Dreams Adrift (A River Dream Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page B

advice from a neighboring boat.
Thanking him profusely for his help, we made fast and then invited
him and his mate to come over for a visit.
    A short time later Dwayne Stevens and his wife
Joan were climbing aboard from their dinghy. They were fellow
Americans taking a holiday cruise from Cartegena to
Gibraltar.
    “ We always take these two weeks
and charter a boat somewhere far from home,” Dwayne told
us.
    The Stevens were from Gilford, New Hampshire,
where they owned a house on Lake Winnipesaukee.
    “ Last year we sailed from
Barcelona to Cartegena. The year before that was the Toulon to
Barcelona leg. We've been working our way along the northern
Mediterranean.”
    It didn't take much encouragement to get them
to join us for a late dinner. Afterward we sat in the salon and
learned a bit more about them.
    “ We should really be back in New
Hampshire this time of year. These two weeks are among the busiest
of the year for our restaurant,” Joan told us.
    “ Yeah,” Dwayne said, “but we leave
it in the capable hands of our son and his wife. Along with our
partner Troy, they really run the place these days.”
    “ What type of restaurant is it?” I
asked, wondering if it was a fast-food type place or something
fancy.
    Joan took a sip of her tea, and replied, “It's
a full-service family restaurant. We also have a few rooms upstairs
that we rent out, sort of an inn.”
    Maeve smiled as she offered to refill Joan's
cup. “It sounds like a bed-and-breakfast.”
    Joan held her cup out to let Maeve top it off
and shook her head.
    “ Not really; we don't actually
serve breakfast.” She laughed. “But you can sleep in late and come
down for lunch.”
    While the ladies talked about the restaurant,
Dwayne and I talked about sailing.
    “ Lake Winnipesaukee is a
good-sized body of water, isn't it?” I asked Dwayne.
    He nodded thoughtfully. “It’s twenty miles
from Moultonborough to Alton Bay and five miles or more wide,
depending on how you measure.”
    “ How long is the sailing season?”
I asked, wondering what it would be like to sail that lake. I
imagined it would be a lot like the time Hans and I visited his
grandmother and went sailing on Lake Geneva.
    “ Ice out usually occurs about the
third week of April,” Dwayne explained, “but it's usually another
couple of weeks before I put the boat back in the
water.”
    He noticed the puzzled look on my face when he
said ice out.
    “ Ice out is declared when there is
enough open water for the Mount Washington to make all its
ports.”
    I’d heard of the Motor Vessel Mount
Washington. It made regular rounds of the lake during the late
spring, summer, and early fall. My mother, who was from
southwestern New Hampshire, had visited Lake Winnipesaukee and
cruised aboard the M/V Mount Washington.
    The vessel was named for the real Mount
Washington, the highest mountain in New England, and the location
of the highest wind speed ever recorded. When I was a kid we’d
visited it once or twice, but I hadn't been in a long
time.
    “ You and Maeve should come up and
visit some time,” Dwayne suggested. “I'll take you out sailing on
the lake. You'll love it.”
    As it was getting late, he suggested this as
they were preparing to row back to their boat.
    “ We will definitely plan on it,” I
promised as I helped Joan down into their dinghy.
    We didn't see them the next morning as they
rose with the sun and headed west. We did hear them, though, as
they weighed anchor and hoisted their sails.
    “ They were a nice couple,” Maeve
noted. “I hope we'll still be traveling the world to go sailing
when we're that age.”
    “ As long as we can, we will,” I
assured her.
    We spent a couple of days seeing the sites
around Almunecar before continuing our voyage. We spent another
month sailing east along the Spanish coast, finally arriving in
Valencia. There we turned in our trusty vessel and rested for a few
days before boarding the first of the several flights it would