When Amanda Lewis was a little girl, people would ask her, as people often do to small children, what she wanted to be when she grew up. She always answered, “I want to be a sailor.”

“Oh,” most adults would reply, “you want to be in the Navy?”

“No,” she always said. “I don’t want to just ride around on a ship. I want to be a sailor.”

Even as a small child Amanda knew the difference. Her parents and her grandfather ran Winchester Harbor Fishing Charters, up on the northern part of Lake Huron; sometimes her step-grandmother Barb helped out on the two family fishing boats, too. So did her two-years-older brother Ron, at least for a while. He was eventually to prove to be the rebellious one and became what most people would believe actually was a sailor. It was a term he sometimes resented; often members of the Coast Guard don’t like to be associated with the mere Navy.

It came as no surprise that Amanda started helping out with the fishing boats as early as her family would allow. Like her mother before her, Amanda was at the helm of one of the family fishing boats well before she became a teenager. At first her father Jake, her mother Rachel, or her grandfather Nate kept a close eye on her, but she soon proved to be a competent helmsman who could be trusted to do what she was supposed to do. Watchers on shore and charter customers who weren’t familiar with the family were always a little amazed to see the preteen at the helm of the 40-foot Chinook or the 28-foot Coho as she steered it across the harbor, while whichever of her elders who happened to be with her set up the fishing rig for the day or shot the bull with the customers. It was a family business, after all, and she was part of the family.

But that wasn’t sailing, and Amanda knew it. Sailing involved sails, and neither the Chinook nor the Coho came equipped with them. While fishing may have been a job for the family, sailing was for fun. The family’s main sailboat was the 31-foot Pixie, the third sailboat of that name the family had owned. The first had been before she had been born, and Amanda could just barely remember the second one, but she really got involved with the third, learning how to sail it in all kinds of conditions.

When she was old enough – a term rather liberally used around the Lewis household – she was allowed to sail around the harbor in an aged 16-foot fiberglass daysailer that never officially got the dignity of a name, although Amanda often called it Sailor Moon. When she was a little older, when her parents were sure she knew what she was doing and the conditions were right, sometimes they’d let her take the little boat by herself down the channel between the jetties and out into the big lake.

One day when Amanda was messing around outside the channel she happened to see a big power cruiser with a number of people on it go by. It had a big stereo blasting, and even at her age she suspected more beer was being consumed than was good for them, when she happened to notice a small boy fall overboard, with no life jacket on, naturally. No one on the boat noticed – but Amanda did. She deftly steered the Sailor Moon up to the little boy, who at least knew how to dog paddle, and rescued him.

She was eleven.

The winds were light that day, and there was no way she could catch up to the power cruiser. So she did the next best thing, which was to take him back to the Channel Stop, the combination motel/convenience store/snack bar/fueling dock the family also ran in addition to the charter fishing. There she radioed her grandfather Nate, who was up the coast in the Coho in the direction the cruiser was heading. Even when Nate caught up with the cruiser he had a tough time convincing them that they were missing a kid.

The story, and her picture, made it into several papers. Of course that drew admonitions from people who thought they knew better that she shouldn’t have been there at all. Her family knew enough to ignore them; from that time on, no one in the family ever doubted that Amanda was truly a sailor and could handle herself competently when the chips were down.

Amanda had a much older half-brother, Matt, who often spent the summers with the Lewis family although he lived downstate. The winter after the rescue he bought a 25-foot International Folkboat, which came with the name Mary Sue. He was then a college kid, and Amanda often sailed with him as his crew. One day she managed to weasel the truth out of Matt: when he got out of college he planned on going cruising in the Mary Sue, first across the Atlantic and then, maybe, around the world.

Up till that time, Amanda hadn’t given a great deal of thought to what she wanted to do with her sailing besides sail, but she caught the bug from Matt. When Amanda was sixteen, Matt set out on his solo voyage, but it didn’t stay solo for long; he met a Newfoundland girl, Mary O’Leary, along the way. He took her with him, and later married her. The following summer Amanda accompanied Matt and Mary for several weeks as they traveled canals across Europe, with the Mary Sue’s mast down, running on the diesel inboard. It was on the deck of the Mary Sue that Amanda arrived in Paris, an accomplishment that her high school classmates regarded as sheer bragging, not to be associated with the truth.

