Chapter 2

That was one of the moments I remember best during a voyage that had had its practical beginning about seven years before. As a rim man on the copy desk of a morning newspaper, the Plain Dealer of Cleveland, Ohio, I had a chance at about ten–forty every working night to peek at the ads the regular subscribers didn’t see until they got out of bed the next morning. It was a benefit I hadn’t even considered when I applied for the job, but during the summer of 1958 I availed myself of it with considerable appreciation because Virginia, my wife, and I had decided that at long last our heads were far enough above water, financially, to permit us to buy a small sailboat.

Every night when first–edition copies of the paper were brought up from the presses to the second–floor city room, I took advantage of the first lull in the night’s work to turn to the want ads listed under “Boats–Marine Supplies” to see what I could find. Most of the ads concerned motorboats; only a few sailboats were offered for sale and none of these seemed suited to us. We needed a boat large enough to accommodate both of us, our daughter, Robin, and our son, Douglas, and yet small enough to keep at our home in suburban Willowick, in the garage we hoped to have before long. This would enable us to avoid dockage fees that, at that stage of our fortunes, would have bankrupted us. But it also meant that the boat had to be centerboard craft that could be rolled on and off a conventional boat trailer with ease. A sailboat with a keel sticking down was out of the question as it would be much too difficult to haul on a trailer.

Finally, after weeks of looking, I found a promising ad in the paper of August 2nd. It said:

SAILBOAT, 13 ½–ft. Old Town, needs

Some repair, cheap. EN 1–7298.

Getting the drop on the P.D.‘s three hundred thousand–plus paying readers, I dialed that telephone number at once and made arrangements to see the boat early the next day. It turned out to be a most memorable occasion.

The owner was a fine old gentleman of Greek descent who met me with a twinkle in his eyes. From the way he spoke, I could tell the boat had played the same unifying role in his family that Virginia and I hoped it would play in ours. He and his wife had raised their daughter on sailboating very much as we hoped to raise our youngsters, for, in addition to all the other reasons we had for wanting a sailboat, we listed the character–building part it could have in shaping our children’s personalities.

But my first glimpse of the boat gave me quite a shock. It looked so lonely and forlorn turned bottom up in the owner’s back yard, its bow and stern resting on rough crates. What struck me like a blow, however, was the sight of two enormous splits in the hull, one on each side at about waterline level. They were about five feet long and up to a quarter of an inch wide. I couldn’t imagine what had caused them and I didn’t ask for fear of embarrassing the owner; he was such a nice old man. The cause didn’t matter, anyway; all I needed to know was whether they could be repaired.

Sensing that I wanted to examine the boat thoroughly, the elderly gentleman left us alone. He had said the boat was thirty years old, and she showed her age in her multi–layered and multicolored coatings of paint, which, in spots, was peeling. But the planking, except for the two splits, appeared healthy and strong.

I lay on my back, pushed my head and shoulders under the boat and, as soon as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, studied every nook and cranny of her interior. I discovered the “needs some repair” of the ad was an understatement. Nearly two dozen of the boat’s steam–bent ribs were broken and half a dozen others were infected with dry rot, which also had decayed chunks of the mast step and a portion of the centerboard trunk. The canvas deck was badly worn and needed replacement, and the sails, as I discovered later, were too mildewed and threadbare to use. Everything else, though, was basically sound.

For about forty–five minutes I lay there under the boat. After I’d examined her insides completely and had decided her split planks were mendable, I drifted off into woolgathering about our plans for her, fixing her up, the place she’d occupy in our family and how she’d fare with us and we with her. Finally, I got down to the business of listing all the pros and cons, weighing her cost, a hundred and sixty dollars, and the expense of repairing her and buying her new sails, which I estimated would come to around three hundred dollars, against the cost and the possibility of buying a boat in better condition. I decided that, dilapidated as she was, she was the boat for us. So I paid a deposit and told the owner I’d be back soon to pick her up.

On August 4th (Virginia has the date underlined in her diary) the whole family bundled into our car and, with a rented trailer hitched on behind, we drove off to take possession of our little craft. The owner and his friendly wife and daughter came out to greet us on our arrival. We chatted for a few minutes, completed our transaction, and then everyone pitched in to turn the boat right side up and winch it onto the trailer. Virginia told me later that, as we drove slowly down the driveway, she noticed tears glistening in the old man’s eyes as he and his wife kissed their hands and patted the boat with affectionate gestures of farewell. We were sorry to be taking away an object that had meant so much to them, but at the same time we were happy to know that, despite its run–down state, the boat had been deeply loved. Unquestionably, it had provided this pleasant family with many happy experiences, and we felt certain it would do the same for us.

