They elbowed into the life of the quay. They were on the outskirts of “Frenchman’s Row,” an unofficial gathering of French yachts. It existed on the quietest end of the quayside and was relatively permanent.

Most of the other floating neighborhoods were temporary, and changed their characters as boats came and left. Some thirty American, Australian, Swedish, German, and New Zealand boats stretched along the concrete waterfront almost to the middle of town. “Cannabis Row” centered around Jack-the-Rip-Off, who had finally left the Marquesas, navigating with his alarm clock, a plastic Davis sextant, an obsolete Nautical Almanac, and an Ecuadorian poodle which could smell reefs.

Star of Peace and three other long-haired boats were moored in “Hippie Haven,” and “Hamburg Heights” was studded with the black, red, and gold ensigns of West Germany. Kurt in Kormarant, an imperious Berlin carpenter, and his ex-bus-driver cook, had been tied up there for years.

The lingua franca along the quay was English. The Germans learned it of necessity, the Swedes and Danes all seemed to know it anyway. Even the French learned a little or became isolated. A handsome, quiet Czech, sailing with his government’s permission, had studied it enroute through the West Indies and the Panama Canal.

Papeete authorities practiced laissez-faire with yachtsmen. If your hair was too long or you were anti-nuclear-testing, or the smell of pot from your cockpit overpowered the tourists walking along the quay, you were asked to move on when your visa expired. If not, if you wanted to stay and your finances held up, you got an extension.

The little floating communities had their own rules. No matter how tightly you were squeezed in already, you welcomed a new boat. You launched your dinghy, took her lines, and jammed her in somewhere.

A man’s seamanship was measured by his modesty: the longer you sailed, the less you knew about the sea, and everyone had learned this. In Catalina, a weekend sailor might scream at a tyro for fouling his ground-tackle. Here, where your boat was your home, your measure was how calmly you watched a departing neighbor winch up your anchor by mistake with his own.

Within weeks Mitch and Lindy had made warmer friends than they had in twenty years in their home on the hill. Marriages and crews dissolved, loves were born, Kurt of Kormorant knocked his lifelong friend into the water and dove in to rescue him. A female doctor on Mistress saved a bungled abortion on a Chilean yawl and word never got off the quay. A young millionaire on Foam got religion, donated his boat to Jehovah’s Witnesses, and no one laughed.

You thought of the people as their boat and the boat as the people. Mitch and Lindy evolved more fraternal feeling for the Windrift, the Star of Peace, and Vedura than they had for boats they had raced against for years in San Francisco Bay.