We don’t have an anchor. The dock says NO DOCKING. We can pull up against it and we are allowed to drop someone off–in this case that would be Clay dropping off me. He did his research. Yet, he didn’t know that there was NO DOCKING. Should I trust him?
I said, perhaps fifty times, “I do not want to go to this island” once we saw the NO DOCKING sign. I follow rules. Clay says we don’t have an anchor. I do not want to tie off on the rusty ladder leading up to the rusty, rocking steel dock. Yet, Clay has his heart set on Lovell’s Island, an island farther out than the one we used the rented boat to go to last time. Lovell’s is one of the Boston Harbor Islands. He says, “I thought there was a DOCK,” meaning, like, a real dock. One you can tie up to.
No matter what I say, or how many times I say the same thing, Clay just keeps pulling up to the ladder. So I climb up, and he hands me out our stuff–the cooler filled with Hummus Wraps (I never, ever tell him this is vegan so he won’t stop eating it), the old backpack with all Clay’s clothes he just took off to put on his bathing suit, my purse–why did I bring my purse on a small motorboat that crashes down on waves if it goes over 12.5 RPM? (They measure speed in RPM.)
Clay drops me off, because he’s got an engineer’s brain and he says, “I’m going to anchor the boat.”
“How?”
“I’ll anchor the boat.”
“How?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
How did he figure it out? He found the anchor! After I watched his luminescent white body maneuver the rented boat under the summer sun to where another boat was parked and bob up and down about 20 feet out from Lovells’ shore, I saw him stick his upper body into the life jacket compartment in the front, also our fancy seat for the ladies (me) to sit on while being steered around the harbor. Out came the modern anchor, shiny, small, like a harpoon with a weight on the back. No anchor, indeed!
The owner of the other boat was now coaching him from shore. I was talking to a guy from the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation who was saying “he can’t dock here!” and feeling like I used to when I was a teenager and my parents used to embarrass me.<<“I’m not part of this crowd!”>> But I was. I heard Clay shout to the older gentleman on shore, “Sorry, that was my fault!” Later he told me he got their lines tangled. After sitting for what seemed like an interminable time, Clay fastened the swimming mask he had bought and the flippers too–he likes equipment–and jumped in. He swam to me on shore.
Now, we had rented Paradise. Except for bugs (that will be a different post). We swam once, twice, three times. I look back to that moment where I realized I might actually want to swim and had not brought a bathing suit, and do not, even, in fact own one except a professional-type suit I bought once to exercise in that is too tight, and think–if only I knew then what I know now! I wore my sports bra–good thinking there–and my long chino shorts–great for boating, not so great for swimming, but hey, my thighs wouldn’t get sunburned.
The water was cold at first but just-right cold, a challenge but not preventative. Then it quickly felt warm and/or perfect. The top layer was warmed by the sun, the lower part where your feet tread water was cooler. I could dive down–mask or no mask–and feel the refreshing coolness. Clay wanted me to try the flippers so I put them on and although they were too big I briefly felt like a superhero moving through the water so fast with extra-large feet.
We explored the island a little, ate the wraps and had some juice, and I felt the sun on the odd parts of my body that my outfit exposed and it felt great. I lay in the sand with soft sand cushioning my back and legs and coating my wet shorts-butt. I went home with a burn. When I was a kid I loved swimming, and I did some forward flips in the water in honor of those I used to do for hours with my brother. I made my same old error of tilting sideways at one point. There were only three groups on the beach–two couples and a family–and it only went up to five groups at peak.
The pickup from the dock went much more smoothly.
The feeling of being out on the water is the happiest feeling on Earth. Is it the vast expanse? The smell of the air? The movement? You can see so much all at once. For me, first it was buildings, clustered together like they’re trying to survive a cold snap or see who’s the tallest. Then wharves, piers, rotting and new. The large stone bricks making up the wall of the fort at Castle Island. Then more green islands. Washes of sand and rock rising to green trees, each one slightly tempting, beckoning.
We moved out past Lovell’s Island and suddenly there was less. Not anything like not being able to see land, but the islands were wilder, less prone to structures. Clay handed me the wheel. The three islands in front of us, Little Brewster Island, Great Brewster Island, and Calf Island, combined with the island we had come from and the well-known Georges’ Island with its fort, left the water smooth with just ripples, protecting the area from the open ocean. Fewer boats meant no wakes. Spinning across this blue field was magnificent. Heading toward a little island, I felt like I could go on forever and this journey would go on forever.