Earlier in the day Robin and Douglas had broadcast the news to their friends that we were going to get a boat, so nearly all the children of the neighborhood were waiting for us on our return home. They paraded along shouting to one another as we proudly towed our new acquisition up our driveway, and, from that moment on, the boat seemed to be surrounded by children. It apparently was a magnet, although I suspect that neighborhood mothers often told their offspring to “go up and watch what Mr. Manry’s doing” just to get them out from underfoot for awhile. Anyway, they seemed to congregate around the boat whenever I was working on it, which was practically every day between 9:30 A.M. and 4 P.M., when I had to stop to have dinner and then leave for my job on the P.D. copy desk.

Sometimes I was able to pull off a stunt like Tom Sawyer’s the day he had to whitewash his Aunt Polly’s fence, except that I was taking paint off, not putting it on. I’d scrape away as though the task were sheer ecstasy and pretty soon one of the young observers would ask if he could share my fun; and I’d say yes and give him a scraper or some sandpaper. And then another would ask, and then another. Once I had four junior boat renovators working at the same time. Usually they didn’t get a great deal accomplished; the paint–removal project was arduous. But we all had a good time.

I used every minute I could take from the demands of my job, family and home to work on the boat, for steady progress had to be made if it was to be ready in time for the 1959 boating season, which opened in May. In fact, I spent so much time working on the boat I’m sure Virginia and the children often wondered whether we had taken possession of it or it had taken possession of us. I must say, though, that they bore up remarkably well under the intra–family strains created by occasional conflicts between its needs and ours. Like the time I had to soak the ash ribs I’d ordered in the bathtub for five days to make them pliable enough to bend into place. That was a time of tribulation for everyone.

The grim days of having to take sponge baths or none came to an end as the new ribs were installed and bolted down to the planking. A new mast step was put in next, and the decayed portion of the centerboard trunk was cut out and replaced with fresh wood. Then those cruel, ugly splits in the sides were repaired with plywood strips, waterproof glue and fiberglass.

During all this time we had to be careful to keep the boat dry. Whenever I wasn’t working on it, we kept it covered with tarpaulins and old plastic tablecloths. And, of course, the necessity of keeping it dry made that fall seem like the rainiest one we’d ever had.

One night Virginia was ready for bed when I telephoned from the Plain Dealer, as I always did at about 10:00 P.M., during my supper hour.

“Is it raining?” I asked. (It was impossible to tell form the P.D. city room, which had no windows.)

“Yes.”

“Better make sure the boat isn’t getting wet.”

“O.K.”

So my wonderful wife put a raincoat on over her pajamas and rubber boots over her bedroom slippers and went out into the cold, blustery, wet night to make sure the boat–this nautical thing that was being treated with the deference we might have shown a third child–was not suffering from the dampness.

One of the tarps was flapping wildly, threatening to come adrift; so Virginia took hold of an automobile tire we used to weigh the tarps down and heaved it into position. It was an easy operation. She’d done it scores of times before. The only trouble was that this time the tire was full of ice-cold rain water.

Virginia gasped and sputtered beneath the resulting shower, drenched to the skin in spite of the rain gear she wore, and nearly frozen. It was a moment of dreadful crisis for me and for the boat, although, at the time, I remained tranquilly oblivious at my P.D. post miles away, with nothing more serious on my mind than the split infinitives and faulty syntax in a reporter’s news copy. I didn’t hear of it until the next day, at breakfast.

We passed through such troubled waters as these on several occasions. However, a rising tide of good humor always saw us through, as the boat gradually changed in appearance from an abandoned hulk to a craft that might conceivably return someday to the element for which it was assigned.

Our developing plans for the boat were rather unconventional. In fact, our intentions went far beyond simply restoring it to a seaworthy condition. We wanted it to become our little yacht, to take us on cruises, which meant that it had to have sleeping accommodations for all four of us within the meager space provided by its 13 ½ –foot length and 5 ¼–foot beam. Seldom has so much been expected of so small a boat. And yet these expectations were, in a manner of speaking, realized.

