It took three hours. Three hours of negotiation, cussing, stonewalling, and bringing up side issues. Or, as it was said in the Bible, “great gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.”

After everything was said and done, with a little help from Jake, Adam wound up with a price $14,500 under the list price, a considerable markdown, and a contract was signed at that price and earnest money paid. Just to be on the safe side, Jake took some pictures inside the cabin and around the deck to make sure no electronic equipment or expensive fittings turned up missing when the time came to pick up the boat.

“Jeez,” Jake said as they got in the car for the trip back to Winchester Harbor, “I may be able to survey a boat, but when the time comes that I have to replace one of the charter boats, I want you along with me as negotiator. I’m pretty sure you managed to drive him down to just about his minimum price. That’s really a deal now.”

“Good, I’m glad you think so,” Adam told him. “It’s good to know I can do something useful around a boat. Now, we have to get it back to Winchester Harbor.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Jake said. “I wouldn’t want to single-hand it first time out, but I’ll bet Amanda would be happy to go with you.”

“I sure will, Adam,” she said from the back seat. “I haven’t been able to get out sailing enough to suit me this year. It’s just that I don’t think we really want to do it this time of the year without a motor, just to be on the safe side.”

“I’ve got to admit, that’s something I don’t have laying around,” Jake said. “At least not one that’s worth anything.”

“Well, I suppose it’s the long way around to do it, but I’ll have to head downstate to get the money squared away,” Adam replied thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose there’s any reason I couldn’t grab the motor off the Knick-Knack.”

“That would work,” Jake agreed. “It’d be a little on the small side for that boat but it ought to work for one trip. But look. On the trip back with the boat, keep an eye out for things you’d like to change or have set up differently. I’ve got a few ideas along that line, and maybe we can take it out for a day sail or two to work on it a bit. I mean, as long as I’m going to have it in the shed for at least part of the winter, there’s no reason I can’t deal with stuff that wasn’t on the survey sheet.”

“We’ll have to look at it,” Adam said. “And I suppose there’s no reason we can’t think about it a little. I keep thinking a GPS chart plotter would be a good addition. But look, Jake. We may be friends, but this is a business transaction. I expect to pay you full rate for the work you do, and that includes today. I realize there’s not a lot to fix, but I want it fixed right. You’re probably not going to get started on it till fishing season is over with, are you?”

“Maybe a little on crappy days, but the real work is going to have to wait till the season is over when I bring in the crane to take the boats out of the water for the winter. I’ll need the crane to yank the mast out of it anyway. Then the boat will have to be on the hard till I get the boats back in the water in the spring.”

“Well, then, I guess that means we’ll get a little chance to sail it in the next month or so to find out what we want to do with it,” Adam said. He let out a sigh and said, “Good grief. Now I own two boats. I ought to have my head examined.”

“You’ve got the bug, all right. No question about it, and the Moonshadow is a boat you can live on comfortably and go a lot of places with.”

“Maybe I’m just having a second thought too late, but I can’t help but think that it’s a lot more boat than the Knick-Knack. I wonder if I’m sailor enough to handle it.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t have much problem. You’ve come a long way in two years. That boat is a whole lot heavier than your little MacGregor and draws more water, but it’s going to be more forgiving in some ways, too. It’ll especially be better in rough stuff, where the Knick-Knack pushes the envelope a little. I don’t want to say you aren’t going to have any problems with it, because you probably will, but they should be problems you can handle and you’ll learn something from it.”

“I hope you’re right,” he shook his head.

“Adam,” Amanda said from the back seat, “What are you going to do with the Knick-Knack?”

“Now there’s a question I don’t have an answer to. Sell it, I guess. It might be fun to have to run around the islands in Georgian Bay, but it’s going to seem like quite a step down after the Moonshadow.”

“Are you going to keep the name Moonshadow?”

“I think so,” he said. “I kind of like the sound of it. It does sound a lot better than Knick-Knack.”

Adam still felt a little dazed over a late dinner back at Winchester Harbor. Once again, he’d intended to have a solid review of the issues of a new boat, covering all the pros and cons, but he’d let circumstances ride roughshod over him in a headlong rush. But buying the Knick-Knack had proved to be a good idea in spite of everything, and he couldn’t help but hope that things would work out as well with the new boat.

