I stood on the aft deck, rising and falling with the bounce of the boat, letting the cool night air slough off sleep. Pier 1 glowed like a Martian ship was about to land, but only stars spattered the sky. Our neighbors buzzed along the pier armed with a bevy of bare...
I stood on the bowsprit as we sailed Biscayne Bay. The wind swept the swelter of the sun from my skin. A bucket of Noon rain had dumped and now steamed up from the decks of the Annie Lee, taking my troubles—real and imagined—with it. “Annie!” Dad hollered from the...
Saturday dawned sunny and sticky like every other day in Miami, but a cloud of misery sat on my head like an anti-halo as I anticipated a weekend scraping barnacles off the Annie Lee’s hull. R.J. perched in the cockpit. At four years old, even today’s fifty-yard...
Careening off the end of Pier 1 on his trike and going overboard in cowboy boots, my kid brother learned to swim the hard way. But he owned Dinner Key Marina in a way I never would. I focused on flying under Dad’s radar, but R.J. stacked up father-son adventures,...
My cousin Diane landed in deep doo doo for mouthing off to my Dad’s sister one too many times and got shipped from Ohio to reform school—i.e. my life. We sailed to Key West, fetched Di from the airport, and anchored off Marathon Key. Di made a tiny haystack of fish...
The three-foot hammerhead shark lay writhing, white belly up, on the Pier 1 planks while we kids gaped. Matt Canfield jerked his pole and the fish galumphed a foot closer on its fishing line tether. Kate, Scottie, R.J., and I shrieked and skittered backwards. The eye...
