"Get to the chart and do your thing," Mitchell shouted from down on the leeward side. "Get us to Newport."

Swaying with the supple tension of a sailor’s stance Andy coiled the main sheet and placed it on the bench. There’s nothing slovenly about his seamanship Mitchell thought. Andy was smiling as he made his way below. He was happiest with his head in something technical and he had been waiting for this.

Cavernous wind in the sails, the boat fought against capsizing as Mitchell pushed upward into the tiller with his left hand braced on the lifeline, both arms extended and rock-steady. Swells exploded under the bow as the sloop shouldered through the harbor entrance into salt spray raining down sunlight in every diamond drop. Between the sails Mitchell took a long look ahead at the Atlantic. A long look.

"Come to one-hundred-five degrees," Andy hollered and climbed up from below. "We could've used the genoa."

"We'll get a feel for the jibs. How far?" Mitchell extended his arms to push the tiller higher, turning the sloop onto the new heading with the wind astern.

Andy trimmed the sails and checked the knotmeter and his watch. "One mile," he said. "Ten minutes at this speed. Then come to forty-five degrees. From there it's eleven miles to Newport."

Mitchell pushed up into the steering. "I need a helmchair that will tack to the high side. I don't know how long I'll last like this. You might have to spell me."

Andy frowned and checked his watch then climbed below.

Mitchell’s arms and shoulders had never taken a force like this, his hand on the tiller was strapped tight and his elbows were locked. He raised his chin and turned his head side to side to relieve his neck muscles. With his eyes on the compass to keep his movements from altering the course he pushed off the lifeline and dropped his right shoulder to ease the strain. A little relief he thought, but it’s a long haul to the coast of Maine.

When they jibed Andy ducked under the boom as it swung like a scythe overhead, pulling the boat and the height of the tall mast and the mainsail over to starboard. Up on the high side now, Mitchell reached automatically for the angled deck. The tiller was light as balsa wood in his hand. Sunlight illuminated the decks and cabin top, his field of vision was unhindered. He watched the sloop cut the sapphire swells, lured like a lover into the wind’s solemnness.

Julia. He wondered if time would change the warmth in her eyes, the press of her body, change his desire for her into random memory. Those days. The swift collision of their souls, two joyous spirits compelled by forces unconcerned with forethought and logic. He still saw her, still heard her voice. Sometimes he felt her sleeping, after, in the curl of his arm and he marveled then that love so powerful had surrendered.

In the middle of Naragansett Bay an eighty-seven-foot steel tower on Brenton Reef stood in the entrance of East Passage like a Colossus in command of the shipping lanes to Providence. The red light on top of the tower flashed every two seconds, its horn blared every ten. The sloop was quickly past the rusting girders and into the waters between Conanicut Island and Newport Neck. Surf echoes reached them from granite shores.