“We got it wrong,” Mitch said tersely. “We heard she was for sale. Thanks for your patience.” He turned to the taller brother. “And for yours, such as it was.” He started for the door but Lindy still held back. “Mr. Dugan,” she repeated softly, "could I see below?”

Andrew Dugan studied her. Outside in the yard, the fisherman’s calking hammer plunked. The bearded youth’s sander whined, hesitated, whined again. Next door the factory whistle signaled a coffee-break. The carpenter suddenly reached to an array of keys hanging on the wall, picked one ring.

“All right,” he said. He indicated the door and followed her out. As Mitch moved to leave, the older brother said: “That’s funny. You’re the third couple that’s been here, plus two guys alone.”

“What the hell gives?”

“Long story,” said John Dugan briefly, “but you’re the first ones to make it to the dock.”

On the rotten wharf Lindy and Mitch removed their shoes, although Dugan had not. They followed him aboard, stepping over an apitong caprail to a deck of Port Orford cedar. For a moment the three of them, Mitch at 200 pounds, Dugan at perhaps 180, and Lindy at 115, were together, well outboard, on the starboard side of the ketch. The boat refused to roll to their weight. He wondered if her bottom was on the shoaling mud. Then he sensed a stirring as she rose to a passing wake. She was not aground, simply the stiffest boat of her size he had ever boarded.

He wondered how heavy a keel lay below them, whether there was internal ballast as well, to ease her roll at anchor, how close the builder had stuck to the plans on his own desk at home. He had lots of questions, but he was afraid that he would blow Lindy’s minor triumph if he asked them. Dugan was unlocking oaken hatchboards and drawing them from their slot, carefully so as not to mar the varnish. Mitch glanced around topside.

She was very solid. A green tarnish on her old bronze sheet-winches, mounted on blocks of solid teak on either side of the cockpit, told him that she had not been sailed recently. The main and mizzen sheets—of manila, when nobody had used manila for years—hung looped from bronze belaying-pins in a mahogany pinrail around the after mast. Mitch plucked at a mizzen shroud. Plough-steel. He would replace it with stainless, if it were his boat, but still, it was strong if properly painted and maintained. And appropriate to the craft.

He slid his hand under the canvas sailcover and felt the mainsail clew. Fine Egyptian cotton. Nobody had used nonsynthetic sails for fifteen years. He happened to glance down. Dugan, starting down the companionway, was watching him. Neither spoke of the obsolete sails. Dugan dropped below as if disappearing into the conning tower of a submarine.