In the end, it was only my father who drove me to Connecticut. My mother said she could not guarantee that she’d behave like an adult. She was afraid she would “dissolve into a blob of jelly” and cling to me and not let me go. I kept telling her that this was just a little trip across the ocean, no big deal. We’re not even sailing the boat back because Uncle Dock is leaving it with a friend in England.
I think my mother imagines horrible things happening on that ocean, but she will not say so aloud. My own mind does not want to imagine horrible things.
“Sometimes,” my father said, “there are things you just have to do. I think this might be one of those things for Sophie.” That surprised me. It did feel as if it was something I had to do, but I couldn’t have said why, and I was surprised and grateful that my father understood this without my having to explain it.
“Okay, okay, okay!” my mother said. “Go! And you’d better come back home in one piece!”
For two long weeks, my uncles and cousins and I have been holed up together in Uncle Dock’s small cottage. I am beginning to think we’ll never live through this time on land, let alone the sea journey. We’ll probably kill each other first.
The boat is propped up on dry land and was a sorry sight the first day, I have to admit. It didn’t look anywhere near ready to head out to sea. But it has a terrific name: The Wanderer. I can picture myself on this sailboat, wandering out across the sea, wandering, wandering.
The boat belongs to Uncle Dock, and he calls it his “baby.” It seems huge to me, enormous, far, far bigger than any boat I’ve ever been on. It’s forty-five feet long (that’s a pretty big “baby”), navy and white, with two masts of equal size, and nifty booms that wrap around the sails.
Below deck there’s sleeping for six (four in the forward section, two in the back); a galley with icebox, sink, and stove; a table (two of the beds double as bench-seats for the table); a bathroom; a chart table and navigation equipment; and cubbyholes and closets.
Uncle Dock, who is a carpenter in his real life, walked us around The Wanderer the first day, pointing out things that needed fixing. “This baby needs a little attention,” he said. “Rudder needs work, yep, and the keel, too, yep,” and “That whole bilge needs redoing, yep,” and “Those electrics—gotta rewire, yep,” and “Whole thing needs sprucing up, yep.”
Yep, yep, yep.
My cousin Brian was busy making a list of all these things on his clipboard. “Right, then!” Brian said, after we’d walked around and around the boat. “Here’s the list. I figure we should also make a list of the equipment we’ll need—”
His father, Uncle Stew, interrupted. “That’s my boy, a real organizer!”
Uncle Stew’s real name is Stuart, but everyone calls him Stew because he worries and stews about every little tiny weeny thing. He is tall and thin, with a scrub of black hair on his head. Uncle Stew’s son, Brian, looks like a younger photocopy of him. They both walk in a clumsy, jerky sort of way, as if they are string puppets, and they both place a high value on being organized.
While Brian was still making up his list, my other cousin, Cody, started fiddling with the rudder. “Not yet!” Uncle Stew said. “We’re not organized yet!”
Brian said, “We’ll get all our lists together and then divide up the jobs.”
“That’s my boy,” Uncle Stew said, “a real take-charge sort of guy.”
Yep.
It’s hot, ninety-five degrees most days, and everyone has his own idea about how things should be fixed. Uncle Mo spends a lot of time leaning back in a deck chair, watching the rest of us, and barking orders: “Not that way—start on the other side!” and “You knuckleheaded doofus! Is that any way to use a brush?” Mostly this is aimed at his son, Cody, who has selective deafness. Cody can hear the rest of us just fine, but he can’t ever seem to hear his father.
Uncle Mo is a bit on the chubby side, and he likes lounging around with his shirt off, getting a tan. His son, Cody (the one my mother thinks is charming in a dangerous sort of way), however, is fit and muscular, always humming or singing, and smiling that wide white smile of his. Girls who stroll through the boatyard on their way to the public beach stop and watch him, hoping to catch his attention.
And Uncle Dock is easygoing and calm. Nothing seems to faze him, not all the work that needs doing, or the mishaps that occur—like when Brian knocked over a can of varnish, or when Cody gouged the deck, or when Uncle Stew tangled the lines. Uncle Dock shrugs and says, “We’ll just fix it, yep.”
On the second day, after Uncle Stew and Brian had doled out most of the assignments to everyone else, I said, “What about me? What do you want me to do?”
“You?” Uncle Stew said. “Oh. Yeah. I guess you could clean up—you know, scrub things out.”
“I want to fix something.”
Uncle Stew laughed a fake laugh. “Huh, huh, huh. And what do you think you could fix, Sophie? Huh, huh, huh.”
“I’d like to do that bilge—”
“Oh?” he said, smiling all around at everyone else, as if they were sharing a private joke. “Now, how exactly might you do that?”
And so I told him how it could be redesigned and what sort of equipment I might need, and the more I talked, the more Uncle Stew’s smile faded, and the wider grew the grin on Uncle Dock’s face.
“See?” Uncle Dock said. “She knows something about boats. Let her tackle the bilge.”
Brian, with his clipboard in hand, jerked his puppet-arm and said, “Who’s going to do the cleaning, then? I don’t have anyone down for cleaning—”
“We’ll all clean,” Uncle Dock said.
“Not me,” Uncle Mo said. “I’m a lousy cleaner. Ask anybody.”
And so we (all of us except Uncle Mo, who was lying in his chair getting tan) have spent these hot, sweaty days working on The Wanderer at the marina. We’ve repaired the rudder and keel, redesigned the bilge, rewired the electrics, and organized and cleaned.
This morning The Wanderer came off her cradle. Dock and Brian and I were on board as the crane lifted The Wanderer up in a sling and lowered her into the water. It was such an eerie feeling: down, down, down she went. I didn’t think it was going to stop going down, but then there was a floop and a wobble and there she was, bobbing like a cork.
Afloat!
“You okay, Brian?” Dock asked. “You look a little wobbly.”
“Sort of want to throw up,” Brian said. “This boat looks awful small now in the water. This is all that will keep us alive?”
“Small?” Uncle Dock said. “This here Wanderer is a pretty big baby.”
“Our little island home,” I said.
I sent a postcard to my parents. I told them that soon I was going wandering on The Wanderer.