The mid–section of the hull was converted into a tiny “cabin” separated from the cockpit by a watertight bulkhead and covered with a roof that could be partly opened, to permit entry and use of the folding–down seats at its rear, or removed entirely. Virginia and I could sleep on air mattresses, in sleeping bags, in this area; one on each side of the centerboard trunk, with our feet extending into the bow.

Next, I built a removable panel that could be fitted over the foot well to convert the cockpit into a flat space where Robin and Douglas could put their air mattresses and sleeping bags. Since this cockpit sleeping area was elevated eight or ten inches above the floor where Virginia and I would sleep, it gave our accommodations plan a split-level effect that was certainly in tune with the times, from the viewpoint of home architecture if not naval architecture.

Naturally we had to consider the weather, for it wouldn’t have been very pleasant on our yacht in a rainstorm; the joint between the two sections of the cabin roof wasn’t absolutely rainproof, despite the use of weather stripping, and would have let water drip below, maddeningly. Besides which, the cockpit double–bunk layout was entirely open to the elements. These difficulties were overcome through the fabrication of a tent we could sling over the boom and snap to fasteners installed on either side of the boat just below the rubbing strake. The tent enclosed both cabin and cockpit, giving us all the headroom we needed, as well as privacy and shelter for cruising.

At last, in early May, after more than nine months of toil, our tiny yacht was ready. Then came the unforgettable day we brought home our own trailer, pulled the boat onto it for the first time and, just for practice, pitched the tent to see how it would look. It looked great; at least, it did to us. I think it would be accurate to say the boat was unique; and the entire rig, assembled with the tent up, had the extraordinary appearance of an amphibious Conestoga wagon. Robin and Douglas and their friends had a wonderful time playing in it. And Virginia and I began to feel like pioneers on the threshold of exciting explorations that would add an entirely new dimension to our lives. We could hardly wait to get started.

Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 10th, was only a day or two away and I thought what a treat it would be for Virginia if we launched our boat and went for our first sail on this special day. So that’s what we did; only it didn’t work out quite the way I’d hoped it would.

We trailed the boat to Cleveland’s Gordon Park and utilized the public launching ramps there to get it into the water. That much was easy. But then the complications set in. First it began to rain and, for half an hour or so, Virginia and the children huddled uncomfortably in semi–reclining positions in the minute cabin to keep relatively dry. There wasn’t room for me in there, too, so I stayed outside tending the mooring lines and getting soaked.

When the rain finally stopped, the wind began to blow with alarming force. Frankly, it scared me. Even as a novice sailor I realized it would be dangerous to be out on Lake Erie in such a stiff and gusty breeze. But we’d come to sail and sail we would. At least, one of us would–me.

I felt like Captain Bligh when I told my family I’d decided to go it alone; under the circumstances, I simply couldn’t be responsible for the safety of anyone but myself. However, they must have realized I spoke words of wisdom for there were no significant protests. All three got out of the boat and into our car and sat there, protected from the wind, eating the picnic lunch Virginia had prepared, as the boat and I left the shore.

As we headed into the maelstrom of winds and waves the words of Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar” came to me:

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea.

It wasn’t the time of sunset, either actually or figuratively, and there was no evening star in sight, but I could hear that “clear call for me” and a frightful moaning that filled me with dread. Fortunately, the moaning was of the wind in the rigging, not of the bar. That was a relief.

I didn’t dare to venture far into the lake; in fact, I stayed within the protecting arm of a nearby breakwall. Even so, it was one of the most breath–taking sails of my life. The boat whizzed along so fast that I had to come about every twenty seconds or so to stay within the breakwall’s shelter, which I was determined to do. Violent puffs of wind made the craft heel over so far and so fast that I repeatedly let go of the mainsheet in alarm, whereupon it would run through the boom block as far as it could go. Only the knot in its end kept it from going all the way, which would have created a very sticky situation indeed.

In less than fifteen minutes I’d had my fill of sailing under those conditions and returned to the dock. We soon had the boat back on the trailer and were on our way home.

“It was kinda gusty,” I told Virginia.

“Kind of gusty!” she exclaimed. “I was sure you were going to upset. And the waves were so big we couldn’t even see you when you were down between them! All we could see was the tip of the sail!”

“Yeah. I guess it must have looked pretty exciting from the shore. And it sure wasn’t much of an outing for you. All you got to do was sit in the car and watch your husband sail.”