The next day he drove back home, had Chuck help him exchange the sedan for the pickup, then went on down to Frenchtown Harbor to take the Honda off the Knick-Knack. He gave some thought to taking the boat out of the water for the winter, but he didn’t have the tarps and things he would need and was anxious to get moving back north. He’d probably be back in the area in a few days anyway, he thought.

The next morning he stopped at his bank, got a large cashier’s check, and headed back to Winchester Harbor. Early on the morning of the day after that, he, Amanda, and a guy Jake knew from the village got into the pickup and went over to get the Moonshadow.

The boat broker was a little surly, apparently having some second thoughts about being stampeded like a herd of buffalo himself. Still, he was glad to take the check after Adam and Amanda checked the digital photos against what was actually in the boat, and from what they could see nothing had been changed. It was a bit of a job to get the Honda hung on the outboard motor mount on the stern, but by noon they were ready to go. Amanda got the lines, while Adam warmed up the motor, then he backed the Moonshadow out into the harbor and turned it to the north.

Even in the first hour Adam was satisfied with the purchase. The boat did turn a little more sluggishly than the Knick-Knack, but that was to be expected. But the feel, especially in the biggish waves that were just about on the nose, was a lot more like he remembered from the Mary Sue. It was more solid, more stable than his other boat; it felt like it meant business. He had the definite feeling the boat was going to work for him.

The wind was strong and cold out of the north, stronger than it had been on his trip back from Put-In-Bay on the Knick-Knack a few weeks before, but the Moonshadow just sailed along happily. They had to tack several times to get out of Traverse Bay, and once they were out on Lake Michigan they still had sail hard on the wind to make good their passage to the north.

They were still going strong as they got near Beaver Island as the day was fading. Having had enough of beating into the wind for one day, and knowing that there was no way they were going to make it to Winchester Harbor that evening, they pulled into St. James Harbor, tied off to a slip, and found a small bar that was open. Amanda wasn’t twenty-one yet but the waitress didn’t seem to know or care; they shared bar burgers and a couple of beers before heading back to the boat for the night.

The wind was still hard out of the north the next day, but now they didn’t have to beat into it; they set a course a little north of east for the Straits of Mackinac, then passed under the bridge and turned down the coast for Winchester Harbor. Late in the day Adam steered the Moonshadow up the familiar channel, and into a vacant slip close to Jake’s dock.

The Chinook was off the lake by then and Jake was waiting for them as they pulled in. “So how was it?” he asked.

“Not bad,” Adam said. “Not bad at all. I think I’m going to like this boat. Amanda and I picked up a few things we’d like to do differently, but nothing important. I doubt I’m going to be able to get much sailing in it this fall, but I think I want to get to know this boat a little better.”

For the lack of anything better to do, Adam decided to spend the rest of the fall in Winchester Harbor. Occasionally he had to run down to the city to put in an appearance at the office or do some other odd thing, so he made the trip down there something less than once a week.

On his first trip, he took an extra day, bought some tarps and rope at a hardware store, and pulled the Knick-Knack from the water for the winter. He managed to get a little help getting the mast down, then got the tarps on it and tied down. Even if he hadn’t bought the Moonshadow, he thought there was little chance he’d be using the smaller boat the rest of the fall anyway. He wondered a little what he was going to do with the boat; probably sell it in the spring.

His plan was to get out and go sailing on the Moonshadow when the weather was nice, which it occasionally was. Most times when he took it out, he was by himself as no one was available to go with him. On the days when the weather wasn’t promising, he turned to working on the boat. It was dirty from lack of use and needed an extensive cleaning from one end to the other. He also made some minor repairs after conferring with Jake, but it was something constructive to do.

A little to his surprise, the second weekend after he bought the boat Carolyn showed up without warning; it proved that she didn’t even know he was there or that he had bought the boat. They went out for a sail on it, but that was all since her brother’s family was around, but she agreed it would be nice to get out for a longer sail with him next summer. They loosely made plans to get together and go someplace some winter weekend, but neither of them were sure it would even come off.

Then things changed suddenly with a phone call one evening. Adam happened to be in the snack bar with the rest of the gang when it came in, and the call proved to be for Amanda. It was hard to tell from the snack bar exactly what was going on, but the squeals of joy, multiple shouts of “Hey, great!” “Wow!” and the like told everyone else it had to be good news.

Finally Amanda wound down enough to tell them what had happened. “It’s Ron!” she gushed. “He found a boat for me.”

