The next morning the four of them were at breakfast at Earlene’s kitchen again, making plans for the day – but this wasn’t just any day, it was a day that Amanda had been looking forward to for over a year.

“Just to remind you,” Cordy told them, “with the depth of the sand bar and what the Rag Doll drafts, we’re not going to be able to get out of the bayou unless it’s at least half tide. We’d better be getting back in before the tide is halfway out. That means we have probably about five hours we can be out at the outside, and we’ll be bucking the current both ways.”

“Just to be on the safe side, I don’t want to try to sail it unless we’re in fairly open water,” Amanda said. “I mean, just in case something goes wrong. I’m pretty sure that Ron and I can handle the sailing side, but Cordy, you know the channel out to the river better than the rest of us combined, so I want you on the helm until we get outside.”

“Sounds like a good move to me,” she replied. “We’ve got several hours before we have to get going, so I think we’d better be sure the engine is running. You haven’t tried to start it yet this fall, have you?”

“No, I’ve thought about it a couple times but haven’t actually gotten around to it.”

“Then I suppose we’d better start it up as soon as we get over there to make sure it’ll run. It’s been darn near a year, well, last January, I think, since we took it out around the backwater that time. Engines are pretty good, but sometimes they don’t sit unused too well. I’d hate to get out somewhere and have it crap out on us.”

“Maybe we’d better get the dinghy blown up so we can have it available.”

“Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Cordy agreed. “If something went really wrong in the bayou or the channel, I could probably take it to go get the push boat.”

Since they had plenty of time, they lingered around for a second cup of coffee, then a third, while Amanda fretted. She was excited – she’d put a lot of work into the Rag Doll over much of the last year, including some of the things she’d done in Winchester Harbor, and this was going to be the big day. It was hard to wait.

Eventually Amanda’s antsiness got to everyone else, and they headed over to the boat yard. Cordy had a little problem getting the engine running, but realized they were just low on fuel, so they used five-gallon cans to get the tank a little fuller.

Ron and Zack hooked up the marine band radio, which hadn’t been done yet, but a test call to the push boat told them it wasn’t working – it appeared to be working, but wasn’t. Cordy hunted up an antenna from the junk pile around the yard, and they made a quick test with that; it worked, but that meant that either the antenna at the top of the mast or the wiring to it was screwed up. There was nothing that could be done about it at the moment, since it was obvious that new wire and a trip to the top of the mast was going to be needed.

Amanda got the little rigid inflatable dinghy blown up, and the small engine mounted on it. It was clearly going to be a problem to haul it on the foredeck, but for today it could go onto the cabin top. Then she got the cover off the mainsail, and got the working jib hanked onto the forestay, to be able to raise it when they were ready. And so on – everything wasn’t quite done yet, but it was getting close and time to get ready for the big test.

The tide was coming in now; they could tell from the dock posts. It seemed to take forever, but after a while Cordy said. “We might as well give it a try if I’m careful taking us over the bar.”

Amanda was so excited she could just about have screamed. She tried to act calm and professional, but her friends could see she was just about ready to burst. Cordy got the engine warming up, then Ron and Zack got the dock lines. In a few moments, they were aboard, and Cordy was backing them out of the slip.

The motor purred along, taking them out of the backwater, the first time in over a year the Rag Doll had been outside of it. There wasn’t a hint of running aground as they crossed the shallow part of the sand bar, but Cordy just had a smile on her face. “Amanda,” she said, “why don’t you take it now. Just stay in the center of the channel, everything is deep enough here that you won’t hit anything.”

“All right,” Amanda said, happy to be doing something besides just looking on. She took the tiller in her hands, while Cordy went up to sit on the foredeck with Ron; Zack sat down across the cockpit from her.

God it was working, it was really working, and her friends were there with her!

After a while, the channel turned to head toward the river, and widened out a little bit. “Hey, Amanda!” Cordy called from the foredeck, “we could probably sail it now if you wanted to try it.”

“Hell yes, I want to try it,” Amanda yelled back. “It’s time for this boat to be wearing her glad rags. Ron, let’s get the main up first!”

Before long the mainsail was up and filled; allowing them to run on an easy beam reach in the gentle breeze. In a few more moments Ron had the working jib up and trimmed as well, and the Rag Doll was sailing along with a bit of a bone in her teeth. Without thinking about it too much, Amanda reached over and shut off the motor so the boat could sail on like it was supposed to.