Tragically, Matt never got to sail around the world. He died of leukemia while on the boat and his wife had to bury him at sea. If there had been any question by that time anyway, Amanda resolved that she was going to pick up Matt’s fallen torch and carry it for him.

By then Ron was in the Coast Guard, and Amanda was working in the family business; in fact, had been doing so for some time. Since she was living at home, she had saved most of the money she’d made working on the charter boats over the last several years for her personal boat fund. Now that she was out of high school, she was making even more money at it than before. The following winter Amanda tried to buy the Mary Sue, but since most of her memories of her husband were tied up in that boat Mary naturally wanted to keep it.

That brought reality into the picture for Amanda, at least a little. Despite having a good amount in her savings account, she really didn’t have enough to buy a boat, fit it out, and sail it around the world – at least now. But soon she developed an alternative plan; winters were long and hard around Winchester Harbor, and there often wasn’t much to do. Maybe, she thought, she could buy a cheap older boat, fix it up, and sail it around Florida and other southern places in the winter, returning to Winchester Harbor in the summer. After all, her father had done just that for years in the original Pixie before she’d been born.

It seemed to fit together perfectly. Now, all she had to do was find the right boat.

It was still blowing like hell, even in the sheltered waters of Winchester Harbor on this mid-September day. This whole damn day has been a waste and an unpleasant waste at that, Amanda thought as she stood on the flying bridge to steer the Chinook toward the dock. The wind carried cold drops of rain with it, hitting her in the face where the foul-weather jacket she wore couldn’t help keep her dry.

Perhaps for just an instant of relief, the medium height brunette glanced down at the back deck where her father Jake and the customers were out of the elements a little in the wind shadow of the cabin. The customers didn’t seem quite as green as they had been out in the big lake beyond the jetties, but the stern of the boat was still going to have to be hosed off before they could call it a day. Most of the customers had been hanging over the side blowing their guts, and that was sure to leave a mess.

It had all been pretty much for nothing too, at least as far as fish were concerned – they’d spotted a few salmon on the fish finder, but in the roily waters none had seemed interested in the spoons presented to them. It might have been just as well; the customers had mostly been too seasick to hold onto a fishing pole.

At least now she could see that they were aware that the worst was over with, she thought as she turned back to steering the big sport-fisherman. The dock was less than fifty yards away now, and with the wind coming straight off the shore it wasn’t going to be an easy landing. But it wasn’t as if she hadn’t done it before.

A landing with the wind off the dock was not anything new for Amanda or her father, although it rarely was quite this bad. Both of them knew what they had to do. Amanda kept the boat closing the dock slowly, under good control despite the high winds. She noticed her father get out of the cockpit on the starboard side, wearing his own foul-weather gear, of course. He walked up the starboard deck carrying a docking line which he fastened to a cleat on the forequarter, then stood waiting for what she knew had to come. No more communication than that was needed between the two of them; again, this was nothing new.

Amanda cut the throttles to let the wind slow the boat a little, then when the time seemed right she threw the rudders over so the starboard forequarter of the boat was set to just nudge the dock. When she got the Chinook there, her father quickly hopped onto the dock, threw a couple turns of the line around the dock post, and waited. He casually raised his arm as a signal, so she threw the rudders hard to port, and opened up both the engines halfway. The thrust of the propellers on the rudders swung the stern to starboard; as the docking line grew taut, her father threw another couple turns of line around the docking post, then hustled back to where the stern was coming close to the dock. In a few seconds one of the less-seasick customers tossed a line to him from the stern, and he tied it off to the dock post while Amanda cut the throttle back to an idle to let the boat’s engines cool a bit before shutting them off.

The dock lines would have to be doubled and hardened up before they called it a day but the worst was over. Shit, she thought. Glad to have this one over with.

