Bob. Bob Jenkins.

1pm, Saturday June 19. Blowing like stink, we leave Rockland Harbor for the Fox Island Thorofare. We almost turned back because there's no daggerboard trunk, so Guy made this tube thing, but it's not tall enough and water pours in. You have to sort of fall off to drain it out or tack. It's like a big water balloon.

Plus we were taking all sorts of spray in the face. But how can you turn back? We quickly suited up and went ahead, still thinking we were turning back. 12 knots upwind, spray pouring at you. Swells. Big tide fighting the wind. We don't talk, we just hang on. We don't know what the boat will do. 9 knots, then a gust and you are roaring off again.

Cleo likes sailing. She's got a little doggy life jacket. She's half dachsund and half pomeranian. When she gets a chance, she jumps out on the tramps and dances all around. When it's hairy she stays in the cockpit.

Fox Island Thorofare, uneventful sail in. Some gusts. It's 2.30 pm. We sail around some and then tack back out. It's going to be a real sail home. The wind has picked up. No idea how hard it's blowing. We still don't know if we will flip this boat, Guy almost did the other day. We reef down, which is a lot easier to do on Bob then Circus. I throw myself on the tramp during a gust, hoping that if we are going over, a little weight will help. We don't go. One of the big racing lobster boats goes by, full of guys. Probably headed over to Rockland for the races tomorrow. They are watching us, screaming along taking in spray. A beer bottle salute.

Guy steers most of the way home. I am in the grove and loving it until I get cold and somehow I lose my focus. He feathers up into the really big gusts and we don't talk for a couple hours, just focusing on the PB Buoy. There's a big J boat ahead, and we are going to roll it. We can see the lighthouse and we roll over the J Boat and get into the harbor miles ahead of anything else out there.

There's a big oil driller in for repairs called the Stena Forth, which is weird to see just off the breakwater, all lit up at night.

Sometimes I just pray to make the Breakwater. Give us a lift and get us through without a tack.

As scary as it is, all I can think about it the wind, and being completely focused on the moon, and the wind on the water, and the puffs ahead. Sometimes life feels like a beat to windward, hanging my butt off the side as far as I can get and ready to dump the main.

But at those times it feels so real, so elemental.

I can still see you smile when I thought I was really messing up my life, and with you, it was okay, because you knew how to cut through the fluff...

Photo composite made when our good friend Mark McClellan was lost through the ice just before Christmas, much loved by the community and still missed.