Last night, after anchoring The Wanderer in the Block Island harbor, Cody and Brian and I took the dinghy to land and walked along the beach. Brian can be a real fusspot, carefully rolling up his jeans so they won’t get wet, and leaping out of the way of the waves, and constantly checking his watch.
“It’s seven ten,” he announced, and then ten minutes later, “It’s seven twenty,” and then ten minutes later, “It’s seven thirty.”
“Give it a rest, okay?” Cody said. “What does it matter what time it is?”
Brian dodged a rock wedged in the sand and jumped back from the ocean spray breaking around it. “We have to be back before dark,” he said.
Cody looked at the sun, hovering in the western sky. “You know what? I bet we’ll be able to tell when it’s starting to get dark—without a watch!”
“Huh, huh, huh,” Brian said.
Two girls were coming from the opposite direction. “Hey, look, some wildlife!” Cody said to Brian.
“Where? What?”
“The babes,” Cody said, eying the girls. “The babes.”
One of the wildlife babes stopped in front of Cody and smiled sweetly at him. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Cody said.
“You wouldn’t, like, you know, happen to know what time it is, would you?” she asked. Her friend blushed and flicked something off her arm.
“Huh, huh, huh,” Brian said, jerking his puppet-arm, and dangling his watch-laden wrist in front of Cody. “Sometimes a watch comes in handy,” Brian said.
We returned to The Wanderer (before dark, much to Brian’s relief) and spent the night on board in the harbor instead of sailing on, because Uncle Dock said we need to do some more fine-tuning.
Today, more sun!
I went up the mast in the bosun’s chair for the first time, to replace the bulb for the anchor light. Up there, you can see for miles and miles, to the ends of Block Island and across the ocean: water and more water and sky and more sky. And since there are no stays on these masts, you really feel the motion of the boat and the water up there. You feel the air on your face and in your hair, you smell the sea, you feel so free.
Later, while Uncle Dock was tinkering with the electrics, Cody and I returned to shore and walked down the beach to the lighthouse and on back to the bird sanctuary. Cody spotted a fuzzy chick and said, “Hey, you little chick. Hey, you fuzzball,” which surprised me, because usually he is busy flexing his muscles and you wouldn’t expect him to be so tender with little birds. As we left, he called, “Bye-bye, birdies.”
He sure is a funny kind of guy. One minute he is talking about babes and the next minute he is talking to the birdies.
We are barely under way with our journey, and already everything seems more fluid and relaxed. I wear what is dry and near. I go to sleep right before I collapse, and wake up to the sound of people talking in the cockpit. I’m ready to get out on the open ocean, though. I want to be moving, to be sailing, where it doesn’t matter if it’s day or night, where time is all connected. I’d like to catch a fish, to feed myself directly from the ocean. I hope to be a voyager, a wanderer, sailing on to Bompie!