He gave the order to cast off to the people handling the lines. He put the motor into gentle reverse, and the boat backed slowly out of the slip. At just the right moment, before crashing into the stern of the boat docked opposite him, John pushed the engine’s stick shift from reverse to forward and turned the boat’s wheel. The Grey Skies headed toward the mouth of the harbor.
As they moved into more open water, the wind picked up and the water got choppier. Carol’s sitzbones dug into the fiberglass seat of the cockpit with every lurch of the boat. She wasn’t comfortable but having fun anyway. John is looking quite dashing, she thought. And he’s quite the skipper, isn’t he? He rents awful cars but he commands a wonderful boat. What would it be like to sail with him? To spend the night anchored in a little bay, as she’d heard people talking about at Trapèze. She hoped John invited everyone out again. If Gregoire and Amandine could see her now. Maybe she’d take a selfie and text it to them. She gave it some thought. Maybe not.
“We’ll be putting the sails up outside the harbor,” John said. “Everybody must be on the lookout at all times for other boats. The English Channel is just about the busiest shipping lane in the world.”
Even as John was saying it, they bobbed past the jetty that marked the mouth of the harbor.
Philippe felt the wind tug his hair with new vigor. He spotted a ferry approaching them, white and sleek and formidable. And another, smaller one, coming from the other direction. He hoped John knew what he was doing.
The wind was now a stiff roar in everyone’s ears. The boat shifted under them with more energy as it bounced on the even choppier waters. John shouted that it was time for the fun to begin. As a few powerboats zipped around them, and three tankers moved majestically near the horizon, he asked Philippe to handle the mainsail.
Philippe pulled on the mainsheet with all his might, determined to prove himself a worthy crew member for the future. The sail, as it emerged from its housing in the mast and progressed toward the stern in its track along the boom, rattled and flapped as the wind flowed over both sides of it equally.
As soon as the mainsail was unfurled and fastened, John spun the wheel to point the bow away from the wind. The sail suddenly billowed out as it filled with air, and the boat heeled steeply. Driven by instinct, people scrambled to the upwind side. Emily and Louise switched to the upwind banquette inside the cabin. John turned the motor off, and in the ensuing quiet—except for the noise of the wind—they all could hear the delightful sound of water running along the hull. John unfurled only one jib, the smaller one, and sheeted it in. The boat sliced through the water, rising and falling on the swells. Bits of foam from the whitecaps flecked their faces.
“Great sailing weather,” John shouted, smiling.
People nodded, hung on, and hoped they wouldn’t get seasick.