With the engines idling, there was nothing much now to be done on the flying bridge. Amanda went down the ladder to the cockpit to help the customers gather up their possessions, and to tell them she was sorry the weather had been so crappy and that they hadn’t caught any fish. After this miserable ordeal some of them probably wouldn’t be back to try it another day, but there was a good chance some of them would be.

Even so, every one of them was glad to be off the boat today. Some of them had to be assisted in climbing onto the dock, but at least none of them kissed the ground. As rough as it had been out on the big lake today she wouldn’t have been surprised if one of them did.

Usually there was some standing around talking about the adventures of the day, with the customers not wanting to quite give up the good time they’d had, but this wasn’t the case today. Within minutes all of them were in their cars and gone, although Amanda suspected that some of them might not make it much farther than Dot’s Tavern out on the highway. If she’d been just a little bit older she might well have been there with them; for some reason today seemed to call for a drink.

“Tell me,” her father said as they watched their customers take off, “why did we even bother to go out there today?”

“Because they paid for it, maybe?” She shrugged, and turned to getting the boat cleaned up and ready for tomorrow’s customers. The weather forecasts were not all that promising, but there was a chance they might try it anyway – like they had today.

Of course, her father joined her in buttoning up the boat for the night or however long it might take before they went the next time. Again, it was something they had a lot of practice doing so not much discussion was needed. In fifteen or twenty minutes they were done, and they were in Jake’s pickup truck for the ride up to the Channel Stop, the combination snack bar/convenience store/motel/fuel dock that was the other part of the family business. “That could have gone better,” Jake said absently.

“I really don’t mind being out in conditions like we had today,” Amanda sighed. “But it sure was no fun for the customers.”

“Yeah, everyone was so seasick they started getting me a little urpy myself,” her father agreed as they pulled into the parking lot of the Channel Stop. “I hate it when that happens. You were lucky. You didn’t have to put up with that stuff when you were up on the flying bridge.”

“I sure knew it was going on,” she replied, then brightened when she saw a familiar car in the parking lot. “Is that Adam’s car?” she asked.

“Might be,” Jake smiled. “After all, there can’t be more than a couple hundred thousand gray Buicks in this state.”

“I hope it is,” she said as Jake pulled into his normal parking spot up near their house, at the far end of the motel from the snack bar. “I haven’t seen him all summer and I want to know how he got along with the Knick-Knack.”

“Pretty good, from what little I’ve heard,” Jake said as he shut off the pickup and popped open his door. “But if it is him, we’ll probably find out more.”

Amanda really did want to know how the boat had worked out for him. Just about a year ago she’d been cruising the Internet looking for a sailboat that she might be able to fix up and take south to live on for the winter, like her father had done before she’d even been born. She’d found one downstate, a 25-foot MacGregor trailer boat with the name Knick-Knack painted on the stern. It seemed like it would do what she wanted it to, even though the price was suspiciously low – low enough to make her wonder if it really was a piece of junk.

Still, she’d taken a day off one stormy day and drove the family pickup downstate to look at the boat, and it seemed to be in surprisingly good shape to her. Oh, there were things that needed help – it had been disused for some time and was quite dirty, and came without an outboard motor. Upon more investigation she found that the owner mostly wanted it out of his yard, but that the low price had scared off buyers. Just to open negotiations Amanda offered him a token hundred bucks for it, and he landed on it so quickly that she was a little regretful that she hadn’t offered him even less.

She soon was heading home, dragging the boat on its trailer behind the pickup, with a shakily wired up lighting connection. It turned out to be a hassle, since both of the tires on the trailer were shot and she was surprised she was able to get a few miles up the road with them. She’d had to jack the trailer up alongside the road, get the tire and wheel off – no small chore since the nuts seemed to be rusted on – and then take it to a tire store several miles away to get it replaced. When she got back to the boat, she found the other tire was flat, so she had to do it all over again.

What with everything, and not wanting to be out on the road with the trailer overnight, she’d had to find a motel and didn’t make it back to her home at Winchester Harbor until late the next day. Fortunately the weather was still crappy, so she didn’t miss a day out on the lake in the Chinook.

