Dave stood at the mast of his 36-foot Catalina and ran the flag up himself. And every boat in the marina that had a horn blew it. Margaret Odom's slip was restored. Her late husband's Boston Whaler, a 1994 Outrage that still ran like the day it was launched, sits in slip 14 now, clean and covered, and visited by Margaret every Sunday morning when she brings a thermos of decaf and sits on the dock and talks to Harold like he's still there.
I spent 3 days removing the wedding decorations from the Sarah Grace. Every pin, every ribbon, every piece of tape that touched Sarah's boat came off by hand. I sanded the scratches out of the hull. I revarnished the teak deck where the table legs had dug in.
I reattached the VHF antenna bracket with new stainless bolts. I cleaned the galley until the coffee mug in the holder above the nav station, Sarah's mug, the one with the chipped handle and the faded Coast Guard logo, was the only thing left that belonged there. The Coast Guard Auxiliary decals went back on both sides of the hull, crisp white and blue and red against the navy paint. The ensign went back on the mast.
And the transom, where Sarah had painted the name in navy blue letters with gold leaf edges, needed no repair. The fabric had covered it, but hadn't touched the paint. Sarah's letters were exactly where she left them, steady and bright in the Carolina sun.
I took the Sarah Grace out on a Tuesday morning alone. No charter, no clients, no crew. Just me and the boat and the open water and the sound of the twin Cummins rolling through the inlet at eight knots. I cleared the Beaufort Channel, turned southeast, and opened the throttles.
The bow lifted, the wake spread. The salt spray hit my face the way it always does, sharp and clean and tasting like every morning I've ever loved about the ocean. Somewhere behind me, Vivian Harcourt was attending her first mandatory boating safety class, teaching recreational sailors about the federal documentation requirements she'd violated on the biggest day of her daughter's life. Somewhere behind me, Carl Hutchins was posting the first transparent quarterly budget Harbor Point had seen in seven years.
Somewhere behind me, Tom Choi was pressure washing the dock for real this time, while Dave Espinoza's POW/MIA flag snapped in the breeze above the marina. And somewhere above me, I like to think Sarah was watching the boat. She named the boat. She built the boat.
She launched with champagne and shaking hands and the fullest laugh I've ever heard cutting through the Atlantic. Exactly the way she was meant to.