Atlantic High Read Online Free PDF Page B

back, called the yard, and then the police.
    Bounding onto the slip, my son Christopher unsheathed a hacksaw, and I was astonished at the ease with which it sawed through the heavy steel links, understanding finally the old business about the hacksaw in the cake being the key to instant manumission for the prisoner. I dove down to start the engine, only to find it cleverly immobilized. One or two vital parts were missing. So who needs an engine? I asked. And Danny and Christopher, thoroughly in the spirit of the heist, repeated, “Who needs an engine?”
    We raised the mizzensail, slid the boat out into Flushing Bay, headed her into the wind, raised the main, then the genoa, and three hours later, the two forward sails down, we coasted into the slip at Stamford for a perfect landing.
    I wrote out the script for our Mrs. Flynn because, after all, when you go to all that much trouble, you should get some amusement from it. Anticipating what the boatyard owner would say turned out to be as easy as expected, and Mrs. Flynn reported that the script had proceeded as perfectly as if rehearsed.
    “Mrs. Flynn? This is John, at John’s Yard.
Suzy Wong
has been stolen.”
    “No, Mr. John, she wasn’t stolen. Mr. Buckley went and took her away yesterday.”
    “That’s stealing.”
    “No, Mr. John. There’s no such thing as stealing your own property.”
    “But he owes me my bill!”
    “Who commissioned the work?”
    Splutter at the other end. Followed by, “I’m going to call the police.”
    “You do that, Mr. John. You tell the police Mr. Buckley stole his own boat.”
    Further splutter.
    I offered arbitration, but Mr. John said he would prefer eleven hundred dollars. With arbitration there is always the risk that you will be paid what you deserve to be paid. Technically nothing, but what the hell, okay $1,100 .
    In any event, the new owner took possession of
Cyrano
. When she was last sighted, I should add, she was a part of the entourage of
Freedom
, our winning 12-meter sloop in the 1980 America’s Cup Races, parading back into Newport from the race course, and in all honor I must report that Reggie, who espied her from a distance, reports that she looked like a million dollars. Dear old money-guzzling
Cyrano
belongs to someone who can make her look like a million dollars, so that her raiment will reflect her inner nobility.

2

    After losing
Cyrano
, we took to chartering boats for our own use. In the Caribbean, with Dick Clurman and his wife Shirley, regularly at Christmastime; and, occasionally, in the spring. In the Aegean, with Van Galbraith and other friends, and family. It was the third time out in the Caribbean that we came on
Sealestial
. Six weeks earlier we had joined a couple in the Fiji Islands. I kept a journal.
    Saturday
[October 21, 1978] . But yesterday was Thursday, the international dateline having been traversed, and by the ache in our bones and spirits yesterday seemed a week ago, a thousand hours having been spent in the cramp of the economy section of a jumbo jet filled SRO. For my wife Pat and me the ordeal, if not, exactly speaking, intolerable (as a historical fact, we survived it), was only just short of that. We cannot imagine surviving what our companions went through. Barbara, Bindy, Vane, and Drue are the stuff that made possible the Battle of Britain.
They
had flown from London nonstop to Los Angeles where we, after spending a leisurely day there, met them at the International Airport. A mere one hour after they landed we were all off on the 747 to Hawaii, seated cheek by jowl. I longed for the arrival there on the assumption that the great plane would immediately empty, leaving us room to stretch out on the next leg. Surely not
everybody
flies on to Fiji, I thought smugly; to which the reply is: Nowadays practically everybody
does
fly on to Fiji, notwithstanding that Fiji is as far from Hawaii as London is from New York. Exactly as far south of the equator as Hawaii is north of it. If