Thoughts On Sailing Home

Sailing HideAway

In the failing light the HideAways headed up, dropped sail, and urged our aged outboard to consciousness.

Linda worked the sails into their resting places while I, unable to see through the downed sails, stood on the stern bridge deck steering a course to the channel the tiller at my side. 

Bruised, battered, soaked and tattered the HideAways crept into the Gulfport Channel with a fairly well shredded main sail and a dingy splintered. 

Gulfport Florida Channel

As HideAway, a Com-Pac 23, surged home running before the swells I stood taller than the bimini watching our little craft below. 

The outboard  gurgling as it pushed us along, a Fish Hawk cried, the splash of a fish somewhere, the roil of a wave. I sensed a sailor’s connection with the mariners of the ancient world.

I Could See for a Thousand  Years

 The boat rolling now, homeward bound, as the wind reached her broadsides running free my tiredness vanished. 

All was at peace –

Only the sea, the wind, and we.

I slowed the engine to idle…