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Show ALASKA -15 enough for you? Going to dump her again this year, Sam?" No one seemed to be going in any particular direction. It was confusing, cold, silly. Finally, a horn sounded: her job was to keep the boat from capsizing. She ducked to avoid the sweep of the boom, diving under it just in time to emerge as the boat stood itself on edge on the side she had just abandoned. She had to wedge her toes under a board and lean out as far as she could so that the waves slapped at her face and ice blurred by close to her eyes. All this had to be done quickly, precisely. In the brief intervals between tacks, she stared, fascinated, at the sail, a silent triangle that curved over them like a white benediction. Later, the cousin explained how it was a triangular tension of pulling and sucking that had them, winds mastered by a void, beating them with that fine edge between force and vacuum-aerodynamics, trigonometry, the sort of thing she hadn't cared to understand before. Out there, pointing into the wind meant only that the boom seemed to fling itself over the boat very often, just after he yelled, "ready about," and she was doomed to fling herself from one side of the boat to the other to keep it just this side of upright. A tension that could never end. It was a wonderful thing. Even so, it ended. The cousin said, "congratulations." A gray-haired man reached out his hand from the swaying boat to help her step off the dingy, saying, "Here, lad." The cousin took her to his Port Washington apartment and said, "Call me Sam; you haven't -- ------ all afternoon." He held up a model sailboat with two perfect wedge-shaped |