Chapter 262

I have been into boating for the last dozen or so years but my experience has been purely with powerboats. Dave, one of the guys in our office invited me out on his new sailboat and even though I had no sailing experience at all, I jumped at the chance of doing something I had never tried before. His marina is about an hour's ride from the city and we met at a local Wal-Mart parking lot for the ride down to the boat. I thought it was going to be a little thing but it was forty-two feet long with a beam (width) of over eleven feet. Quite a boat! His father had bought it new a dozen years earlier but had recently died and left it to the son. Dave is just a kid of twenty-three while I am Chuck, the old guy of fifty-one. The sail out of the marina and out into the Sound went great. Dave was saying the wind couldn't have been any better and from the way I was enjoying the ride I would have had to agree with him. He announced we could sail over to an island and then drop the anchor while we