A passel of college kids conjured the back-to-school spirit last weekend when they came to Bridgehampton to sing. Shere Khan, an a cappella ensemble of 12 Princeton students, performed for a group of friends at a private party, while the 45-member Howard University Gospel Choir, accompanied by electric bass, keyboard, and drums, raised the rafters of the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church. 

Shere Khan, the tiger in Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book,” is an appropriate riff on Princeton’s mascot. Linda Frankenbach and Rik Kranenburg had invited the co-ed group to spend the weekend here, rehearsing and enjoying the beach before heading back to school. Their son is the president of Shere Khan, and a senior. The Howard Gospel Choir was offering its sixth annual concert as a benefit for the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center.

A cappella singing requires a very good ear, which these collegians obviously have — as well as the talent to put across the messages in the contemporary songs they sing. I wasn’t alone among the audience in not quite being up-to-date on the music young people listen to these days, but Shere Khan rocked, and we all got it. The Beatles and Paul Simon were mixed in with Beyonce, Pharell Williams, Sheryl Crow, and Amy Winehouse, and at least half of the ensemble took terrific solos.

But I was stricken with admiration for the group’s music director, a Princeton junior named Liti Chiang, who not only set the beat but provided — vocally — amazing percussion. (The only note I questioned were the colors of Shere Khan’s T-shirts on its website: blue and red rather than Tiger orange and black.)

The camaraderie and good will of the audience for the Howard Gospel Choir was evident in its response upon learning that the concert, which had been called for 4:30 p.m., would start late because of a bus problem. The passion and gusto of this group is legendary, and they showed their mettle even though, we learned later, they hadn’t even taken time for lunch.

I’ve sung in innumerable concerts at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, and attended some wonderful performances there during the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, but nothing can compare with the Howard Gospel Choir for energizing an audience, encouraging them to clap and sing along to familiar songs like “Oh Happy Day.” This group, too, rotates solos among its members, and its music director, Reginald A. Golden, who circled the aisles in one number, “Keep A-Inchin’ Along,” has a stirring tenor voice. 

The good works — and fund-raising needs — of the Bridgehampton Child Care Center are formidable. A brochure passed out with the Howard Gospel Choir concert program mentioned just a few of the expenses that will need to be covered in the coming year, including $10,000 for meals it regularly serves and $5,000 for an equipment shed. I promised Bonnie Michelle Cannon, the executive director, that I would mention a benefit golf tournament that will be held at the Atlantic Golf Club on Monday, Sept. 22. I don’t play golf, but I can spread the word. Hallelujah!

Leo the pig has been in hog heaven these weeks as the bushes, grasses, and shrubs around our yard come into full, high-summer lushness. My wife, Lisa, has been reveling in produce too, although, unlike Leo, she does not waddle down to the edge of the lawn to munch grape leaves right off the vine.

As I have mentioned, I surprised Lisa for her birthday this year with a membership in one of the South Fork’s growing number of community-supported agriculture farms. Each week since before Memorial Day, we have picked up our box, and as spring has moved into summer, there has been an increasing variety. There is more, in fact, than we are able to keep up with some weeks. The pig and our few remaining hens are the beneficiaries of what we deem a little too long in the crisper.

Regular readers also may recall Leo’s story. Over my protests and warning that I was going to move in with the hens, Lisa and our oldest child somehow convinced themselves that the Texas breeder they found on the Internet was on the up and up when she promised he would not exceed 10 pounds when fully grown. I countered that he would, at best, end up the size of our Labrador mix, albeit with shorter legs. Now at about 50 pounds and counting, I rarely miss a chance to say “I told you so.”

Leo’s days are like this: He gets up a short while after I do from a child-sized couch in the master bedroom, which he has taken as his own. After a quick trip outside to water my dooryard herb patch, he badgers me for breakfast by assaulting my ankles with his snout. If that fails or I boot him away, he heads over to the pot rack to make so much noise that I am forced to comply and give him a bowl of pet-pig food. (Yes, they make this stuff.)

Next, he heads outside to snuffle for fallen shad berries or nibble fresh grass. The chickens, who we keep locked up because of hawks, can only look on with envy and make cackles of outrage. Then he sleeps in the sun until his ample belly starts to rumble, and he starts on his rounds once again.

At dinner, after the kids have been fed, Lisa and I sit down to our plates of greens sauteed with garlic and lemon juice or zucchini with tomato and purple basil. By now, Leo is done for the day and bedded down. We, if the children settle down, are not far behind.

