Hibernation

Scapegrace is sleeping quietly on her poppets in the Bronx, and the outboards are sleeping quietly at Sheila's place on City Island, and the fishy-smelling folded-up rubber dinghy is stinking up our storage locker in Harlem. But the weirdly temperate February weather has started up the old itch, an itch that wouldn't have shown up for another month in a normal year: time to go out and scrape the bottom -- especially that dismal boot stripe; I owe you a picture but I'm almost afraid to take it. And the sails need some stitching, which I could have done two months ago and haven't. And I should take the covers off the cushions and bring them home and wash them; two sweaty bachelor weeks in Long Island Sound last year left them smelling like the lion house at the zoo.

Being a sailor is a bit like being a Mormon: you have more than one spouse, and strangely, the voiceless boat has her ways of invading your dreams too.