It was easier to review the problems of the day than to get up and face them. First, the partnership. Today he would have to tackle Bernie before their pressurized silence gave both of them ulcers. But not that problem, not before coffee, not right now.

Instead, the boat. With some relief, his mind drifted to the decisions he must make in equipping her. First, self-steering. He had picked important legal strategies with less mental zig-zagging than he was spending on the choice between three vane-devices for steering by the wind. He suddenly decided on the smallest and most expensive.

Next, Lindy’s galley. He had torn Dugan’s old wood stove off the boat and tossed it into the yard’s scrap pile. They still needed more data on alcohol stoves, propane, kerosene, Diesel oil. Alcohol was safe and clean, but hard to get in foreign ports, unless you burned rum. Propane tanks were unsightly topside and dangerous below. Kerosene smelled. Diesel stoves were hot in the tropics. Alcohol, then, he decided, and the stove stainless steel and gimballed.

Third, ground-tackle. Lindy was insisting on an electric anchor winch, to save his back. But he doubted that he could maintain an electric motor, “marinized” or not, exposed on long passages to heavy green water on the foredeck. He decided to stick to Dugan’s old hand windlass.

Next, the skylight hatch. It was a beautifully varnished period piece. It could be opened wide for ventilation in the tropics, at anchor in good weather. But Mitch was sure that it would leak in a tropical downpour, even closed. At any rate, they all leaked in any kind of sea. He mulled for a few minutes the idea of substituting a huge plastic dorade. No, it would be ugly, a sin against the whole soul of the boat. He would rather risk the leaks.

Four decisions already, even if two of them were only to do nothing, and the day had not started. Lindy flopped over beside him, close to waking.

Asleep, she usually looked eighteen, but this morning her face sagged. For weeks she had been up until 1 or 2 A.M., packing for the movers and for the boat. She could not believe that you couldn’t stuff the contents of a three-bedroom house into a forty-foot ketch. The choice between a favorite pot and an omelette pan would stop her for half an hour.

He eased out of bed. He wove his way through prostrate suitcases, packing boxes, piles of blankets. The bathroom was stacked with medicines, lotions, and hairbrushes. A tiny box marked “BOAT” and a large carton marked “OUT” showed that initially she had intended to be brutal. The trouble was, the “BOAT” box was full and the “OUT” box practically empty. The medicine cabinet on the boat measured two feet by two and was only three inches deep.