It had worked. All of the work had been worth it: the Rag Doll was alive again, wearing her glad rags as they sailed out into the wide river, the city spread out before them. Little more than a year before it had been a dirty, muddy piece of junk that was little more than an eyesore, but now it was a proud sailboat with her sails full, ready to head for far horizons once more. The Rag Doll may have been more than the age of any two of the passengers combined, but once more she had a future in front of her.

It was a very proud moment for Amanda, and she had every right to feel that way. It had been her vision, her work – and the work of her family and friends, of course – that had torn away the sad rags the boat had worn the year before and brought her to life again. What adventures Amanda and the Rag Doll were going to have now!

They sailed along for a while on the broad river, feeling the boat heel to the pressure of the wind, feeling it alive on the waters under a clear blue Florida sky, enjoying the moment for perhaps half an hour – no one was keeping track of time.

After a while Amanda decided that while feeling good and victorious was fine, this really was supposed to be a brief shakedown run. They needed to try the boat out on various points of sail, set up in various ways, looking for things that still needed to be fixed. There was a limit to what they could test in the sparkling breeze that morning, but over the next hour or so they managed to find a list of a few items that needed attention. The worst one was that a window needed a little sealing as it was letting drops of water into the cabin. Amanda was still pleased as punch with the Rag Doll.

While they were sailing down the river, Amanda pulled out her cell phone and called her folks at home, to tell them that she and her friends were out giving the Rag Doll a test sail. It was sailing wonderfully, and she was thrilled.

“Jeez, honey,” her father said. “I wish we were there to enjoy it with you. It’s spitting snow up here, gray as all get-out, and it looks like winter is coming.”

“Well, I’m sure glad I’m here and not there. What a wonderful boat! You’ll get to see it in a little over a month, and by then we ought to have all the loose ends on the work list taken care of. I can’t wait to show off to you what a nice boat it is.”

They talked back and forth for a few more minutes. It would have been nice to have had her parents there, she realized, for they had been the ones who had infected her with the love of sailing and had gone out of their way to help her develop and realize her passion. But it’s not always possible to have everything, and having them up north somehow made the accomplishment of this dream more special to her.

They sailed along for a while, still just feeling the boat out, but it felt like it was going to be everything Amanda had wanted.

“I hate to bring this up,” Cordy said finally, “But we really ought to be heading back toward the barn or we’re going to get caught by the tide.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Amanda sighed. Right at the moment she could have kept sailing in the Rag Doll, headed for anywhere, so long as she could enjoy the boat and being out on it. “I sure don’t want to, though. All right, we’re going to come about to port.”

In a couple minutes they were on a broad reach heading back toward the backwater. The river hadn’t really been the open water Amanda hungered to have the Rag Doll sailing on, but that would come in time.

It still took them close to an hour to get into the channel heading to the bayou, and the wind was such that Amanda was able to keep the sails up going up the channel until it was almost time to turn into the bayou. “Don’t worry, Rag Doll,” she said quietly to the boat. “You won’t be here much longer. We’ve got places to go and things to do.” But speaking more loudly, she said, “We’d better get the sails in. Ron, take the jib, and Zack, you and Cordy get the main. “

The sails were down quickly; Amanda started the engine, then got out of the way so Cordy could feel for the best way across the sand bar on the falling tide. They were in plenty of time, and in only a few more minutes the Rag Doll was back in her slip, with a happy crew beaming smiles just about as big as Amanda was wearing. “All right,” she told them. “There are still things that need to be worked on, but I think the time has come for a celebration. Let’s break out the beer!”

Soon they all had a can of beer in their hands, from the refrigerator in the cabin; even Zack was actually drinking his, in pure celebration. Someone even poured a little bit into a saucer for Beffy, who sniffed at it suspiciously, but decided that it wasn’t for her, which brought a lot of laughter.

The afternoon was dwindling down by now. Amanda offered to make some dinner – she had some supplies aboard the Rag Doll now, although not much – but Ron offered to get pizza again and that sounded better than cooking. Mostly they crowded around in the cockpit, the tiller lifted up out of the way, and talked about sailing, the Rag Doll, the Coast Guard, and other things of interest to them.