Over the course of the next month or so she did get the mast up on the Knick-Knack and sailed it just enough to get an idea of what needed to be done so she could take off south with it in a future winter. The winter months were slow around Winchester Harbor, including the family businesses, so much of her time was spent in the boat shed down by the dock working on her new acquisition. It did need a lot of work, but fortunately it was mostly elbow grease work, and from working with her father on other boat projects in previous winters she wasn’t exactly a newcomer to working on boats. The most expensive part of the project was a new outboard motor, and again the Internet gave her a lead on a small used Honda at a reasonable price.

Unfortunately, as the winter crept on she started to have second thoughts about the Knick-Knack. Her main concern was that it was very lightweight, and she had doubts about how well it would stand up to heavy weather. It also was decidedly lacking in creature comforts – although it was clear that some creatures had made themselves comfortable aboard over the years – and the more she thought about it the less she liked the idea of having to live on it for months on end. As spring came she was still looking forward to taking it south in the fall, but was starting to wish she hadn’t been quite so impatient to be buying a boat.

Then Adam, an old family friend, showed up, and mentioned that he was looking for a lightweight daysailer to keep on Lake Erie to develop his sailing skills before buying a real cruising sailboat. It turned out that the Knick-Knack was just about what he had been looking for. After a trial sail and some negotiation, Amanda came out of the deal about $4,500 to the good, but now without a boat to take south. A little wiser now about what she was really looking for she had been looking ever since without finding what she wanted – a real cruising boat, not a trailer sailer.

The family hadn’t heard from Adam directly all summer, but Jake’s sister Carolyn reported that she’d been sailing with him on the Knick-Knack a couple times and he really seemed to be enjoying it. But there weren’t many details, and since Adam was a friend who occasionally pitched in on Lewis family chores around Winchester Harbor without asking for a penny in return, Amanda was concerned that she hadn’t taken him on it too badly.

Sure enough, it was Adam in the snack bar, busy getting himself around a burger and fries. “Well, look what the wind blew in,” he said as the two of them walked in.

“Good grief, what a day,” Jake said. “Total waste of time on everybody’s part.”

“Did you catch anything?” Amanda’s mother Rachel asked.

“Just totally skunked,” Jake reported, passing along a few of the details. “It’s supposed to be worse tomorrow, and I think I’m just going to call up and cancel now before we waste any more time. I don’t think I want to go through another day like that twice in a row, anyway.”

“That’s probably not a bad idea,” Rachel agreed.

“I think so,” Jake replied. “Anyway, hello, Adam. It’s good to see you again. What brings you up here?”

“Mostly I wanted to bounce a couple ideas off you, but there’s no rush.”

“Well, I’m always good for listening, but whether my replies make any sense or not is another question.”

There was a little catching up before Amanda was able to ask, “How’s that boat I sold you worked out for you?”

“Just fine. I’ve been out with it any number of times, and last month I trailered it up to Georgian Bay and spent a couple weeks poking around. There are sure a lot of places to poke around. You could blow a summer at it easily.”

“Didn’t it get a little cramped?” she asked, beginning to wonder a little if she’d been too hasty in selling the boat. After all, if Adam could get along with it at his age, somewhere around fifty, she ought to have been able to live with it for a winter.

“Well, yes, but I tried to overlook it. That’s such a good boat for a place like that it wasn’t hard to do. But you were right, it isn’t a boat for long-term cruising. You might have been able to get along with it better than I would but after a couple weeks it felt good to get home, too.”

“So you like the cruising life, huh?” Jake smiled. “I sort of thought you might, especially after we went to the North Channel last fall.”

“Yeah, I do. In fact, that’s the big thing I wanted to talk to you about. You’ve told me that fall is a good time to look for boats and I’m thinking about looking.”

“It is a good time for it, but the kind of boats you’re probably thinking about are going to be going up on the hard for the winter pretty quick. But after a summer on that boat I’ll bet you have some good ideas about what you want next.”

