Late afternoon east wind guides Puffin around Bassetts Island one last time after sunny skies and a mid-day light house swim in warm clear water give way to dark clouds and the distinct possibility of rain.
“Where will you go?” Mary asks as I ready a few things for what will be the last sail of the season. Docks out looming in the days to come.
“Clevelands!” I say knowing perfectly well I’m not going to make it out to the abandoned light we see from our patio. “Any takers?”
Not this time. Mary and Cheryl have other plans. A nap. A walk in the woods. No, it will be just me in our family’s day-sailing Herreshoff. Me and the memory of my Mom, her love of these boats, the original wooden craft brought down from her summers on North Haven. Every time I raise these sails, I picture Mom’s hand on the tiller. Hear her voice. Remember the advice she’d give out like October leaves falling from windblown trees, the color of life.
East wind not something we’re accustom to in these waters. Summer’s usual prevailing southwesterly as dependable as a loyal dog, coming around in the afternoons, heat of the land blowing predictably great sailing weather and carving out the character of the place. October finds no such breeze, and so I cheat a look at my phone for hint of evening forecast.
“Be careful out there,” Mary says. “It’s late and you don’t want to end-up stranded,” a phenomenon the two of us understand all too well from sailing days in Christmas Cove, where stiff afternoon breeze too often peter out before sails are down.
“I’ll be fine,” I think as I row out in our small dingy, a tender designed for little more than one person ferrying to and from local moorings. Standing water greets me in both boats, levels up to the floorboards despite Puffin’s cover. Nothing too dramatic, and soon find myself heading east under sail, tempted by the thought of rounding the island.
“What would my Mom do?” I ask myself.
“She’d head in,” Mary would say to me later of my decision to round the backside of Bassetts under setting sun and gathering storm.
“Don’t take unnecessary chances,” Mom would have added. “You can get in real trouble.”
I don’t listen, to better judgement, to her voice, to Mary’s own warning. Instead, I calculate east winds will push me along before the wind past Kingman’s, and quite possibly all the way back on a straight shot past Eustis Rock and on to Atkinsons at the tip of the gut. Last year, Mary and I swam around this same island, so I feel a confidence and new familiarity along its shores — comfort while ghosting along the white sand and dunes total anomalies for this part of Buzzards Bay. July’s sun worshipers now gone for the season, the usually crowded anchorage on the south side empty but a single motor boat raising anchor as I pass. He’s got the common sense to pack it up for the day, as should I, but not before heeling over the sand bar extending deep into the channel between Scraggy Neck and this special spit of land.
To my great relief when I tighten sails and head up around one last green can, I relax into the one tack that will indeed take me home. Sun peeking out from a cluster of storm clouds, my anxiety wanes with growing evidence we’ll make it home without tow, a final leg trip rewarded when I spot a loon off to starboard. Floating quietly past she calls, one perfect moment unusual when summer winds blow their regular fifteen to twenty knots.
“Well hello,” I say. A final goodbye to the season. One final whisper with Mom.
