Things changed a little after Amanda’s birthday party. There was still the stack of work that needed to be done on the Rag Doll, and she made steady progress on it, with the usual amount of help from Beffy, of course. On a couple of notable days she even struck more items off the to-do list than she added to it, and those were milestone days.

Over the two months she’d been working on the boat, there had been a number of days when she’d felt it would be nice to have a beer or two to wind down. There had even been three or four days when Ron or one of the guys brought a cooler with a six-pack or two. Now that being able to go out and get her own legally was a reality, it didn’t seem quite as imperative. Probably the weather getting cooler, with the highs in the sixties as she got into the last part of December had something to do with that.

What did happen was that over the next few weeks she saw Ron more than she had in the past – well, at least sort of. Once or twice a week he’d come over to the boat yard in the evenings, but more to see Cordy than to see her. A couple times he brought Zack along and the four of them went out for dinner and a beer, but Amanda soon sensed that Ron and Cordy wanted some time for themselves, too. She didn’t detect anything serious going on between them, but wouldn’t have wanted to bet about what might happen if she weren’t there to keep an eye on them.

Much though she liked Cordy – and she liked the girl a lot – it was hard to imagine the two of them getting together. Cordy was considerably more rough-cut than her brother, although Amanda had to admit that Cordy had proved that she could clean up nicely. Maybe it was just messing around together, and she couldn’t fault either of them for that, but still, as far as she knew her brother hadn’t had a serious girlfriend since sometime in high school.

But, whatever she actually thought, she figured it was a good idea to keep her opinions to herself and hope it turned out for the best.

The weather wasn’t always cool and sometimes it turned nice, with the highs in the seventies. When days like that came, she liked to get out and work on the topside of the boat, where there was still a lot to do in preparation for painting the deck. She was out there working one day a few days before Christmas, flipping over in her mind the thought of getting on a plane and flying home for Christmas with her grandparents. The thing of it was that she didn’t really want to do it, couldn’t afford it, and didn’t want to leave Beffy alone for that long, so it was more something to think about than actually do.

She was hard at work with the orbital sander, which made a lot of noise, and she didn’t notice a vehicle and trailer pulling in until she heard a familiar voice call, “So how’s it coming on that thing?”

She looked up and was really surprised at what she saw – a familiar pickup truck, and an even more familiar boat. “Adam!” she cried. “What brings you down here? And the Knick-Knack, too?”

“I got tired of hearing about how warm it was down here. I decided to come and see for myself.”

“Does that mean you’re going to be cruising down here?”

“For a while, probably, but I thought I’d give you a little help if you needed it.”

“Oh, I can find things for you to do,” she said as she put the sander down; Adam was a special friend, after all. “But I’m surprised that you’re actually thinking about a long cruise in the Knick-Knack.”

“I surprised myself with it, too,” he replied. “While your dad was down here last month, I took off and went up to Newfoundland to see Mary and my grandson, then when I got back I helped your dad take the engine out of the Moonshadow. We got that done and a few other things, but I could see your dad was getting pretty interested in getting started on the interior for your boat, and there wasn’t much I could help him with on that. I didn’t have much on my agenda for the rest of the winter, and I told him it was a darn shame the Moonshadow wasn’t ready to go, because I sure would like to be sailing it around down here. He suggested I bring the Knick-Knack down instead, and it struck me as more interesting than sitting around my apartment all winter.”

“I have to ask, did you bring the engine from the Moonshadow down with you?”

“No, I didn’t,” he admitted. “At least partly because I had the Buick up at Winchester Harbor, and I had a bunch of stuff to take down to Frenchtown with it, including the outboard for the Knick-Knack. It’s probably just as well. The boat and trailer rig is a little too heavy for my little pickup truck, and bringing the engine along with it would have made things that much worse. But I took my time and made it down here all right, although there were some hills that were pretty slow. So how’s it coming on this thing?”

“I’m making progress,” she said, and talked about some of the things she’d been doing to the Rag Doll for a couple of minutes, and some of the things left to do. “There’s no way I’ll be able to get done by spring, but with any kind of luck I should be getting close.”

“Well, good. At least when you’re done you’re going to know you’ve got a good boat.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s been a lot of work but Ron and some of his buddies come over every now and then and help with the heavy stuff and some of the grubby stuff, so I’m making progress. This is going to be a really neat boat when I get it done. I’m going to have a lot of fun with it, but then, I’m having a lot of fun with it now.”