“Some ideas, true. Whether they’re good ones or not, I can’t tell. I want a boat that’s, oh, about the size of your sailboat, give or take. It needs to be big enough in the cabin that I could live aboard for an extended period, maybe with someone with me, and it needs to be comfortable enough that I don’t feel like I’m camping out in a fiberglass tent like I do in the Knick-Knack. It needs to be simple enough and set up so I can single-hand it if I have to. It would be nice if it was a long-keel boat like the Mary Sue, with a lot of ballast so it doesn’t bounce all over the place and roll down to the rail in more than ten knots of wind. And realistically it needs to be a boat I could go offshore in if I felt like it.”

“Adam, Dad,” Amanda piped up, “that sounds just like the Moonshadow.”

“You might have a point there,” Jake agreed. “I haven’t seen the boat but I sure remember how much you were lusting after it.”

“What’s this?” Adam asked.

“It’s a boat I looked at over in Traverse City a month or so ago,” Amanda told them. “It’s a Walton 36, built and fitted out a little more for offshore. Actually I didn’t go over to look at it but at a Cape Dory that turned out to be an overpriced piece of shit, but the Moonshadow was in the next slip and the broker gave me the nickel tour. It looked like a real good boat, and it was really at a fairly good price for what it is, but there was no way in hell I could afford it.”

“Sounds like it might be a possible,” Adam smiled.

“Yeah, it might be,” she replied. “I’m not a marine surveyor like Dad is, but I know a little about boats and it seemed to be in real good shape. The guy said it was set up for a couple who mostly sailed by themselves, and had hankerings to go to the Caribbean, but they never got to do it. It’s a touch on the old-fashioned side and doesn’t have every electronic gadget known to man like some of the stuff we see coming in here. I’d have bought it on the spot if I could have afforded it because it’s just about the boat I’m looking for.”

“Might be worth a look,” Adam smiled. “If you guys aren’t going out fishing tomorrow, would you be up for a run to Traverse City?”

“Sounds better than going out in the Chinook, getting blown all over the place, and watching the customer’s asses as they hang over the side to puke,” Jake smiled. “But maybe we better call over there and make sure this boat is still in the water and not on the hard already. I guess I’d better go make some phone calls. Amanda, what was that place in Traverse City, anyway?”

She told him the name of the brokerage. He said he could look it up, and headed to the back to use the phone there. “Adam, I’m really glad the Knick-Knack worked out well for you,” she said. “When I bought it I was thinking about doing something like Dad and Mom did when they had the original Pixie years ago. But after I got it I started to realize it would restrict me to coastal waters and wouldn’t be that comfortable anyway.”

“So how’s the search for a new boat been going?”

“Not that well, but that’s not surprising. I’ve checked out a few, but there always has been something wrong with them, usually overpriced for what they are. I’m really on a pretty tight budget although I’m better off now than I was when I bought the Knick-Knack. If I don’t turn up anything pretty quickly, I’m probably going to head south when the season is over with anyway. There’s bound to be the right boat somewhere.”

“Heading south, with or without a boat, has to be warmer than spending the winter in Winchester Harbor.”

“That’s my thinking. It’s getting a little too late to be heading south in a boat anyway, even if I found the right one in the next ten minutes. And besides, if I did find a boat in the next ten minutes I’d probably have to spend all winter working on it. If I have to do that I’d just as soon do it where it’s warm.”

“You might have an idea there,” he grinned. “And you have an advantage over me in that you know what you’re doing around boat work anyway.”

They talked for a few minutes about what she wanted in a boat. Actually, the list she had was pretty close to Adam’s, except that she was on a very tight budget, and didn’t mind the thought of having to fix up a boat that wasn’t too badly decayed.

Jake came back after a while. “It’s still in the water,” he reported. “The guy said it was going onto the hard in the next few days, though, so I guess we caught them in time. I got a few more details about the boat, and while it sounds like a good deal I don’t think it’s something you’d want to buy sight unseen. Anyway, I dumped the trip for tomorrow. Let’s plan on getting an early start, since if this boat looks like a keeper I probably should go through it pretty thoroughly.”

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