Many may not take me for the type of gal who enjoys camping. After all, I was raised in Manhattan. Growing up, the closest I ever got to camping was visiting my cousins at Hither Hills during their extended stays there, but I always left long before dusk. Fast forward all these years later and I look forward to going to sleep under the stars, sitting by a campfire, and, yes, even as a decade-long vegetarian, waking up to the smell of bacon cooking at the neighboring campsite.

All of that faced several interruptions, including leaks and police activity, a few weekends ago.

First, the hot water heater in our camper broke. (Did you think this city girl slept in a tent?) It was already after dark on a nonelectric site at Indian Island in Riverhead, so we roughed it the first night. In the morning, we tinkered with pipes and valves, which promptly blew the faucet off the kitchenette sink. Then we realized the fridge and freezer, which can operate off propane, weren’t getting as cold as they should, a rather big problem for my MorningStar Farms veggie bacon strips.

My fiancé was ready to admit defeat, but a friend in East Hampton, far more experienced in the world of camping, had a number for a repairman who exclusively fixes campers. We called Bill, who came right over, fixed the sink and the fridge, and diagnosed the leak. Weekend saved.

As soon as one problem is fixed though, another rears its ugly head.

As we enjoyed a peaceful evening, we heard yelling. We peeked our heads around the camper, and diagonally across the way found a man screaming at two Suffolk County Park Police officers. Our next-door neighbors, a large group of 20-somethings, suddenly came out from their campsite to fill us in — they had been watching most of the incident through the blinds. Allegedly, the man had two shotguns in the trunk of his car, which the cops had confiscated. It’s illegal to bring any firearms to a county park.

The man appeared intoxicated, also a no-no in a county park. He was filming the exchange with his cellphone camera — after all, the Eric Garner incident was just days old. The back-and-forth went on for quite some time with him screaming about his rights and the officers trying to keep him at bay. It was like a block party with campers from every site gathering around to watch. More cops and a sergeant arrived.

The man grew less steady on his feet as time went on, doing the two-step and carrying on. When he urinated right in front of the officers, it seemed they had had enough. I think it took six officers to arrest him as he struggled with them. My neighbor captured the whole thing on his cellphone. There were no chokeholds, though.

Everyone was relieved the man was in custody, and just as we were all ready to go back to our s’mores, the reason the officers had held off arresting him so long became apparent: a 3-year-old child asleep in a large tailgating chair and no other adults in sight. Another hour went by before a Riverhead volunteer ambulance came to fetch the child, I assume under some kind of protocol because the child seemed fine, scared and alone, but all right.

Officers remained at the campsite well after I turned in for the night. The Suffolk Times reported later that police found a loaded shotgun in the man’s tent, though the article made no mention of those other guns. Court documents said the child could have easily gotten to the gun.

You just never know what’s lurking around the corner. The whole incident got me thinking that maybe I should have stuck to Manhattan, where at least I had double-bolted doors, albeit no real view of the stars.

Taylor K. Vescey is The Star’s digital products editor.

Back when summer was new, The Star sent out its interns to gather up all the free magazines they could find and put a brief rundown of them on our website. The interns came back with 13 glossies. Thirteen! A few, like Hamptons magazine, have been around a long time, but most are relatively new here and some are pop-ups (to use the term now popular for the sudden appearance of a shop or restaurant).

Fortunately for us here at The Star, these glossies pretty much compete with each other, and not with us. They lure advertisers from the corporate worlds of fashion and interior decorating, and, of course, they follow celebrities. They all allege to know everyone and everything that is happening. Real estate is also prime fodder. 

Ocean Home, which I hadn’t even heard of before the interns found it, offered what it said were the top 10 “most exclusive estates on the market.” (The word “exclusive” always draws my attention, by the way. What does that really mean, anyway? Most expensive? Most likely to be encircled by a moat?) The Real Deal, an oversize Manhattan magazine that concentrates on luxury apartments that are for sale, added a “Hot in the Hamptons” feature for July. There is Hamptons Cottages & Gardens, and Pulse, and Joan Jedell’s Hamptons Sheet, which have been around awhile.