After the sun set Ron had to be heading back to the station since they were going to be heading out early to work on navaids again, and gave Cordy a big goodbye kiss before he got in his car and left. Cordy didn’t hang around much longer either; she said she was going to have to get up early so she could go over and fart around with the crane boat some more. That left Amanda and Zack sitting in the cockpit, sharing cola drinks now, and still warm with the glow of a special day.

“So, Amanda,” he said, “it looks like you got what you wanted. Are you satisfied with the Rag Doll?”

“I couldn’t be happier,” she grinned. “There’s still quite a list of things that need to be done, but they’re all piddly little things. We ought to be able to make quite a dent in them in the next few days.”

“It’s good to see you happy,” he grinned. “You had a dream and made it work. I’m just happy to have been a part of it. In case you’re wondering, this has been a special day for me, too. This is the kind of thing I dreamed of back when I was going through hell back in Clinton City. I mean, good friends, good times, a nice day, and a very nice, successful girlfriend who doesn’t hold my past against me.”

“You know,” she smiled, “ever since you told me about that, I really haven’t even thought about it much, other than to realize how it made you what you are. And what you are is a guy I really like. You’re nice, you’re quiet, you’re gentle, and you’re not overbearing. I see all too many guys I can’t say that about. I know you went through hell, Zack. I’m very sorry that you had to. But at the same time, I guess I have to say that I’m glad you did, since it makes you the kind of guy that I really admire.”

“Amanda,” he sighed. “I’m glad you feel that way. You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to hear some girl say something like that to me, and I’m glad it’s you who did. I still don’t want to tell Ron or Cordy or anyone what I told you that afternoon up at your place, because I don’t want to feel that hanging over me again. But I’m so pleased that it just doesn’t matter to you. You have made me very happy, Amanda, if only for that.”

“I realize that you’re very shy about it,” she said. “And when I stop and think about it, I guess you have every right to be. I can’t blame you for that, or for anything else that happened in your past. I’m just glad that you’re on your way to overcoming it, and maybe I helped out a little bit with it. It just makes me feel good that I could be a part of it. You’re a nice guy, Zack, you really are. I’m proud to have a friend like you.”

They had been sitting across from each other in the little cockpit of the Rag Doll, but now Amanda got up and moved over to sit next to him, putting an arm around him and snuggling up close. Even Beffy got up from where she’d been taking a nap and got on his lap. “You know,” he smiled, “this feels good. It feels good to know that I have friends that care for me. I never had that back in Clinton City.”

“Clinton City is in the past, Zack,” she told him as she felt the warmth of his body in the cool evening air. “That’s the best place for it. You’ve got a future ahead of you, and there are going to be good things in it. I don’t want to make promises now, and really, I’m not ready to just yet. But I think we’ve got some more good times ahead of us, at least this winter.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I don’t know, Zack. I can’t tell you, since I just don’t know. What I do know is that I want to get finished with the Rag Doll, and then sail down the coast so I can meet up with my family for Christmas. After that, we’ll be together for a while, and maybe by the time we get through that I may be able to give you an answer.”

“It would be nice if I could be able to be with you for Christmas,” he sighed. “But part of the deal in my taking that long leave is that I agreed to be around for the holidays so some other people could take off and go home. Since I don’t have a home to go to, I figured I might as well.”

“Are you going to have duty on Christmas Day?” she asked. “I know it’s a hell of a long drive for just a few hours, but you might be able to drive down and join us.”

“I’d like to, Amanda, I’d really like to. But I don’t know yet if I’ll have the duty, but since a lot of people are going to be gone it’ll be a good bet that I will.”

“Well, if you can’t you can’t,” she said. “But maybe we’ll have to have our own little Christmas after you come down to get on the boat for a while.”

“Now that’s a deal I can look forward to,” he sighed. “Amanda, don’t get me wrong. I would love to be with you for Christmas, but don’t figure on it happening. I haven’t had a real Christmas or a real home since before my mother died, and I miss it. My one real big dream in this life is to have a real home again someday. It would be nice to be able to tack myself onto your family holiday, but I guess I’d feel a little strange doing it.”

