They decided that they were wasting their time. The red ketch was not the only sea-going vessel in California. They began to look for any good cruising boat. He took a week off and they drove the Coast to San Diego, checking everywhere. They were humble before condescending young yacht brokers in elkskin Topsiders and immaculate dungarees, patient with experts who knew less than they, polite to owners who were palpably lying in their teeth.

Most of the brokers seemed ignorant of even the boats they were selling. Mitch and Lindy were already too salty. The brokers were programmed for a hard-breathing couple who had never sailed. The wife should be interested in sleeping-capacity and decor below, not pot-stowage or built-in galley-hazards in a heavy blow. The husband should be concerned with radar and navigational gimmicks, not water-capacity or frame-thickness or the impossible battery-drain of an autopilot at sea.

The brokers lost interest. They had plenty of chrome-and-plastic dogs already listed, without trying to find an old-fashioned wooden cruising boat. Mitch left his business cards to be disposed of as they drove away.

The night they returned he sat in his study under his sextant-lamp. The plans for Gundred he had cut from Yachting lay again on his desk before him. He was no boatwright, but he had earned extra money in high school by working on yachts when his father was Commodore of the St. Francis Yacht Club. He knew something of woods and boat maintenance. He called a yard in Seattle which still made wooden boats. They knew the Atkins design. They phoned back with an estimate, collect. There were orders stacked up. Delivery, not sooner than twelve months: bare-hull, unrigged, someone else to do cabinet work, tanks, engine installation, and ship-fitting. “Thirty-one thousand, Mr. Gordon.”

“Thirty-one what?"

“Thousand,” said Seattle, amused. “Where you been? You can’t find spruce, fir, oak. We have to cure our wood ourselves. Teak’s out of sight. That’s why your amateurs are trying to build in cement. Boatwrights, fifteen bucks an hour. None left, hardly.”

A bare hull was hardly a start. Rigging and fittings would triple the price and add years to the time they must wait. He put down the phone, defeated. He could never get her built in America. He might try in Nova Scotia, Sweden, Tasmania, Finland, or Denmark. Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong might be even cheaper, but oriental workmanship was risky. Besides, the Far East had turned to fiberglass too.

He did not want glass, or even steel: he wanted a boat that lived. His heart was set on wood.

He wanted the red ketch.

Sunday afternoon, he oiled the turnbuckles on his father-in-law’s sloop Invincible, while the old man played dominoes in the yacht club bar. Then the two of them sailed out on the Bay in a whipping westerly. While the old man steered, Mitch tuned her rigging for the Honolulu race.