A briefly warm afternoon this week got me thinking about getting Cerberus ready for the season. I’ve kept my four-decade-old sailboat at Uihlein’s in Montauk this winter and thought I might drive over to look over what needed to be done. A return to below-freezing temperatures slammed shut that window in short order.
The truth is that there is not as much time before we get to Memorial Day weekend as it might appear on the calendar. Once March comes around on the East End, it is a sprint until the season begins (however one defines it). Though the snow might be over, spring comes slowly out here, compressing the days available for crawling around the boat’s bilge, say, into relatively few.
The way I see it, the last of the cold weeks is a fine time for mending a holey sweater, looking online at what new things I might buy for the boat, if cash were no object, and baking.
One of the few truly useful improvements of the digital age, in my opinion, is immediate access to nearly all the books in the world, often free, thanks to a library card.
At present, I have digitally checked out Robert O. Paxton’s “Anatomy of Fascism” and an entire cookbook devoted to biscotti. A half-batch of anise-and-pecan biscotti — flavored with a tablespoon of Pernod out of a bottle I borrowed from my sister — is in the oven as I write this.
This is not to say that I have anything against hard-copy books. “Bread Head,” which more or less is what one would imagine, is on my bedside table, singing a sweet siren song about capturing wild yeast and bacteria to make sourdough starter. At minimum, this would require obtaining a digital scale and organic flour. Unlike Odysseus, I succumbed, and have yet another project to keep me occupied until it is time to get back aboard.