He had awakened her for her watch at midnight. Her first entry was a half-hour later, course and speed for 1230, then 0100, 0130, 0200, then another for 0230, and—he almost yelled again in relief, or pain—one for 3 A.M.

And he had discovered her gone at 0312. She had fallen in less than twelve minutes before he had awakened.

He had been covering three hours worth of track all day when he could have been searching twelve minutes worth.

Fifteen miles, skimmed shallowly, versus perhaps one mile, searched over and over, swell by swell ... He was at the wrong end of his pattern now; she was three hours southeast.

He whirled and started the engine. He jammed the throttle forward to the highest RPM’s he dared to use. He could smell hot metal.

He disconnected Irwin and took the wheel. Linda Lee slowly gathered speed and leaped ahead, straining under power and sail. He caught his breath as a sheet of spray hit him full in the face. The water was becoming colder.

The ketch crashed southeast, where he should have been searching all day.

They moved into Hurricane Hole Marina, Sausalito’s newest, intending to stow their perishables and be gone in a couple of weeks.

Hurricane Hole was considerably more comfortable than Dugan’s shabby wharf. There were cinderblock johns on the seawall, telephone-jacks and plastic dock-boxes at the slips, and a piratical marine-supply store, much too handy, adjoining the marina office and doubling the price of every bronze screw it sold.

When Lindy was too tired to cook on her new stove, the Ancient Mariner Restaurant offered itself. It was one month old and reeked of tradition: varnished hatch-cover tables, trawler-nets behind the bar, glass fisherman balls hanging everywhere, yellowed photos of square-rigger San Francisco on the walls. Waitresses wore servingwench bonnets, low-cut bodices, and crotch-height miniskirts. In TV voices they announced their names—mostly they seemed to be called Sherry—and recited the menu, and begged them to have a nice evening. The lobster, was always tough.

There were certain rules at Hurricane Hole. You learned to obey, to twist, or evade. You never polluted in the daylight: you trudged down the dock-finger, up the gangway to the seawall, and along the seawall to the nearest cinderblock toilet. After the first chilling night-time hike, you began to use the head aboard, letting the tide destroy the evidence.

As “live-aboards,” native to the marina, they found themselves superior in status. A live-aboard might not actually move his boat six inches a year, might, in fact, be a stockbroker or advertising man commuting to work like anyone else, but he was an expert on all things nautical simply because he slept aboard at night.