Adam knew that Ron, Amanda’s older brother, was in the Coast Guard and stationed at Jacksonville, Florida, and once in a while there had been mention that he’d been keeping his eyes open for a boat. He was in a good position to know where bargains might be found in the area.

“What is it?” Jake asked. “Is it any good?”

“It’s a Pearson Triton,” she replied. “Just about the perfect boat, a twenty-eight footer. He says it’s in pretty sad shape, but it’s more or less sound. “

“How much?” Jake shook his head. “It might not be worth the effort, although Ron has a good eye for boats if anyone does.”

“That’s the good part,” she said. “He paid two hundred and fifty dollars for it.”

“Two-fifty? Are you kidding?”

“Two-fifty,” she smiled. “It was a bank repo and it was up for auction. He was the only bidder, and that was the lowest they’d let him bid.”

“Holy crap,” Jake shook his head again. “If a Triton is floating and not depending on its bilge pump to keep it above the water, it’d be worth ten times that at the absolute minimum even if it was a huge piece of shit. There’s got to be something wrong with it if it’s a bank repo.”

“He says it’s going to need a lot of work, but I figured that was going to happen. Dad, I know the season isn’t over with yet, but I really want to get down and check this out.”

Jake turned to Adam. “New boat bug bites again,” he said with a head shake. “Are you up for being a deckhand on the Chinook for the rest of the season?”

“Sure, it’s something to do,” he grinned. “Besides, the only way you’re going to be keeping Amanda around here is if chains are involved.”

“I really should go down and give it a good looking over,” Jake said. “But there’s no way Amanda and I can both be gone at the same time until the boats are out of the water.”

“I’ve got a good idea of what to look for,” Amanda said. “And I might not get that far anyway.” She put her ear back to the phone for a minute and exchanged a few words with her older brother. “Ron says the boat has to be moved to a slip somewhere in the next few days, but he can take care of it. But I have to get down there to take care of the paperwork before it can be moved.”

“So go already,” Jake shook his head. “We’ll just have to get along without you.”

“Thanks, Dad,” she said, and turned to the phone again. “Ron, I’ll leave in the morning. It’ll probably take me two or three days to get there, but see what you can do about finding a slip, preferably in a place where I can work on the boat . . . OK . . . OK . . . I owe you a big one on this, Ron. See you in a few days, and thanks again!” She hung up the phone and said, “Holy crap! A Triton 28! That’s pretty close to the top of my list anyway, and for that price!”

“Be careful with it,” Jake told her. “God alone knows what’s wrong with it, and that boat is old. They made the last of them back in the sixties sometime, so it’s got to be even older than the Mary Sue. That’s another one of those boats with an Atomic 4, and you know what I think of them. There’s a dead one sitting in the Moonshadow, you know.”

“Ron has no idea if it runs or what,” Amanda explained. “He really doesn’t know much about it, other than the fact that it appears sound but is going to need a lot of work. I can hardly wait to see what it’s going to take and get started on it!”

“You might as well go get packing,” Rachel put in. “You’re not going to be doing anything else useful tonight anyway.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “I’ll get down there sometime after the season is over with to give it a good looking over, but all I can say is be back here for the season opener in the spring. It’d be nice if you’re a few days early so you can help get the boats set up for the season. And it’d be even nicer if you get your six-pack license down there so you can be the captain of one of the charter boats. Ron can probably get you going on that. Other than that, see us in the morning before you leave.”

“OK, Dad. Wow! A Triton 28! I can’t believe it. I’ll catch you later.” An instant later there was a bang as the door slammed behind her.

“I’d have to say she acts mildly interested,” Adam grinned.

“I’d say that qualifies,” Jake smiled. “Hell, Matt wasn’t a tenth that excited when he called me up and told me he’d found the Folkboat he’d been looking for, the Mary Sue. I guess that means we’ll be looking for more help around here sooner or later.”

“I thought the idea was that she was going to be working summers and going south in the winter.”

“I suppose that still is the plan,” Jake shook his head. “Except that I know a number of Tritons have been around the world. They’re old boats, and not quite as tough as the Mary Sue. They were really designed as a coastal cruiser but they’re tough enough to do a lot more than that. I wouldn’t want to sail around Cape Horn in one, but moderate latitudes if she watches the weather, well, if she’s not thinking about it now she will be soon enough. I’ll get done what I promised I’d do on the Moonshadow, but I have this horrible suspicion I’m going to be spending a good share of my winter in the bilges of a Triton 28 somewhere around Jacksonville. At least it probably won’t be some damn hamlet out in the middle of nowhere where there are more alligators than there is water.”

