So. We'd found and agreed

upon The Next Boat.

A Nimble Nomad, she's a

pretty little river trawler, needing only 18 inches of

water under her keel and able to run up on a sandy beach.

A 45 HP Honda outboard powers her so quietly you can

carry on normal conversation in the cabin.

Which is where the helm is.

No more frying in the sun in an open stern, we'll do our

boating in the shade. Or out of the rain. A companionway

(nauticalese for "door") both fore and aft

enables captain or crew to step out into deep cockpits

from which to handle lines safely.

Ideal for a pair of senior

mariners, this boat invariably suggests two adjectives

- "geriatric" and "cute" -

that I suspect Dave is tired of hearing applied to his

vessel.

But it's true. The boat has

grab-rails and other safety provisions built in, and with

its forest green canopy, it's just so darn cute.

The plan was that we'd

bring her to Georgia from her location in Annapolis early

last winter so we could have her ready for spring

launching. We traded in a puny Toyota for a vehicle with

the muscle to tow 3,500 pounds. The whole point of a

small boat is that we can tow it to waterways around the

country.

Now size is relative. A

25-foot trawler looks awfully small when you're working

out sleeping arrangements and an adequate galley for two

adults.

But set her on a trailer

and hitch her to a Jeep, and suddenly small becomes huge.

Dave wanted perfect weather

and road conditions before he essayed to haul her home.

As winter passed, he spent hours a day on The Weather

Channel until he spotted a window of opportunity. It was

late March before we hauled our new trailer to Maryland

to pick up the boat.

He swears it was a piece of

cake, but I left fingerprints in the Jeep's arm-rest as

the Titanic behind us start wagging the car. It happened

only at certain speeds, downhill, and scared me to death.

Dave never failed to

correct it quickly, however, even though that entailed

the use of brakes. Conventional wisdom says to pull

straight ahead, but surge-brakes make a difference. Apply

them and both tow-vehicle and trailer slow down

decisively.

At last our objective was

secured and we had The Next Boat within easy reach of

tools. During the loveliest spring in my memory, the

overhaul began. I can honestly say the past months have

been among the happiest of our marriage, planning,

shopping, working, solving problems. Together.

First there was all the

obvious stuff - removing old varnish, sanding teak,

buffing out the dark green paint of the hull, repainting

the red bottom, and scrubbing to remove months of

airborne soil from the white gel-coat.

The major construction

projects were at my insistence. To circumvent having to

take down the dining table and rearrange cushions to make

up a bed, we revised the portside bunk to become a settee

can remain in place when the settee is used as a bunk at

night.

I wanted a cabinet I could

store my laptop in, with a drop-down leaf on which to

type or read electronic charts and still sit up forward

next to Dave. Built to reflect the console on which the

ship's wheel and the compass are mounted, it's a series

of trapezoids, with virtually no right angles or parallel

lines.

An engineer I am not, and

several efforts to make kraft-paper patterns for Dave to

turn into a plywood structure resulted in some truly

dreadful failures and not a few heated discussions.

With no two planes quite

parallel, and no way to be certain what's level on a boat

on a trailer, one relies heavily on eye-balling a

project.

Lesson learned: if a line

looks slanted, regardless of what the spirit level says,

slanted it is and slanted it will remain. Amazing what

defects some well-placed trim can correct.

We installed dish shelves

and a knife block and better access to the boat's

capacious storage bins, built a cutting board/lid for a

food storage bin, added a fiddled shelf over Dave's bunk

to match the one over mine, installed reading lamps, a

mirror, and a shelf for toiletries in the head.

We beat a weekly path from

boat to hardware store to Home Depot and HomePlace, with

telephonic detours to the marine supply catalogs, buying

hinges, cane webbing, insect screening, and forest green

throw pillows, place mats, napkins, galley towels. The

small scale of a small boat provides ways to save, such

as splitting one king-sized cotton blanket into two

bunk-sized.

One day, Dave said,

"I'm ready to do something different. Let's get this

boat in the water." We had bought, built or invented

just about everything we needed to make The Next Boat our

own - except for a name.

As we peeled

"Beachcomber" off her sides, we debated whether

to stay with the name of her two immediate predecessors

- "Alice" - or choose one that

includes all three of our daughters. "Three

Girls?" An acronym of Mary, Alice and Jean:

"Maryalicejean?" "MalJean?"

"JAM?"

In the end, we decided not

to forego family tradition. The decision made, we watched

the sign maker on Highway 85 work computer magic with

Brush Script and forest green vinyl.

And a few days later, the

steady hand of our friend Marquita shadowed with gold

paint a name that remembers an absent child while

acknowledging her sisters: "Alice III."

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