Adam showed back up at the Channel Stop two days later, with the trunk of his Buick filled with a Honda outboard. He was clearly getting anxious to get over to pick up the Moonshadow – he had a bad case of “new boat fever” that was evident to everyone. Just about the first words he had for Amanda as she and her father got off the Chinook after a pretty good day’s fishing were, “Are you going to be ready to go pick it up in the morning?”

“It’s up to Dad,” she told him. “But I’m ready.”

“I suppose there’s no reason you couldn’t go and do it,” Jake said, sounding a little negative. “From the weather reports, the weather isn’t going to be exactly the nicest we’ve had all summer. Cold, blustery and overcast is what I make out of it, although it shouldn’t be anything like that stuff we had a few days ago.”

“I don’t mind it being a little rough,” Adam told them. “I really want to see how the Moonshadow handles rough stuff and learn something about handling it in those conditions.”

“I don’t mind it a little rough, either,” Amanda replied thoughtfully. “But it’s a boat we don’t know much about and it could have some surprises. I suppose we could go over, take a look at the conditions and see how it goes. If it’s too rough, we could find a place to hole up until this system blows through.”

“Really, it’s your call,” Adam said. “You know more about it than I do.”

Amanda was still a little negative about getting going the next morning, for the morning marine weather report was just about as bad as it had predicted the day before. Still, Adam was anxious to get to know the Moonshadow better and Amanda figured there was no harm in going to take a look.

The plan was to drive Adam’s Buick over to the boatyard where the Moonshadow was waiting, but there was no way to get the car back short of making a special trip once they’d delivered the boat. However, having breakfast at the Channel Stop before they left solved that problem. One of the breakfast regulars, a retired guy by the name of Sam Dale, admitted he didn’t have anything in particular to do that day and was willing to ride over to Traverse City with them and drive the car back. Ten minutes later the three of them were on the road.

It wasn’t a quick turnaround; they had to get the outboard out of the trunk of the Buick and hang it on the motor mount of the big boat, and do any number of other little chores involved in the pickup. It was late in the morning before Sam headed back to Winchester Harbor in the Buick, while Adam and Amanda cast off the lines on the Moonshadow and headed out from the boatyard.

The weather was marginal, as had been predicted. It was blowing hard out of the north, right dead on the nose. The little outboard, adequate for the Knick-Knack, was barely able to move the bigger and heavier boat into the breeze at all. Amanda had figured that they needed to be a little conservative with the strange boat, and even before they’d left the dock she’d dug out the little “spitfire” storm jib and hanked it onto the forestay. They weren’t fifty yards away from the dock when she raised it to help the outboard out.

The sail started drawing immediately, and they started to get far enough from shore for a little comfort, so Amanda turned to getting the mainsail up, but only up as far as the highest row of reef points. That did the trick; the Moonshadow heeled over and started moving comfortably as close to the wind as it could get.

After a while they started to get a little more comfortable with the boat in those conditions. Amanda and Adam talked it over, and increased sail on both the main and the jib; the Moonshadow settled down and showed the stuff it was made of: good stuff – it was a solid boat and acted like it; even Adam could tell it. “You know, Adam,” Amanda said to him over the howl of the wind back in the cockpit, “I think you’ve got a winner here.”

“I think so too,” he agreed. “It just shows this boat was built to take it.”

The big problem with the whole exercise was that the wind was right on the nose, which meant that they were going to have to tack several times, even after they got outside the long, narrow bay. The waves the wind was blowing at them were large, and they crashed through each one, taking it on the forequarter of the boat; with each wave, spray blew back on them. In spite of wearing foul weather gear, the cockpit was wet and uncomfortable. Some boats have canvas shields called “dodgers” to help keep some of the spray out of the cockpit in such conditions, but the Moonshadow, for whatever reason, didn’t have them.

Amanda could see that was going to get uncomfortable to the point of being ridiculous long before they got back. After a while Amanda took the little jib, which had been taken down, and rigged it in front of the cockpit as a sort of makeshift dodger to keep some of the cold spray off, although it had to be rerigged each time they tacked.