“You have to do that stuff when you’re young,” he smiled. “I’ve been working on the Moonshadow with your dad some, and I’ve learned an awful lot. But I sure wouldn’t want to take on a project like this at my age with my skills.”

“It gets to me a little at times. There are times that I’ve wished that I’d just kept the Knick-Knack and gone cruising with her, but it really isn’t the boat that I want. I decided I wanted to have something I could go offshore with, and that really isn’t a good idea in the Knick-Knack.”

“I see what you mean. I mean, I can compare the Knick-Knack and the Moonshadow in similar conditions, and I’d a hell of a lot rather be on the Moonshadow. Hell, you were with me on the first day out of Traverse City. I sure wouldn’t have wanted to be out in the Knick-Knack in that stuff. But I figure for cruising around inside down here it ought to do just fine. It beats staying up north, anyway.”

“It does at that, although I’ll tell you what, I’d rather be up north in the summer than down here. Ron and Sid both tell me it gets to be bug city down here then, and it gets so humid that you don’t know whether you’re in the water or what. It’s going to be hard to go back and get on the Chinook, though. So how long are you down for?”

“Until I go back north. I’ll probably be heading back about the same time you do, so I can be there when your dad gets the crane to put the boats back in the water.”

“Yeah, I ought to be there for that, too,” she sighed. “But look Adam. I’m glad you’re here and are willing to help out, but you ought to do some cruising, rather than just grub around on the boat with me all winter. Besides, while the weather is nice compared to Michigan, it’s not this nice all the time. This is the warmest day we’ve had in a couple weeks. I get along all right living on the boat, but there are times I’m glad I have a warm sleeping bag and an electric heater. You’re welcome to stick around if you want, but if I were you I’d leave the Knick-Knack on the trailer and head a couple hundred miles south, maybe more. I’m told that it improves a lot as you get farther south.”

“I suspect you know more about it than I do, and your dad pretty much told me that himself when we were kicking this trip around. And, on top of that, if it gets too bad and I want to give it up, I can always call you up to come and get me with the trailer. But look. The Knick-Knack was all buttoned up for winter when I took it out of Frenchtown Harbor. I mean, I just tossed stuff aboard and let it go at that. I need to get stuff put away, and I need to stock up on groceries. All of that could take me a couple days, and then it’ll be getting close to Christmas. How about if I stake you and Ron to a Christmas dinner, then head on south?”

“I’m sure Sid won’t mind if you park the boat here for a while, especially if you slip him a few bucks. As far as Christmas dinner goes, could we maybe add a couple of friends?”

“Friends of yours?”

“Mostly Coastie friends of Ron’s, although there’s a local girl who might also be interested. She has family here though, so I don’t know.”

“Yeah, sure, why not?”

“I’ll have to ask. Hey, while you’re here, are you going to stay on the boat?”

“If it gets that cold here at night maybe I ought to think about getting a motel, but it would only be for a few days.”

“All right, it sounds like a plan. If we didn’t do something like that, Ron and I would probably be here working on the boat all day and having Christmas dinner out of cans.”

Adam wound up getting a motel room for a few days, which was just fine with Amanda – the evenings had been too cool for showers out on deck in a bikini, and basin wash downs just were not getting the job done. For a few days she could use his shower, which made her feel clean again.

The two of them had dinner together that evening, and he gave her a detailed account of seeing his grandson Matty in Newfoundland. It was a long drive up to the little fishing village where Mary and Matty lived, but it had been a fun time. They also talked about the Moonshadow and the work that had been done on it. “So,” she asked, “now that you’re getting it pretty well ready to go, what are you going to do with it? Spend the summer in Georgian Bay?”

“That’s a very tempting thought,” he told her. “But I’ve pretty well made up my mind to not do it with the Moonshadow, at least not yet. You’ve been there, haven’t you?”

“Matt took me over there for a few days on the Mary Sue a few years ago. It’s real pretty.”

“I had a good time over there this summer with the Knick-Knack, but I’ll tell you what, it’s a good boat for over there. There are rocks and shallow spots all over the place, and it strikes me as a real handful to have to take a boat that draws the depths of the Moonshadow into those areas by myself. I need an extra set of hands, and I don’t have them right now.”

