Which Comprises a Weekend and Five Questions.

I'm finished with my job. I'm really finished.

When I reach for my keys now, sometimes the way they feel startles me, with two less on the ring. Then I remember: oh yeah. I won't be needing those anymore.

That's what it feels like. Not like the buoyant rush of summer vacation. Just, every once in a while I notice a weight missing, and it dawns on me again: oh yeah.

And every time, it feels a little better.

The weather was absolutely wretched on Saturday, but I had fun anyway, shivering on the deck talking to the brave souls who wandered down the waterfront in the rain. (Some of them I even knew!) In the evening we sailed around the river getting whomped by the Lady in a mock cannon battle. Good fun, as my grandpa (also a sailor) used to say. Good fun.

Sunday I went to church, but today was my own Sabbath. Today I turned off the phone and spent half the day in bed. Today I have done nothing I didn't feel like doing. After several weeks of going almost nonstop, it's been really, really nice.

And today I finally had time to answer the five questions Sanguinity asked me. This is one of those self-propagating deals where if you ask nicely in the comments, I'll give you your own personalized set of five questions to answer in your blog, and then you have to make a similar offer to your readers, etc. Anyway, here we go:

1. Where would you most like to be a fly on the wall?

I have always wanted to spy on my ancestors, first and foremost those who chose to immigrate to America. (This is the first thing I'd do if I could time-travel.) They're all several generations back, so I never met them, but I'm curious about these people who got on a small boat and crossed the Atlantic to start over in a land they'd never seen before. What kind of people do this? It doesn't seem to have been poverty that motivated them, in most cases; why, then? What were they hoping to find -- or leave behind? And did they succeed?

And yes, specifically my ancestors, because every time I get to know another of my relatives, it feels like I'm filling in pieces of an immense jigsaw puzzle for which there is no box top. Parts of the picture become clear, and I go: oh, that's not a sandwich after all, it's a whale! Or whatever.

2. Books and ships: what was the first nautical book that caught your imagination; what is the book that has most inflamed it since?

I'm thinking the first one was probably Swallows and Amazons. I read and enjoyed several piratey books before then -- Captain Kidd's Cat, The Ghost in the Noonday Sun -- but that wasn't so much for the seafaring stuff as it was for the characters. Swallows and Amazons explained some basic sailing terms and concepts and made them immediate and relevant to the story, without coming across as didactic or overwhelming me with data. And it had fun characters too.

(Incidentally, one of my favorite parts of real-life sailing is also the characters. Privacy considerations prevent my blog from reflecting this as much as I would like; there is no alias I could assign that would conceal the identity of these people from anyone else who had sailed with them.)

Swallows and Amazons is about four English siblings who spend their summer holiday sailing a small boat in a lake. Their adventures inspired me to declare myself a pirate captain, a backyard cherry tree my ship, and my three siblings officers of a crew that was no less ferocious for being fictional. We recruited from Neverland, Florin, and ships of balladry. We preyed only on other pirates, yet swore allegiance to no land -- which of course meant we were exponentially more fearsome than pirates.

I've loved other nautical books since -- The Dark Frigate, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle -- but the piece of writing that had the biggest impact on me was an article in my hometown newspaper, published in the early '90s, which interviewed several members of the crew of the Lady Washington. That's the one that made me say: I'm going to do that someday.

But that's not a book, is it? And neither is the movie, "Master and Commander," which is just incredibly cool from start to finish, and which I managed to watch at just the right time. I thoroughly enjoyed that book as well, but it didn't awe and delight me in the same way the same way the movie did. It is, however, probably the best nautical fiction I've read in the last 10 years, so if you didn't like my non-book answers to question #2b, Sang, that's it.

3. What's your favorite knot, bend, or hitch?

The bowline. If knots are a kind of magic (as believed by many primitives), this is a potent spell indeed.

I learned to tie the bowline several times, from a cousin, from a book, and from my dad, but the lesson that finally stuck was given on the dock in Westport by a blue-eyed sailor ten years my junior. He walked me through the steps over and over, told me a popular mnemonic narrative, and showed me a wrist-flip he used to tie it more quickly. There's a catch to learning knots from sailors, though; they always want to show off all the other knots they know. This guy was no exception. "Now," he said, "do you want to learn how to tie a dragon bowline?" I protested that I was still getting the hang of this one, but he said, "No, watch." Whipping a bowline into a large piece of line, he dropped the knotted end on the dock and walked a few paces, "dragon" it along behind him. I har-harred appreciatively, as did another sailor lad who had stopped to watch. "Okay, how about a Bangkok bowline?" my tutor asked us mischievously, swinging the heavy line. The other sailor backed abruptly away.

4. Of all the historic ships and voyages, what ship would you most like to see rebuilt (or wish had been preserved) and which voyage would you most like to go on? Would you rather go on the original voyage, or a re-enactment of the voyage?

I haven't actually read much about historical sea voyages, more's the pity. It would obviously be an exploratory voyage, not a boat full of Pilgrims or the like, but beyond that I'm not sure. The Beagle would certainly be a fun one. Johnny Keats and I are fairly enchanted with Balboa's discovery of another ocean on the far side of Central America, although he persists in crediting it to Cortez (look it up, John). Anyway, I really don't know. This question bears further investigation.

As a woman, I'd rather go on a re-enactment of any historical sea voyage than the real thing. If I could (temporarily!) change my gender, however, I'd go with the original.

5. If, as your sail date approaches, you had an option to crew with the space-merchants instead, would you?

My first thought was "In a heartbeat!" But I'm not really that impulsive; I'd have to investigate the offer pretty thoroughly before deciding. How long is the contract for? Do I get to come back afterward? Am I likely to get along with space-merchants as well as I do with tall ship sailors? What's the work like? What kind of risks are involved? Can I keep my house? Can I communicate with family and friends from space? If I say no, will I ever get another chance?

That last question has a whole lot to do with whether or not I'd accept. I really like the plans I've got right now, and if the space offer could wait, I'd go ahead with the sailing. If it couldn't... well, I might just have to go for it (after collecting all the information and considering it carefully, which is how I tend to do these things). Provided I get to come back. I am really very fond of Earth.

I should say that I don't think I'd love Space like I love the Sea, nor a high-tech starship as much as a low-tech tallship. But a chance to visit other worlds, you don't pass that up lightly. Because, of course, the existence of space-merchants does imply there are other worlds to visit. And that makes me all shivery.