“You mean watch him nearly drown!”

When we got home, the neighbors hurried out to greet us as though we had all returned from the grave. They said that, to tell the truth, they hadn’t expected to see us again–alive. However, I couldn’t afford to hang around wallowing in the delightful role of a latter–day Lazarus; I had to eat a quick lunch and rush off to work at the P.D. Virginia, left with the duty of hanging up the sails to dry, spent most of the evening in deep reflection, pondering the meaning of Mother’s Day.

Undaunted, we set forth again a few days later for another attempt at sailing. It was a bright, sunny afternoon and for me a day off from work, which meant we wouldn’t have to hurry home as we had before. We had an opportunity to sail and sail; until dark, if we wanted to, or even later than that. I’d never been sailing in the moonlight and wondered how it would be. Marvelous, I guessed.

This time we decided to launch the boat at Wildwood Park, nearer our home. We got it off the trailer and into the water again without any trouble, stepped the mast, then, with what seemed to us an exceedingly seaman–like flourish, hoisted the sails and headed for the narrow channel leading from the harbor into the lake. We were propelled by a wind that had had its teeth pulled, a gentle breeze that couldn’t have hurt a fly. It was comforting to know that, whatever else might happen, we had nothing to fear from Aeolus, god of the winds.

But alas, that “else” began happening almost at once. The boat seemed to have a will of its own. Refusing to respond to my excited pushes and pulls on the tiller, it moved with unwavering aim on a course destined to pile us up on the huge blocks of stone that formed one of the harbor’s walls. I had a nightmare vision of losing my dear wife and children in a grotesque in–harbor shipwreck and of spending the rest of my days racked by remorse, imprisoned for improper operation of a sailing vessel. I believe I was as close to skidding into utter panic as I have ever been, and the children didn’t help to calm my nerves. Both of them hollered in terror, “We’re going to hit the rocks! We’re going to turn over!”

Fortunately, I retained enough of a grip on myself to get out the oars. I gave one to Virginia, and together we fended the boat off the rocks. Then it came to me–I hadn’t lowered the centerboard! That’s why I hadn’t been able to steer; why the boat had seemed bent on dashing itself to pieces.

In a matter of seconds we had the board down and immediately almost everything subsided into normality. I say almost everything because, even though the wind caught our sails and wafted us peacefully into the lake, even though the boat was now fully under control, Douglas, then not quite five, was far from gleeful.

“Take me back to the shore!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Take me back! Take me back!”

Virginia and I held a hurried conference. We agreed that he was truly frightened and, if we wanted him to grow up enjoying boats and sailing, it would be prudent to respect his wishes and return to shore, to await a more auspicious time to start him off as a sailor. So, without any sailing in the moonlight, or even much sailing in the daylight, we returned to the dock and set off for home.

For a while Virginia and I saw our hopes of family unity built on a foundation of happy sailing experiences slipping into oblivion. But we persevered. Recalling the horseback riders’ dictum to remount at once after a bad fall in order to maintain confidence, we soon cast off from home again, this time on an overnight voyage of discovery to Pymatuning Lake, a fetching reservoir sixty miles east of Willowick .This was to be our shakedown camping cruise.

When we got to the campgrounds, our fellow campers found us, or rather our boat, a trifle startling. In fact, it was plain they had never seen anything like it in their lives.

A woman at a neighboring campsite watched spellbound as I prepared our yacht for the night. When I hoisted the tent over the boom and started to fasten it down, Virginia overheard her exclaim to her husband, “George, look! He’s building a house on the boat!”

I must confess that, secretly, we were both amused and pleased by the apparent consternation our little craft caused among the more conservatively equipped campers who saw it. We loved the dropped jaws and surprised looks it produced. And we were pleased with ourselves, in a way, for our refusal, in this one respect at least, to follow in the crowd’s footsteps like sheep. We enjoyed daring to be different.

Also, on later trips, we found our boat–tent paid unexpected dividends, for we were allowed to sleep in it offshore at crowded camps where all the onshore sites were occupied.