“Well, yeah, you’re probably right on that. So have you figured out something else to do?”

Adam got a big grin on his face. “I think I have, but I’m still working on the details and haven’t made my mind up all the way yet. Right at the moment, I’m considering taking the Moonshadow down the St. Lawrence and across to Newfoundland a little like Matt did before he met Mary, and then going to Blanche Tickle, the little settlement where Mary and Matty live, to visit with them.”

“That sounds like a heck of a trip,” she nodded. “It might be something of a handful to want to do by yourself, but I suppose you could take all summer to do it.”

“Right,” he agreed. “Actually, what I’m thinking is that I might put the Moonshadow on the hard there for the winter, then head down here the following spring. Or, if things go well and I get there early enough, I might just head south after I visit here and try to beat winter down here.”

“Sounds like it might work,” she nodded with a smile. That would be a heck of a trip, and she’d love to be with him on it! She didn’t say anything, since she knew it would have to be right in the heart of the fishing season, and there was no chance she could get away. Though her plans to work in the summer and spend the winter in the south had several advantages, it also barred her from being able to go sailing in some places that would be really neat. Maybe someday. “You have to include the fact that from what I hear, a lot of the insurance companies don’t like you coming much farther south than about Chesapeake Bay before the first of November, to avoid the hurricane season.”

“That enters into it a little,” he agreed. “But my plans are loose at this point, and, like I said, I haven’t come to a final decision yet. I may just come down the Erie Canal or something to get down here for next winter. Actually, bringing the Knick-Knack down here ought to give me an idea of how much I’ll like sailing down here in the winter anyway.”

“I guess you’ll have to be the one to make the decision on that,” she told him. “I’ve spent a little time down here on the Winter Haven over on the Gulf side of the state and in the Keys, but never around here. I haven’t been sailing around here at all, although I’ve been out locally on a work boat a few times.”

After kicking it around a little, Adam had decided to just go ahead and start the cruise from where he was. He figured he could live with the cool conditions while he was on the water, and Sid’s was a good place to leave the truck and the trailer – Amanda occasionally had need to use a truck, and it would be available for her. He did take her up on her suggestion to get an extension cord and an electric heater so that he could be a little warmer if he could find a slip somewhere during a cold spell.

Adam spent the next few days working on the Knick-Knack, getting it ready for his own sailing adventure. He admitted that, when he’d picked the boat up from Frenchtown Harbor, it still had been more or less put away for the winter. It had been cold enough that he had done little more than take the tarps off and throw some gear and clothes, some of it from the Moonshadow, on board. Now, he had to sort everything out and put it where it belonged, along with stocking up on groceries and other supplies for the trip. Occasionally she helped him out with the project, and he helped her with the Rag Doll a little too.

The whole thing left Amanda a little wistful – if things had worked out a little differently, she would have been the one getting set to go sailing on it for a couple months. She wasn’t going to get to do that at all this winter, but maybe, if things went well, she’d be doing the same thing the following winter on the Rag Doll, which would be a much more comfortable boat.

Christmas Day turned out to be a little bigger deal than any of them had planned. She and Ron were there, of course, and so were Zack and Shades. And Cordy was there, too – it turned out that the Sims family wasn’t planning on doing anything special on Christmas day, but their extended family had a big shindig on Christmas Eve. Amanda was a little surprised when Ron introduced her to Adam as “Cordelia.” She’d always figured that “Cordy” was a nickname but she’d never been absolutely sure about it.

Cordy was dressed up nicely for the dinner, and was on good behavior, for her, anyway. Still, it was clear that she and Ron were doing some serious nosing around each other in the midst of the teasing and joking and tall stories they shared. While Amanda couldn’t quite make herself believe that things were going anywhere between the two of them, it sure looked like they were having fun with each other. More and more she was expecting that things could get interesting between the two of them.

Amanda thought that she and Zack did a lot better job of keeping things low-key. They were friends, although most of the time it would be difficult to call them boyfriend and girlfriend. In a way, that was fine; in a little more than two months Amanda knew she would be heading back north, and that probably would be that.

Of course, they talked about Adam’s upcoming cruise in the Knick-Knack; Cordy and the guys all had suggestions about things to watch out for, and things to see. Adam told some stories about sailing on Georgian Bay, and Ron and Shades talked a little about cleaning up after that oil spill the month before, and what life in the Coast Guard was like.