It had been clear from the beginning that they weren’t going to be able to make it back to Winchester Harbor this day. Still, while the boat was moving at a respectable pace they weren’t gaining a lot of ground due to having to tack into the wind every inch of the way. After a while, Amanda turned to Adam and said, “Hey, Adam. If this stuff is getting to you, we could pull into Sutton’s Bay up ahead and wait this jazz out.”

“A part of me would be willing to take you up on that one,” he replied. “But do you realize we left so quick we don’t have an ounce of food with us?”

“You’re kidding!” she said as she shook her head. “I never thought of that.”

“Well, I didn’t either,” he said. “I guess we’re just going to have to tough it out and wait till we can pull into some place that has a restaurant.”

“And maybe a store where we can get some bread and peanut butter or something,” she sighed. “That was pretty damn dumb of both of us. I guess I can skip lunch if you can.”

“I’d say to keep pushing it for a while,” he suggested. “The hell of it is that if we stop now we’re not going to want to get started again.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right about that,” she conceded.

At least once they were out of Grand Traverse Bay they could make longer tacks, which meant their makeshift dodger didn’t have to be rerigged as often. Later in the day they gave some consideration to pulling into Charlevoix for an early dinner and to spend the night, but the way their tacks worked out they were well offshore when the time came to head into the place. They kept pressing onward slowly to the north, and as the day was dying they finally decided to pull into the harbor of St. James on Beaver Island.

It was considerably more peaceful inside the harbor, and they soon found an unoccupied slip; the harbor was protected enough that the little Honda from the Knick-Knack was enough to help them make it up to the dock once they had the sails down. Best of all, not far from the slip they could see a small bar.

Once the two of them had the Moonshadow tied firmly to the pilings and things made shipshape after the tough day, the two of them headed up the street to the little bar. Both were glad to have the prospect of sitting on something that was not moving in a place that was warm, calm, and dry. What was more, there was a good chance the little bar would have burgers or something – she was hungry, having missed lunch, after all.

While normally Amanda enjoyed the challenge of being out in rough seas and the thrill of sailing in difficult conditions, she’d had about all she wanted of it for one day. If she’d been at home she’d have gotten a beer or two out of the refrigerator in the kitchen to unwind. She really could have enjoyed one after this day, but she wasn’t twenty-one yet; what’s more, she knew Adam knew it.

There was a handful of other patrons in the bar, mostly clustered around one end of the place watching a ball game on a big-screen TV. She and Adam got a seat about as far from the TV as they could manage, mostly to be away from the noise so they could talk. Soon a waitress came over to them. “Rough out there today?” she asked as she left them menus.

“Wouldn’t have been quite as bad if we’d been going downwind,” Adam replied. “As it was, it got a little wild.”

“It’s been howling right here in the harbor, too. I’m not sure how anxious I’d have been to be out there today,” the jovial, heavy-set middle-aged woman smiled. “Can I get you anything?”

“How about a Miller Genuine Draft?” Adam said; clearly he needed a beer about as bad as she did.

“How about you, honey?” she said to Amanda.

Oh, what the hell, Amanda thought. Maybe Adam won’t out me, and maybe he’ll realize I need one about as bad as he does. “That sounds good to me, too,” she replied.

“Two coming up,” the woman replied, and turned for the bar. Adam gave Amanda a little bit of a knowing smile, and said nothing.

Amanda sat there silently for a moment, wanting to thank Adam for not letting on about her age but knowing she couldn’t say anything. Finally, she said nonchalantly, “That was sort of fun in a way, but I’ve had better days sailing.”

“I have too. I’ll tell you what, though. We weren’t five minutes out when I realized I was glad we were on the Moonshadow and not the Knick-Knack. That would have been way too much for it. We’d have been knocked down before we knew it.”

“No fooling,” she nodded. “There are some things the Moonshadow needs and some sort of a dodger is right up at the head of the list. But I think you’ve got a good, tough boat there that can take a licking and keep coming back for more.”