I was a little amused when I belatedly cottoned on to the fact that there are two Beach magazines on the market. The Modern Luxury chain’s Beach magazine was inaugurated in 2012 and took a bead on Niche Media’s Hamptons. The other Beach is Avenue magazine’s Avenue on the Beach, which started up last summer. Although one has a much smaller format than the other, each has the word “Beach” on the cover in extra-large type. Could a little litigation be going on between them?

The interns also brought in a copy of Du Jour, which divides its content between the city and the East End. Its publisher is Jason Binn, who had launched but is no longer with Hamptons. More recently, I picked up a copy of Gotham, which is another Niche Media publication, and was pleasantly surprised that there was nothing in it about the East End, except for an advertisement for the James Beard Foundation’s Chefs and Champagne party this weekend. 

But the prize of the summer was picked up and brought home by my husband. It’s called Hamptons Dog, and it is about nothing but. Among the cover lines were: “Boating Safety for Canines,” “Flying Dogs: Learn Frisbee!” and “Summer Skin and Fur Care.” Its editor and publisher is Lisa Hartman, a dog trainer and crackerjack photographer of dogs. The issue featured a Paw List (names of dogs), an article on how to go paddleboarding with your four-legged friend, and quite a few photos of dogs cavorting handsomely on local beaches (although they showed happy golden retrievers or yellow Labs, not happy little blond children, these reminded me of the beachy family portraits you often see marketed locally).

I find Hamptons Dog quite brilliant in its special-interest focus. It certainly stands out among the other periodicals trying to make a buck with party pictures and wannabe society chit-chat. And who among us hasn’t complained that the Hamptons are going to the dogs?

Summer as a child on my grandparents’ farm in the Catskills was fun. We played in a cold brook, picked blueberries on the hills, and invented fantastic worlds on the third floor of the barn, where a carriage had long been abandoned. Once, on a neighbor’s farm, I was allowed to attempt to milk a cow. 

The summer of 1948 was different. It may have been the last summer we spent on the farm, but I honestly can’t remember. Old Man Low, whose cows I used to visit in one of his pastures about a half-mile away, wasn’t there that summer; he was gone. No one told me if he had given up dairy farming, or just passed on, but in any case his pastures were empty and that was that. And then one day, his farmhouse and outbuildings were rented to a group of men and boys. 

In August, I was asked to go to the Low farm to help serve meals for the group. I would get up early and take a shortcut through the woods to a large room being used as a mess hall, where I dished out appalling reconstituted scrambled eggs, among other non-delicacies.

I didn’t hear any shooting that summer, but I knew these young men were training for the war in Israel, which had become an independent nation that May. Not too many months later, a man I had seen at the Low farm, known to me only as Warsaw, was arrested, apparently attempting to load guns onto a vessel in New York Harbor.

We learned then — at least, if my memory isn’t playing tricks, this was when I learned the name — that he and his fellows were members of a group called Irgun, extremist fighters seeking to force the British out of Palestine. Menachem Begin, who in time became the Israeli prime minister and won the Nobel Peace Prize, was one of Irgun’s leaders. Today we would call them terrorists. (Haganah was another paramilitary organization at the time, but it was less radical in its violence than its offshoot, Irgun.)

My parents weren’t political. My father had been a Roosevelt man, not knowing, of course, how little the president was doing to help the Jews escape from the Nazis. They held on tightly to Judaism, however, and belonged to an Orthodox synagogue. Did they know I was helping a secret cell of Irgun that summer? Were they indifferent to or ignorant of the presence nearby of men receiving training in arms? Or were they proud? What seems most likely is that they simply avoided thinking too hard about what was going on, just as I think they avoided thinking too much about the concentration camps. 

As a young woman I guess I took a cue from my parents. I had belonged to a Zionist youth organization in high school, but only briefly. I never chose to study the story of the new Jewish state. In fact, by the time I got to college, I was more interested in the Tunisian struggle for independence from France, and did a paper on Habib Bourguiba, a hero who became Tunisia’s president in 1957.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that nearly 1,200 Palestinians had been killed in the previous three weeks, along with 56 Israelis, three of whom were civilians. It also reported that armed Palestinian fighters had reached Israel through one of the many tunnels Israel has discovered and hopes to destroy.

Every death in this war is an affront to humanity. The casualties are unspeakable. Pondering all this horror, I am almost bereft of opinion. I find myself coming closer and closer to my parents’ seemingly diffident attitude. How can an adult of good conscience — an Israeli, a Palestinian, who has witnessed plenty of evil in this world — see only black and white, or find it simple to take sides?