As we settled down for the night at Pymatuning Lake, Virginia, unknown to the rest of us, began what was undoubtedly the supreme test of her life, an excruciating ordeal of physical endurance. This terrible night of torture was imposed by a regulation government–issue sleeping bag, otherwise known as a mummy sack. The children and I fell asleep in our sacks almost at once. It wasn’t until morning that we learned Virginia had spent most of the night tugging, turning, twisting and thumping–struggling to find a comfortable position in the too–tight shroud that encased her. To top it off, she nearly froze; and in silence. She allowed the rest of us to go on sleeping, undisturbed, as she played martyr, suffering without a word of complaint. Even at dawn, when we awoke, she continued to be brave. The nearest she came to releasing the inner pressures that threatened to explode was to say “I take my hat off to the American soldier. Any man who can go out and fight after spending a night in one of these woolen booby traps has my undying admiration.”

A surge of admiration flowed through me, too, at that moment but it wasn’t for the American soldier.

After breakfast we provided our fellow campers and boaters with a spectacle that no doubt, to them, was hugely entertaining. It happened as we were launching our boat. I was busily engaged in sliding the boat off the trailer into the water when Virginia, at the wheel of the car, mistook something I said for the signal that the boat was launched and the trailer could be hauled away. She took off prematurely with a forward jerk that sent the boat careening into the water with a mighty splash and me following after, legs and arms whirling like windmills. By the time she heeded my shots of distress and looked around, I was on my hands and knees in the lake and the boat–with Robin, our beloved first–born, on board–was skimming off beyond reach.

I swam out and towed the boat back to shore; getting soaked, but saving our daughter. Meanwhile, Virginia remarked to a camper standing near her that perhaps, in view of the havoc she’d wrought, she had better start driving and never come back. And he said he reckoned that might be a good idea.

Robin and Douglas thought the whole episode was the most fun they’d ever had. In fact, it was then they decided that sailing was a great sport, after all, and began to enjoy it thoroughly. Virginia and I were a little slower about savoring the humor of the situation, but as soon as we got under way, spanking along in our windboat before a fresh breeze, we regained the capacity to laugh at ourselves. We could imagine how energetically tongues were wagging back at the camp about the performance of the nutty family with the boat that converted into a tent, or the tent that converted into a boat, or whatever it was.

During the months that the driveway of our home had had the appearance of a boatyard, and the weeks since then, our craft had been nameless. It had been known simply as “the boat” or as “our boat” or (when its seemingly excessive consumption of time and /or money piqued other members of the family) as “Daddy’s boat.”

Now, however, the time had come to give it a name and we put our heads together in a brain–storming session to choose one we all liked.

Douglas at that time was tapering off from an amazing adulation of bullfighters–where he acquired it, I don’t know–and entering a phase of his life in which he regarded pirates as the most wonderful of men, the only real heroes worthy of acclaim. He knew more about Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Long John Silver, Henry Morgan, Captain Hook and the other factual and fictional freebooters of the Spanish Main than other boys his age knew about baseball greats. He and his friends were constantly playing pirate on the boat, making imaginary foes walk the plank and sailing off to hidden islands to bury chests full of treasure. And whenever we went sailing on Lake Erie or Lake Pymatuning, we always had to fly the Jolly Roger from the masthead, as befitted a buccaneer’s sloop.

It was Doug’s love of pirates that led, indirectly, to the name we chose for our boat. It got us to thinking about Captain Hook, and that led to Peter Pan and Tinker Bell, who, at one point in J. M. Barrie’s story, was poisoned by Hook and brought to the brink of death. The only thing that could save her was for the children of the world to affirm their belief in fairies, which they did. So, believing in our boat fully as much as these children believed in fairies, we decided to name her after Tinker Bell. We thought this name was particularly appropriate because, in addition to the connotations of the fairy tale, it reflected the fact that I was forever tinkering with her. However, we changed the spelling to Tinkerbelle, since the boat certainly was an enchanting belle, although, like its namesake and all things feminine, it could on occasion be exasperating.

Tinkerbelle, now definitely a “she” rather than an “it,” exhibited her exasperating side on our next cruise, a gunk–holing expedition to Erie, Pennsylvania, a lakeshore city about ninety miles east of our home. We launched her in the bay formed by the curving arm of Presque Isle Peninsula and planned to sail through the channel into Lake Erie and on to a beach where we could go swimming. It was a sunny day and the lapping waves and glistening sails made us feel vigorously alive. We looked forward to an exceptionally enjoyable afternoon.