“I do too. The way it handled today just convinced me that I made the right choice in getting it. I can see I’m going to have to get more practiced with it, but if today taught me nothing else, it told me that the boat is capable of just about everything I want it to do.”

“I know you’re planning on living aboard and cruising for an extended period,” Amanda said as the waitress came up with two bottles of beer and glasses. “But where do you plan on going?”

Since they hadn’t even opened the menus yet despite having missed lunch, the waitress just set the beers down and left. “I’m really not sure,” Adam told her as he poured some beer into the small glass, while she did the same. “This whole thing has come down so quickly that I really haven’t had the chance to think it out all the way. I mean, just a week ago I was sitting on the Knick-Knack down on Lake Erie and thinking I ought to come up and bounce the idea of getting a new boat off of your dad. Now here I am and I’m not quite sure how it all happened. I mean, I was thinking in terms of a nice, leisurely period of half the winter or so looking for a boat, and now I have one.”

“Looking for a boat can be frustrating,” she grinned as she took a sip of the beer; it may have tasted better because of the fact that it was legally a forbidden fruit to her. “Ask me, I know. I’ve been looking for something ever since I sold you the Knick-Knack, but everything is either too expensive or needs too much work. If I hadn’t sold it to you, I’d be getting stuff together right now so I could head south in a few weeks. Now, well, it’s not going to happen.”

“I’m glad you sold it to me,” he replied. “It was just absolutely the right boat for me for this summer. I had some good times with it down on Lake Erie, but the best time was when I put it on the trailer and went up to Georgian Bay on Lake Huron for a couple of weeks. Actually, the Knick-Knack was the perfect boat for that, too, since it’s light and doesn’t need a lot of water under her, what with that swing keel. That’s my one reservation about the Moonshadow. If I go there with the new boat, I’m going to have to be a lot more picky about where I go with it.”

“So what are you going to do with the Knick-Knack?”

“I don’t know yet. This has all come down so quickly I haven’t figured it out. My general plan is to take the Moonshadow to Florida next summer. Whether I go down the Mississippi or down the East Coast is still up in the air. Whether I go to Georgian Bay with it next spring is sort of open to question. I have the feeling living on the Knick-Knack is going to be a little on the primitive side after I get used to the Moonshadow. The thought crosses my mind that once I get the Moonshadow to Florida I might want to leave it there. If I kept the Knick-Knack up here I could still take it to Georgian Bay in the summer. I could probably stand to camp out on it for a few weeks. It’s not like it’s costing me that much to just leave it on the trailer.”

“Well, yeah, that’s a possibility,” Amanda agreed as a little pea of an idea began to rattle in the back of her head. Maybe . . . it wanted a little more thinking out before she brought it up to Adam. “I’d love to go cruising on Georgian Bay sometime, but it’s always in the summer and I’d be busy around home.”

“Maybe you could work it out with your folks to break free for a week or two,” he suggested.

“Could be, but that’s the busiest part of the year. There are barely enough of us to do everything now, and that’s when we bring in summer help to work at the Channel Stop, and sometimes on the boats.”

“Well, maybe you’ll get to go sooner or later,” he said as the waitress came back over to them.

While they ordered dinner – burgers and fries, which was about the best the place had to offer – the pea of an idea kept rattling around in Amanda’s mind. Adam clearly wasn’t going to be using the Knick-Knack this winter, and once he got well and truly hooked on the Moonshadow, he might not use it again. He might be willing to sell it back to her, or she could rent it from him, or something. She could still go to Florida with it like she had once planned to do this winter!

There were problems with that, of course. While she had the money in her boat fund to buy the boat back for what he had paid her for it, taking it to Florida would mean she’d have to get a different vehicle. Her Chevy Impala was a good car, but it just didn’t have the guts to tow something as heavy as the Knick-Knack when it was on the trailer. That meant a pickup truck or SUV or something, which meant that the money for it would have to come out of her boat fund and it would most likely take a pretty good hit in the process. Wouldn’t it be better to just save the money to put into a new boat, maybe another boat she could give a restoration to, like she had done with the Knick-Knack in the first place? And besides, wouldn’t buying the Knick-Knack back be something of a step backwards?