“Maybe,” Rachel grinned. “She’s still going to be watching her pennies, and I’ll bet she’ll be looking for the cheapest possible slip for the boat for the winter.”

“You’re probably right,” Jake replied ruefully. “Gator Breath, Florida, here I come.”

“At least it’ll be warmer than here,” Adam pointed out.

“There is that,” Jake agreed. “Oh, well, you have to do that shit when you’re young. I know I did, and I know Matt did. I suppose it’s not surprising that she wants to do it. I sometimes wonder how Ron managed to avoid it.”

“Some kids have to break the mold. We both know that, after all.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Adam, I’m glad you’re willing to work on the Chinook to help us out with this. I know you have to go back down below now and then, but when you do we’ll work something out somehow.”

“Not a problem in my book. I can find work to do on the Moonshadow, but it doesn’t have to eat up all my time. As far as going down below, I can’t say, but it probably won’t be much, considering what I have to do here.”

Amanda was gone early the next morning, her car loaded high with spare clothes and tools for boat work. In a way, Adam envied her a little. It would be a lot of work, the kind of thing you had to do when you were young and pinching pennies, and had a dream and a goal. It would be nice to be that young again and free as she was, to be able to do something like that, but he’d missed his chance and he knew it. Now, at least he now might be able to catch up a little.

Three days later they had a call from Amanda. “The boat doesn’t look real good, but it appears sound,” she reported. “Ron and this chief he knows went through it pretty well, and there’s a lot of work to do, but I can do most of it. Ron and a couple of his friends have offered to help me out with it when they can, so that’ll help with the heavy stuff. We found a slip in a small boatyard today, and had the boat towed over to it. We’re going to dig into it tomorrow and find out just what’s got to be done.”

“The engine is dead, I take it?”

“Deader than a doornail, some parts have been stripped off it. It may be repairable, but we don’t know yet. At least it can be turned over by hand, so maybe it’s not a hopeless cause, but boy, what a boat it’s going to be when I get done with it. And, oh, I love the name. It’s just dead solid perfect, and so right in so many ways. Rag Doll.”

“Not having seen it, it sounds like it’s going to be a fit,” Jake grinned. “Have fun, honey, and be careful.”

As it turned out, Adam spent most days of the next several weeks going out on the Chinook with Jake or Rachel. There were good days and bad; the fishing was often good late in the year, and they had customers scheduled most days. Even though it wasn’t sailing, Adam picked up a lot from the experience about seamanship and boat handling, most of which could be directly applied to sailing in the Moonshadow. They were not wasted days.

He did have to go down to the city three times in the next month, but they were all down one day and back the next, mostly to deal with the additional plant in Meridian. Each time he made the trip to the Caldwell-Deerfield office he seemed like more of a stranger there, and it was harder to get his mind in gear to deal with the problems. Bob and Fred were doing a good job with the company, and while he reviewed progress on several areas, Adam couldn’t find much to find fault with.

The salmon season came to an end with the last of October. It was like throwing a switch around Winchester Harbor; with November they went into winter mode. On a cold, blustery day a crane showed up, and Jake, his father-in-law Nate, and Adam had to scurry around getting the boats out of the water and onto cradles or flatbed trailers. The Chinook was the biggest of them, and it would spend the winter outside. Jake and Nate had a list of things that needed to be done on it, nothing major but important. The same was true of the smaller Coho, which Nate usually was the one to take out; it was small enough that it didn’t need a deckhand. With the mast still up, the Pixie was taken out of the water and placed on its cradle for the winter, and finally, the crane operator took the mast out of the Moonshadow, then picked the boat up and set it on a cradle on a flatbed trailer. It went into the work shed for the winter; the three of them spent some time getting tarps on the other boats, and the chore was done.

That was about the end of what Adam could do to be useful for a while. That evening, Jake packed some clothes for a couple weeks, and in the morning he was off on the long trip to Jacksonville. Adam wasn’t far behind him; after breakfast with Rachel, he moved his stuff out of the motel room he’d lived in for over a month, and headed back to his apartment in the city, wondering what he was going to do next.

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