Chapter 1

The topmost of the Penobscot Bay lighthouse was barely visible, the morning sun reflecting off its watchful eye. I cranked out the sails and picked up a paltry breeze, doing precisely the opposite of what I’d intended, heading the boat farther out into the vast Atlantic. I snatched up the book on sailing I’d bought, Sailing for Dummies, and skimmed the table of contents for “How the hell to get back to shore.” But evidently my copy was missing that chapter.

There was an enlightening page about fetching and after reading it twice, I determined I would have been better-off going with the Sailing for Idiots line. The only fetching in my future would be for a ride back to land.

I slipped into the captain’s chair, a red nylon lawn chair, and found a section more up my alley entitled, “Getting Your Feet Wet.” There were a series of sketches with attached labels and after careful debate, the Michelob bottle and I decided we had ourselves a schooner. According to the book: The schooner is a traditional rig with two or more masts, the front mast (foremost) being shorter than the main mast.

I peered up to check if the front mast, foremost, was indeed shorter than the main mast, but I didn’t know which end of the boat was the front, thus, the boat audit was a complete failure. Why couldn’t everything on the boat have labels on it like in the book? I made a mental note to buy some sticky notes on the way home.

The sun had recently escaped the ocean’s horizon and there were a few far-off fishing boats. I pulled the binoculars up from around my neck and focused them in on the nearest ship. The ship was charcoal for the most part, close to a hundred feet long, and came fully loaded with three tattered men. The rest of the boats were too far away to make out their names and I couldn’t help wondering if one of them was The Maine Catch. I still owed the crew a round of beers for saving my ass. That, however, was a completely different yarn altogether.