It all made for a very pleasant couple of hours of talking and hanging out. Before it was over with, Ron asked Adam if there was anything the guys could do to help out with the Knick-Knack to make up for him taking them to dinner. By then, Adam had most things pretty well under control on the trailer boat, but suggested that the guys could help him get the mast up. He’d put it off since one thing Sims Boat Yard didn’t have was a good launch ramp, and the plan had been to trailer the boat to a launch ramp a couple miles away to get the boat in the water. Getting the mast up there wouldn’t have been a big job; he and Amanda had planned to do it by themselves.

“There’s no reason we couldn’t do it right at the yard,” Cordy said. “After all, that’s what we’ve got the crane for.”

After a bit of talking it over, they all trooped over to the boatyard after dinner. Cordy went to change clothes – the old crane wasn’t exactly the cleanest thing in the world – and it didn’t take long for the rest of them to have the mast up and taken care of. By then, Cordy had joined them, and had gotten the old diesel crane to working. They slid lifting straps under the Knick-Knack, and it was only a matter of a couple minutes before the boat was on the water and tied up next to the Rag Doll.

There was a little more fiddling around with the Knick-Knack, but soon they were out of things to do. “Well, what do we do now?” Ron asked. “I don’t feel like going and hanging out in a bar somewhere, and I’m not really in the mood to get to work on the Rag Doll today, considering that it’s Christmas and all.”

“It’s not like Christmas at home, that’s for sure,” Amanda said. “At least it’s warm down here.”

“Yeah,” Ron agreed. “Half the time the harbor would be iced over at home by now. Here we are in sunny Florida, and maybe we ought to take advantage of it.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Amanda smirked. “You know, for years up at home I dreamed about being down here, laying in the sun and going swimming in the ocean on Christmas Day. Now, here I am, and I haven’t even gotten out to the ocean, let alone to a beach.”

Cordy wrinkled her nose. “Girl, it ain’t that warm,” she replied sarcastically. “You’re gonna freeze your butt if you try that.”

“It’s not that cold,” Amanda protested. “I don’t know what the water temperature has to be over in the ocean but I’ll bet it’s warmer than about the best Lake Huron ever gets.”

“I’ll go with you,” Ron smiled. “I don’t have a swim suit with me but I think there’s an old pair of my shorts in your pile of rags. That’d work for a brief swim, at least so we could say we’ve done it.”

“I’ve got some swimsuits and shorts on the Knick-Knack,” Adam added. “Those might work for Shades and Zack if we pull the strings up tight enough.”

“Oh, hell,” Cordy shook her head. “You Yankees, and Shades, I’m including you in that, you’re all crazy as hoot owls. I guess I’ll have to run up to the trailer and get a bikini myself, just so I don’t feel left out.”

The beach was just about deserted, partly from the fact that it was Christmas, and partly from the fact that most Floridians considered it a little too cold for the beach. Cordy fell into that category; she stripped down from jeans and a sweat shirt to a rather tiny bikini that had Ron’s eyes just about popping out of his head, and made a brief trip into the water with the rest of them. They stayed in the water for a few minutes – it wasn’t really that warm – then got out on the beach. Amanda spread out on a towel to sunbathe a little, more for the sake of saying she’d done it than to get a tan. The rest of them got their clothes back on, and Ron and Cordy huddled together very closely. Cordy said it was to try to get warmed up again, but that wasn’t exactly what it looked like to anyone else.

After a while even Amanda got dressed with the rest of them, but at least she could say she’d been swimming in the ocean and sunbathing on Christmas Day. They decided to have a beer on the way back, and when the waitress found out what they’d been up to, she said they were all crazy. She may have been right.

Adam spent his last night in the motel room, but early the next morning he was down at the boat yard, putting his last few things away and getting ready to go as Amanda watched, with Beffy in her arms. “Well, I guess that’s it,” he said finally. “I might as well get out of here.”

“You take it easy, and play it cool,” Amanda told him, while Beffy meeped a goodbye.

“I will,” he promised as he started the Honda outboard. “There’s nothing to stick my neck out over. If things go bad, I’ll have you come and get me. See you in a couple of months.” In a minute or two he had backed the Knick-Knack out of the slip, and was headed out of the bayou on his own adventure.

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