Brock, or Brick, or something like that, I think he said his name was, but it was difficult to pay attention the other day because I was on the beach chasing friends’ children in a runaway kayak as they drifted down the bay in the direction of Promised Land. He seemed a nice enough guy, probably in his late 20s or early 30s. He introduced me to his companion, a woman about his age, and said he was renting the house next door.

Things on the beach have seemed different in the past couple of summers. New and unfamiliar people walk past our place. Last year, the house next door was rented in August to some youngish tenants who were low-key until the end of the season, when they threw a jungle-themed pool party complete with thickset bouncers and a catered spread.

They were nice enough, though my wife was itching to call the police one night when they turned the music up way too loud. Heading off her grab for the phone, I pulled on a pair of paint-covered jeans and the muck boots I use to tend the chickens and headed over for a chat. They agreed to turn the thumping disco down and invited me for a shot of spiced rum. I declined and went home to get back in bed.

As we learned later from the neighbor who owned the house, the jungle party had left the house a shambles. Rooms that were supposed to remain off-limits had been the scene of apparent debauchery and so on. She vowed to better vet her tenants next time. We said we would help keep an eye on things.

So far, the guy whose name I didn’t quite get and his friends have hardly been a nuisance next door. We hear them occasionally carrying on around the pool. It seems that they gather for dinner and an early drink, then go out on the town after we have gotten our kids into bed. They have had one party, and the catering gear hung around on the beach for a few days, but so far, that has been about it.

More interesting, really, was the extended family that rented a place a couple of houses to the west for a weekend at the end of June. Out walking the dogs one evening, I stopped to try to chat with a guy wearing a camouflage trucker’s hat who was baiting a line for a small child.

He had little to say, which surprised me; most of the time, people on the beach here like to get acquainted. A little while later, as I walked back the other way, the rest of the family had emerged, two more men in camouflage hats, a couple of women, and a few more children. They acknowledged my hello with a nod and a wan smile, but did not engage. I have not seen them in the weeks since, but I wonder who they were each time I go by.

Recently, I read of someone who was described as “a great herder of cats.” Leif Hope, a great ballplayer, by the way, who moves like a cat on the mound and bats like a lion, is one of those — an artistic manager of swing-for-the-fences egos in the service of the greater good.

The betterment of life in this town has been the prize on which Leif’s eyes have been cast for the almost 50 years now that the Artists-Writers Softball Game has been played as a benefit, for such organizations as the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center, which began here as Head Start, the Retreat, which offers a haven to victims of domestic abuse, Phoenix House, which helps to free people from addiction, and East End Hospice, which enables the terminally ill to remain in their houses.

Leif is a doer of good leavened with a sly sense of humor, however, a sense of fun that has served him, and The Game’s receipts, well over the years, during which the myth he’s spun of solipsistic, closeted Writers intent on annually bludgeoning the insouciant, life-loving Artists has been undone by the cold fact that Artists, while perhaps less obsessive than Writers, like to win too. And indeed they have as many times as the Writers have in the past 25 years.

Leif’s aim has always been to put on a good show, and thus he ought to be forgiven, I think, for playing fast and loose with his players’ bona fides. John Leo, once the Writers’ manager, said he guessed that in his opposing manager’s eyes anyone who was not a writer was an artist.

In rebuttal, Leif has said the Writers were the first to transgress, insisting in the 1970s that two lawyer ringers from California were eligible to play for them because they “wrote legal briefs.” But I think that riposte came after Leif played two auto body guys, Andy Malone and John Johnson, who in their work repainted cars.

A lover of women, Leif has not hesitated to enlist them in tweaking the Writers’ egos, often subbing in for a few innings all-female lineups recruited from the East Hampton Town women’s slow-pitch softball league.

In the famous “Battery Show” of 1977, he introduced a lights-out pro pitcher, Kathy Neal, and her catcher, C.B. Tomasiewicz, whom he and Tom Twomey had flown over from Connecticut, as “two folk singers from Omaha.”

It soon became evident they weren’t. Bowing to authorial pique, Leif played them in the outfield from the second until the ninth inning, at which point, with runners on first and third, and with the Writers about to tie the game up, he called them back in to pitch and catch.

A popup, a strikeout, and a popup, and that was it. The Artists won 13-7. “Some guys didn’t talk to me for five years after that,” said Leif, who, when it comes to The Game, puts it all on the line, always has, and always will.

