Endings -- of a life, a love, a season -- are the sad price we pay for having been selected to live. When we reach the end of good things, it's best not to mourn them but to look back with thanks.

I chose yesterday to end Bluebird's season on the river. It was not the ending I'd wanted, with a stiff breeze to stretch her sails one more time. The water was oily smooth, littered with a few logs and branches washed from the shoreline by a rising tide. And although in the morning there had been frost on the stones that pave the beach, it was warm when I launched the dinghy, no ice to crunch under my soles.
I rowed the 75 strokes to Bluebird's side, transfered the winter stick that would replace the mooring ball, along with the tools to accompish that job, into the cockpit and climbed aboard one last time.
The next few minutes were too busy to recall the good season that was ending. I had to splice two thimbles on the ends of a polypropylene line that attached the mooring chain to the winter stick -- a five-foot-long PVC tube, weighted at one end and sealed to float vertically and mark the location of the mooring throughout the icy season that is probably just beginning. Then I had to remove the mooring ball from the chain and put it in the cockpit.
Before I let the chain and winter stick go and allowed Bluebird to float free, I had to start the outboard motor. It fired up on the first pull. I let it warmn while I checked various lines. Then I cast off, leaving the sailing season behind.
It was a good season. Although Monica made it aboard Bluebird only once, she enjoyed the sail and, I'm sure, will be back aboard in the spring. And I had several pleasure-filled hours aboard alone, sails when the wind was just perfect and the feel exhilerating as Bluebird balanced between the forces of wind and water.
Twice, friend Rich Vishton came along for the ride, both times a mix of wind and calm that proved what a sweet hull Philip Rhodes had designed fifty-some years earlier.
Yesterday, Rich was waiting at the boat ramp on the far side of the river with Bluebird's trailer when, under outboard power, we slanted across the current, aiming for the breakwater and the end of a lovely season.

This is about as close as I've come to sailing in the last 10 days.

Lexi (left) and Samantha play on the front lawn of the Red Dragon Canoe Club as Bluebird sits on the mooring in the middle of the Delaware River. There's not much time for sailing with two "toddlers" in the house. But we do ride the one block over to the club every day to help Lexi get over her car sickness (I've read it's a puppy thing involving the development of the pup's ear) and once we arrive, the girls get to play on the lawn. I get to stare wistfully at Bluebird. I'll probably haul her later this week. I'm hoping there's wind that day.

I'd just opened the boathouse door yesterday afternoon when neighbor Rich Vishton drove down to the waterfront.
"Want to go out?" I asked.
He thought briefly of the chores he had to do at home and then replied, "Yeah."
So we launched the inflatable, attached the outboard and puttered out to where Bluebird was swinging in the current and a light breeze.
For the next two hours, we sailed gently, heading downstream with the current but against the wind at first, then edging back upstream in what proved to be very light air.
As folks will, we told old stories, some about boats, some about life. Rich steered and I tended the sheets.
The sun was falling fast as we crept toward the mooring near the end of another perfect autumn sail. But we were back ashore before dark. We hadn't needed the outboard. In fact, I don't think that motor is even broken in yet, it's been used so seldom.
This morning, there is a thick fog on the river and only occasionally can you see Bluebird's shadow. I probably won't take her out today, nor tomorrow, when rain is forecast. Then the temperature is predicted to drop, so perhaps the sailing season is about over.
I looked for the license plate and lights for the boat trailer this morning and couldn't find them. I'll need to act on that problem soon so that I can take the trailer to the launch ramp.
Pushing the sailing season is great fun when you get out on the water. But I don't want to find myself actually fighting the ice floes when it's time to haul.

The first section of paint has been removed from Robin's mast. That leaves a bit more than 90 percent to do.
The paint itself came off quite easily with a brass wire brush about the size of a toothbrush. But that left, in most places, a layer that appeared to be some sort of primer. The surface was a blue-ish silver, and underneath was a white layer that, when sanded, spread like thickened paint over the underlying aluminum and was quite resistant to my efforts at removal. I went through several sanding discs before quitting at the current place.
Today, I went to Lowes and bought a circular brass wire brush (I think it's brass. The packaging didn't say.) I think it will fit either on an angle grinder or a grinder/polisher that I have in the basement. I'll see on the next trip if the stripping goes any quicker.
Suggestions from experienced aluminum strippers welcomed.