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.
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