My one regret is that he, a great ballplayer, as I’ve said, hasn’t played more in all these Games for which he’s been the impresario. But there’s more than one way, I suppose, to skin a cat.

Let’s play it again, Leif, play it again.

Part I: The Saga of Winter, 2011

Santa Claus managed to get two big red kayaks down our chimney. The grandeur of the boats in front of the fireplace, amid wrappings of varied shapes, was as beautiful as consumerism gets.  

Kayaks are a perfect present, except if it’s winter, when their use seems a little far off. It is actually not so far away, according to my mom, who has read about the wonders of wintertime kayaking online.

It is blustery when we strap the kayaks to the top of the car and drive to Louse Point. Perhaps it is my holier-than-thou, I-went-to-sailing-camp-and-you-didn’t attitude about the dangers of being on the water in high winds, or maybe it is the adults’ we-bought-these-freaking-things-and-we’re-going-to-have-fun mind-set, but either way no one is listening to my safety concerns. The outing proceeds.

It is the day after Christmas, so we are wearing down jackets under our life vests, while my dog wears her doggie life jacket over her natural coat. I get settled in one boat with my mom, while my dad, sister, and dog pile into the other. We struggle to push off, but once we do, we are away.

Away in a bad way — a speeding-uncontrollably-into-open-water, away-forever bad way.

About two minutes in, I hear a splash. Beside their capsized kayak, my 10-year-old sister is struggling in one direction, toward shore, and my dog is sloshing out in the opposite direction. My dad doesn’t actually end up having to demonstrate that the dog is his favorite child. He bides his time, staying in the middle and yelling at both of them till eventually my dog changes course and swims in their direction.

My mom appoints herself to some damage control. She abandons our ship, jumps in the water, and swears when she feels the temperature. It is certain that my mom loves me and would never want to lose me, so I am confused when she then yells, as I am being pulled away in an unmaneuverable kayak, “Stay! There!”

I decide her authority on this mission is terminated, so instead of staying in the boat and starting a new life alone at sea, I jump in the water to join her on the push to get back to shore. I deem it appropriate to swear too when I feel the water, which is painfully pricking my skin as my coat and Wellington boots weigh me down.

After a bit of paddling, I am able to touch bottom, and trudge along. My dad pulls my dog and sister along by the straps of their life jackets. The cold combined with the current makes our approximately 10-minute return to shore feel like the ice age.

The boats are out of sight when we get to the edge of the shore. We are blue-lipped, but have vanquished the water’s wrath, so aren’t feeling too blue. Except that my mom then places her feet in some viscous mud and falls flat on her face. Anyone treading in that mud would meet the same fate, so helping her up and out is a delicate maneuver. My dad eventually saves her with a branch with which she has to grapple and roll around.

My sister and I grapple too, with an effort not to show we have just seen an awkward and funny fall, given that our mom is in a serious situation. We do one thing successfully — we drive home. All take hot showers, including the dog. After our showers, my mom forces my dad to turn around and go back out with her to find the kayaks, and they do. One has washed up on Gerard Drive; the other is back up on Louse Point.

Part II: Reflections

Our kayaking extravaganza is now immortalized in print, for the public embarrassment of my otherwise capable family. It also is in a painting on a big canvas that I did as a present for my mom that year.

In my mind, when the Queen of England was new to the throne, she might have looked to the portraits on the walls of Buckingham Palace for a confidence boost, an affirmation of her royal lineage. Likewise, when the kayaking painting was hung up in our house, my family and I would look to it for a laugh, affirming our nautical ineptitude.

Nowadays, I’d bet the queen doesn’t blink when she passes by those portraits; she knows she’s the queen and nothing less. Neither do we feel the need to reference the kayaking painting and further rehash the story. We know we’re beach-walkers and nothing close to kayakers.

Part III: The Saga Updated

We still try to inch closer to kayaking status though. A few times we’ve had the satisfaction of a sunny day on placid water. If we were swimming it was voluntary. On Saturday, however, we encountered some windiness during our kayaking. The picnic beforehand was the highlight.

Bella Lewis is an editorial intern at The Star. In September she will begin her sophomore year at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

We already suspected what the public perception of us was, but now we have something akin to hard proof: In a “readers choice” survey by Condé Nast Traveler, “the Hamptons” was rated as the eighth most unfriendly city in the United States among a list of 10. Newark, N.J., at number one, was the worst, and Miami just made the list, at number 10. Imagine! “The Hamptons” was only two slots friendlier than Detroit and — if that doesn’t make your hair stand on end — four slots better than Atlantic City. 

