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Show ALASKA-16 sails. "This is a ketch. I sailed to Bermuda in one of these and she stood up well in the storms. Those are the kind of boats you want to have." He stared at her as if the statement were fraught with meaning, then pointed across the hardwood floor to a window that overlooked the harbor. "Say the wind is coming from there. To move into it, you have to trim the sails close, like this. Any more and you'd lose the wind altogether and be in irons." He flapped the sails to show what he meant. She nodded, half-hearing because her ears were roaring with the sound of ocean and the room did not seem steady. There was so much of it that asked only to be felt. "So, to get to a point directly into the wind, you have to zigzag, like this." He knelt on the floor with the boat to demonstrate. "The vacuum is here, the wind here, and the power is here." He pointed to the spot near the center of the triangle. He settled back on the sofa next to her. "You were splendid," he said. "No one expected the wind to be quite so brisk." She took off another sweater and lay back on the pillows she had propped around herself. "Do I really look like a boy?" "I never mistook you, not for a minute." He slid his hand over her freed hair. She gave herself to the sounds and the rocking, the bobbing floes tilting this way and that, unable to move either way. What Ian had taught her about opposition climbing was exactly this-arms pulling, legs pushing, equal pressure into the rock, making oneself into a rigid triangle against gravity. Pull in order to push, so as not to fall, so as not to drown. It was finally clear. |