A Quick Sail

My family took a quick sail on a borrowed boat this morning. We were all there - my mother, my brother and sisters and their families, Mary Lee and Sherry and I.

We beat out to the north of Clapboard Island and on out of Hussey Sound. We had all his favorite boat foods - peanut butter on Ritz crackers, cream cheese and guava jelly on Saltines, Cape Cod potato chips and half a Sam Adams (knocking the bottoms out of the bottles with the hydraulic pump handle). The American flag snapped from the transom and the CCA burgee graced the masthead.

When we had passed out of Hussey Sound, we rolled up the jib, my sister Anne said a brief benediction, and we consigned his ashes to the sea he loved.

We didn't have much to say for a few minutes, just sat swaying with the rise and fall of the waves and remembering the man. Then, as he would have done, we unrolled the jib and bore away for Whitehead Passage and home...