I, myself, don’t really believe those Condé Nast Traveler readers really knew what they were talking about when they filled out the survey. I think the votes were based on a vague cultural perception.

Sure, in East Hampton, and everywhere else on the South Fork, we have plenty of issues, but kindness isn’t tops among them; residents, visitors, and civic organizations continually attest to lots of generosity and caring. Who would deny that we have an unusually strong sense of community here? The letters to the editor of The Star are often filled with thank-you notes to individuals and volunteers who stepped out of their way to help others. 

I went to the magazine’s website in hopes of finding out just who participated in the survey, but didn’t have much luck. I ended up taking it (well, some of it) instead. Readers were asked to name cities they had been to and then evaluate them on a scale from poor to excellent — for not just friendliness and unfriendliness, but arts and culture, scenery and sights, restaurants and food, accommodations, shopping, and value. Among the friendliest cities, a disproportionate number of high scorers turned out to be in the South: Charleston, S.C. (which I’ve been meaning to visit since a former Star reporter moved there), was deemed the friendliest, followed by Savannah, Ga.; New Orleans was at the mid-mark, despite its problems, and Asheville, N.C., was number 10.

Perhaps those who marked “the Hamptons” as an unfriendly city had visited on a chaotic weekend in the summer, and run into someone in a shop who was tired and cranky. That certainly, ahem, happens. But, really, there’s a lot to quibble with in this survey ranking. First of all, even if we allow the Hamptons to be considered a single geographic entity, they (it?) are hardly a city. Hamptonization may have blurred some of the distinctions between the South Fork’s villages and hamlets, but their basic characters have not disappeared. In East Hampton, at least, people “from away” have been part of the equation for well more than a century; we’re not exclusionary. 

In his 1979 book, “The South Fork: The Land and the People of Eastern Long Island,” the late Everett T. Rattray said that although this place was “native now to a relative handful, it could be native to thousands more if they would undertake the necessary naturalization exercises, which include some long looks beneath the surface of things.” I can’t help but wonder what he would say about the conclusions of Traveler’s survey. Its voters probably didn’t engage in any naturalization exercises. 

Ah, well, perhaps it’s best that they didn’t. Our unfriendly rating may be good news, in the end, for this overcrowded peninsula. Given what things are like each July and August, we don’t really need any further announcements or broadcasts to the effect that our streets are filled with celebrities, that our restaurant kitchens are staffed by world-class chefs, that our visual arts heritage is second to none, that our farm and ocean produce is near-miraculous, and that our beaches are still incredibly beautiful. Grouchy survey-takers? You are welcome to stay home. 

Sunday night I was out in my boat on Gardiner’s Bay as the moon appeared over the Hither Hills highlands. It was a still evening, no wind to speak of, and only a little ripple under the hull as I passed the bluffs at the old Bell Estate, where the Clintons are staying for a couple of weeks.

Nights like this always puzzle me. So calm, so beautiful, and yet so few vessels on the water. There were no signs of the former president and former secretary of state or their security team, either. A single blue-hulled cabin cruiser lay at anchor off the Accabonac Harbor channel buoy. Another, smaller boat made its way northwest, and in the distance, a sloop was tucked up off Gardiner’s Island for the night.

It had been a long day, beginning for me with a fuel line problem that cut the outboard engine in the middle of the Three Mile Harbor breakwaters. On an incoming tide, I let the boat drift back onto a clam flat where I climbed overboard and worked it back to the dock, half walking, half swimming, with a line attached to the bow.

Back at the slip, talking through the boat’s problems with Palmer Smith, who keeps a runabout next to mine, the repair suddenly became obvious. I had the part I needed, and before too long I was on my way again.

My plan had been to run the boat up on the beach near our house as the tide switched around midday. Only a bit behind schedule, I managed to do so by lunch. That afternoon, as the hull sat dry on the sand, I took care of what needed to be done and waited for the bay to come in again. It did, while I was not watching, the way people say a pot won’t boil when it is being watched.

I had gone up to the house for something or other, and when I returned the boat had swung on its anchor line and was floating, swimming distance from the shore, in the light southwest wind. We were under way shortly thereafter.