“Oh, you’d be welcome if you could make it,” she said. “When I was younger we didn’t have much of a family Christmas ourselves. There used to be a number of people around Winchester Harbor who didn’t have much in the way of family, and we used to have sort of a community Christmas party and dinner in the snack bar for them. It made things seem like I had a lot bigger family than I did. It was really kind of fun.”

“What happened to that?”

“People got older, or died, or moved away,” she said, snuggling up to him a little more. “They weren’t replaced with newer folks, and I guess it just died out.”

“You’ve got a really nice family,” he replied. “Ron has been about the best friend I’ve had down here, and the best friend I’ve ever had until you came along. I’ve never gotten up the courage it would take to tell him what happened to me, but maybe that’s me, too. But I feel like I did the right thing in telling you, since it just made us get closer.”

“It did, Zack,” she smiled. The warmth, the closeness, the intimacy of the whole thing was having an effect on her, and she didn’t want to let it go right then. Was this the time? “That’s one of the things that really worked out well. Zack, I don’t know how to say this, but well, I’ve never felt quite this close to a guy, either.”

“You haven’t? I’m surprised. I thought you would have been a popular girl.”

“I wasn’t,” she replied honestly. “Oh, I didn’t go through the kind of horrors that you had to endure, but I didn’t have a lot of friends, either. I wasn’t into sports or the popularity things, and I especially wasn’t into looking forward to going to college. When I was in high school I was mostly interested in the fishing, the boats, the family business, and it didn’t leave me a lot of time for messing around with the other kids.”

“I suppose that could have an effect,”

“It did. Oh, I messed around with some kids now and then but I was always a little bit of an outsider. I did have sort of a boyfriend for a while, but I was so anxious to have a little bit of closeness, a little bit of a normal life, that we let things go too fast, and get too serious. About all I can say was that it was a mistake and it didn’t work out very well. That was back while I was still in school, and he wound up going to college while I went out and worked on the boats, so that was that.”

“At least you had that much. It was more than I had.”

“I suppose,” she said. “But now I feel like I’m having some of those feelings I really wanted to have in school. I’m enjoying being close to you, Zack. I really am. I want to make it closer.”

“I do too, if you think you’re ready for it.”

“I think I am, Zack,” she said, wiggling a little to be able to feel his body better. “And considering how great this day has been, I don’t think there can be a much better time. Besides, it’s getting a little chilly out here. I think I’m going to either have to go below and get a jacket on, or we’re going to have to go below and find a better way to warm up by taking our clothes off.”

“Amanda?”

“I’m saying let’s rig out the wide settee berth,” she smiled. “I want to feel you closer to me. In fact, I’m pretty sure I want to feel you in me. It’ll be a great way to top off what has already been one of the best days of my life.”

“I’ve been hoping to hear you say something like that,” he smiled, tightening up on the arm he had around her. “There was a long time I never thought I’d ever hear anyone say anything like that to me. Amanda, I have to tell you that I’ve never done anything like that. When you kissed me down here last winter, just about a year ago, it was the first time I’d ever really kissed a girl. And then up at your home last summer, well . . .”

“Those days are over with, Zack,” she said. “And maybe that’s an even better reason to go below and do it. It’ll remind you of the fact that all that shit is in the past. Zack, I have to be honest and tell you I’m not a virgin, although what I have had wasn’t much and wasn’t much fun, either. Let’s take our time and do it right so we can both really enjoy it.”

“I’m all for it,” he smiled. “The only down side to it is that I’m really enjoying holding onto you, and I’ll have to let you go so we can go below.”

“Well, some things you have to just put up with,” she giggled. “But I hope we’ll both think it’s worth the effort. Zack, I think we’ve gotten to the point where we’ve talked about it more than we should. It’s time to just go and do it.”

“You talked me into it,” he grinned. “Not that it took a lot of talking.”

It took them a few minutes to get the cabin of the Rag Doll rigged around so they could do what they both wanted to do. But soon they were snuggled up together in the berth, sharing the warmth of their naked bodies as they kissed and caressed and explored each other. And in time they moved even further past that. The first time was a little awkward, but it was wonderful at the same time, and it was the capper to what had already been one of the best days of their lives.

In time, they just snuggled together, sleeping the sleep of the fulfilled, while Beffy curled up on the pillow next to their heads.

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