All went well until we got to the channel and then the breeze dropped to less than a whisper. We stopped moving. Tinkerbelle just sat there motionless as motorboat after motorboat passed by. When an excursion boat out for a tour of the peninsula came along, we were admired, photographed and waved to. And then, an hour later, when the excursion boat returned, we were admired, photographed and waved to again; but this time, since we hadn’t moved ahead more than a few feet, we also became the butt of some snide remarks, such as: “Get a horse,” “Why don’t you use a motor?” and “Maybe you better swim for it. “Even the fishermen on the banks of the channel chimed in with caustic comments.

“Sailing is like watching grass grow,” one of them remarked, plainly for our benefit.

We had prided ourselves that, in the great tradition of the sea, ours was both a happy ship and a taut one. But it didn’t require 20/20 vision to see that the first mate was going into a maneuver that even in nonnautical circles was known as “coming to the end of one’s rope. “So, finally, when one of those beastly motorboats offered us a tow, I accepted.

The return trip, after our swim, was just as slow, maybe slower. It took us more than twice as long to sail the four miles from the beach back to the dock as it had taken to drive the ninety miles from Willowick to Erie. Without a doubt, Virginia and the children earned their Ph.D.s in patience that day. I guess I’d already picked one up somewhere but nevertheless I resolved that, as soon as possible, we’d get a little outboard motor to use when the wind faltered. That would make our seafaring ever so much pleasanter.

In June and July we did a lot of day sailing on Lake Erie from launching ramps in Cleveland and went on several more overnight trips to other, smaller bodies of water. Then, in August, we climaxed the summer with a seven–day amphibi–cruise through Michigan.

Virginia and the kids look back on this as our nonstop vacation race through Michigan because we didn’t spend more than one night at each place we visited. Nevertheless, the trip became a high spot of our lives. Our most vivid memories are of lovely Higgins Lake, where, for the first time, we slept aboard Tinkerbelle while she was water–borne; of the gigantic Mackinac Bridge connecting the state’s upper and lower peninsulas; of Manistique, a former logging town which still has a friendly frontier atmosphere; of Indian Lake in the heart of the Hiawatha country, where we imagined ourselves camping “by the shores of Gitche Gumee”; of Traverse City, where we nestled in a grove of sweet–scented pines, and of Ludington State Park, where we again spent a night afloat, snug and dry in our boat–tent despite the driving rain of a thunderstorm.

During the summers of 1960 and 1961 we continued our day sailing on Lake Erie and occasional overnight gunkholing trips elsewhere; but our three-week vacation each summer was devoted to camping and sailing in the delightfully remote wilds of Algonquin Provincial Park in Canada’s Ontario Province. The fun we had living on an island in the park’s Lake Opeongo has left indelible impressions of bliss on our minds, and the sailing experiences we had there were equally joyful.

It was on an enchanting blue–sky dayon Lake Opeongo, as we ghosted along in our boat listening to the charming songs of tiny white–throated sparrows, that we came to the realization, suddenly, that Tinkerbelle had crept deeply into our lives and hearts. She wasn’t a boat anymore; she was a friend. She was helping us to grow, individually and as a family, by bringing us, together, into confrontation with basic forces of nature and fundamental situations in living. She was giving us a foundation on which to make wise decisions about what was important in life and what wasn’t.

She was providing experiences through which we were acquiring self–reliance, appreciation for the outdoors, respect for others, instincts of mutual aid and cooperation and all the other qualities, skills and attitudes that contribute toward the development of mature personalities. She was teaching us how to endure what couldn’t be cured. And she was helping us to avoid some of the pitfalls that abound in today’s urbanized environment, where the impact of Madison Avenue’s bullyboy exponents of the hard sell has tended to transfer human values from their normal climate to a hothouse atmosphere almost totally unrelated to reality.

Don’t assume for a second that the children were the only beneficiaries, or even the principal ones. Virginia and I gained enormously, too, in our understanding of our children, of sibling rivalry and how to deal with it, in our comprehension of ourselves and of each other and in innumerable other ways. We didn’t always act with flawless wisdom and love, we were far too imperfect for that; but we seemed to be moving in the right direction. Anyway, I hoped we were.

And we owed a debt of gratitude to our boat. She was accomplishing for us what we had originally hoped she would accomplish, and more. This does not imply that these things might not have been achieved equally well, or even better, in some other way, by some other family. It simply means that for us the key to fulfillment was our beloved Tinkerbelle.