It was clearly something to think about and she didn’t think this was a real good time to bring it up. That was fine, she still had some time before she had to be making a decision on it.

But she could lay a little groundwork. As soon as the waitress left with their orders, she asked Adam, “So now that you have the Moonshadow, what are you going to do this winter?”

“That’s a darn good question,” he admitted. “Like I said earlier, this whole thing came down so quickly that I really haven’t had the chance to think it out. If I’m going to have your dad change the engine, that means the boat is going to have to be wintered over at Winchester Harbor. That pretty well means that it’s going to have to stay in the water until the fishing season is over with and he gets a crane in to lift the fishing boats out of the water and take the mast out of the Moonshadow. About all I get out of that is that I might as well stay around and go out sailing with it when I can, to get a little more used to it and figure out what needs to be done. There are plenty of little chores I can busy myself with on days that are less than perfect. I mean, cleaning, varnishing, and things like that. But after it comes out of the water, unless there’s something I can help your dad with, I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you still busy down at your company?”

“Not very busy,” he told her. “After my father died last winter, I decided to move from being Chief Operating Officer to Chief Executive Officer. It’s taken a while to set up, but I’m nowhere near as busy on a day-to-day basis as I was this time last year. I mean, I’ve been able to shove ninety percent of what I used to do off on others in the management. That’ll allow me to go out and do some extended cruising in the future but this winter looks like it’s going to be a long one.”

Sooner or later, Amanda thought, he’s going to get the idea of hauling the Knick-Knack down to Florida rather than freezing his ass in Michigan. That probably kills the idea of taking it myself before I can even bring it up to him, so I suppose the best thing to do is just keep my mouth shut about it. Maybe it wasn’t that good an idea, anyway. It’s probably going to mean that I’m going to be the one freezing my ass in Michigan, unless I just hop in the Chevy and go down to visit Ron, and spend some time looking for boats. Really, there are worse things I could do.

The wind was still blowing hard the next day. Amanda and Adam made a quick stop at a little grocery store near the docks to get things like bread, peanut butter, and bottled water so they’d have something if they had to hole up someplace before they got to Winchester Harbor. But, the way it was blowing, it seemed like they’d have a good chance to make it in that evening.

It was just about as rough out on Lake Michigan as it had been the day before, but since the wind had backed a little and their course was more to the northeast, they were able to make it around Waugoshance Point in one easy tack, almost a beam reach. Things were a little more comfortable and they didn’t even bother to rig the improvised dodger. Soon they sailed under the Mackinac Bridge and turned southeastward toward Winchester Harbor.

By now the wind had backed a little so they were on a broad reach, running close to downwind, and things seemed a lot calmer. Somewhere around Bois Blanc Island they decided it was time for lunch, so Amanda broke out the supplies they’d bought earlier – only to discover there was no silverware aboard.

“Now what are we going to do?” Adam asked.

“A sailor always should carry a pocket knife, just on general principles,” Amanda told him. “You never know when it’s going to come in useful. But Adam, I think you’re going to have to do some work on fitting out this boat to make it a little more livable.”

“You’re right. I could have thought this little exercise out a little more thoroughly.”

Late in the day Adam steered the Moonshadow up the familiar channel not far behind the Chinook, and into a vacant slip close to Jake’s dock.

Jake was buttoning up the Chinook for the night by then, and of course was interested in what had happened. “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.”

Of course, Amanda and Adam had to tell the whole story in detail over dinner up at the Channel Stop, and that generated a few suggestions about what should be changed on the Moonshadow. Adam also explained his idea to stay around until the fishing season was over with, just so he could get a little more familiar with it this fall. “However, if I’m going to do that, I think I’d better take a quick run downstate to pick up a few more clothes, and maybe grab some stuff off the Knick-Knack.”

“Stuff like cooking utensils and silverware?” Amanda grinned.

“Yeah, that too,” he said. “I think that in spite of the time I spent cruising in the Knick-Knack this summer, I’ve learned that there’s a little more to fitting out a boat for cruising than I’d thought.”

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