Ahoy Miranda Ch. 01

Alan Meadows yawned and looked at the morning sky and rubbed his flat gut affectionately.

The breakfast of mixed grains and skimmed milk following by one piece of buttered toast topped by a skimming of peanut butter (for taste) was better for his health than bacon, eggs and two pieces of fried bread.

Oh yeah?

"Yeah," he grunted from the deck of his boat Miranda that was on 'the hard'.

Taking one last look at the blue sky with disappearing colours of sunrise heralding yet another fine day, he went below, turning on lights as he went down to the walk-in engine room. There he admired the new diesel engine designed to go faithfully (forever according to the over-enthusiastic salesperson), pushing along the former fishing boat with up to six guests living in luxury at 8.5 knots.

Workmen with heavy-lift gear had completed installing and testing the engine the previous day. The equipment was used to first lift the cruising boat as Alan now called it, on to the permanent slipway he'd constructed and hauled it up on to 'the hard' by the twin bow anchor chains that had been hauled up the slope and bolted around two sturdy trees.

He cleaned up and then went topside for coffee and sat on the aft deck under the sunshade enjoying the almost 200 meters of calm water to the tree-covered hillside opposite him. He lived amid several seawater-filled sunken valleys called sounds totalling almost 120 miles, several of them interconnecting.

"Ahoy there," called a woman in a kayak, obviously American.

"Hi it's tough going out there against the outward-going tidal current. You should be paddling closer to the shore."

"Thanks I'll take your advice."

"Would you like coffee?"

"Coffee? Oh yes please."

Alan went down the ladder to the ground and pulled the bow of her lightweight craft up to rest partly on dry gravel.

"Thanks, I'm Olivia Kennedy."

"Hi Olivia, I'm Alan Meadows, an early retiree."

She looked at him inquiringly as if her mind was ticking and he said he'd received an offer for his light engineering business that he couldn't refuse and so had retired late last year at the age of forty-three.

"Oh I wondered if that meant you'd taken early retirement. You don't look forty-three."

"But I am and I don't look as beautiful as you do."

She looked a little hesitant and then said, "Oooh a compliment so early in the day."

"Yeah well it doesn't hurt to be nice to people," he said, watching her unzip the protective skirt around the cockpit to keep her and any possessions around her dry. He put out a hand and she stepped out and said thanks.

"You'll have to climb the ladder on to Miranda because that's where the coffee is."

Olivia frowned and asked weren't boats meant to be in the water.

"That's the general idea but Miranda is three months into a 9-month conversion plus modernisation from a fishing boat into a pleasure cum workboat."

"That means I can cruise the sounds for pleasure, take up to six paying passengers living aboard or ferry freight for people living along the extensive network of sounds. Most permanent residents have boats but I'm talking about bulk inert freight including small vehicles, penned farm animals including horses and heavy items. That hoist on the aft deck can lift up to 2½ tons."

Olivia appeared interested and so he continued.

"My business plan suggests I could end up making a tidy profit from the freight side of my combined business. Getting a regular inflow of six to eight passengers regularly could be hard graft but my friend Claire came up with one promising idea and that was to entice an independent film company to make a documentary of the Miranda carrying eight foreign tourists up Arundel Sound and filming their adventures along the way."

Olivia said ah, an all-purpose boat and he said yes, and was fitted as a fishing platform as well.

Alan asked if she was okay with ladder climber as he should look away because she was wearing a dress.

"It's okay, I'm wearing panties."

"Um look, I didn't mean..."

"Yes I know, you were attempting to be a gentleman. You go first and I'll try to look up the legs of your shorts."

Alan grinned and said he liked her already.

Up on the deck Olivia looked around including at the decking and said, "Much of this looks new."

"Yeah and you American women would call it a makeover."

"Why are you doing it? I mean spending so much time, energy and money."

Alan said it was his project into retirement transition, that he'd had no intention of turning into a couch potato or seeking alternative employment working for someone or buying another business. He committed to the challenge of building his own new business,

"My parents used to bring my sister and me down here most summers when we were kids and I never forget the natural beauty of the place and the fun we had here. As soon as the deal was signed for my business I came down here looking to buy a suitable property and found this site containing a long disused cottage in need of tender loving care."

"Then I looked to buy an older boat that would fill my early days of retirement upgrading her. Eventually I found this sturdy carvel timber fishing trawler advertised online and immediately knew I'd found my project."

"God you must have been a good boss. You appear to have vision and energy and single-minded purpose."

"Well I had a bit of those things I suppose. Come into the wheelhouse where I'm living at the moment as I'm now ready to begin refitting the gutted interior on the deck below it and down in the former hold that will become three double cabins and next to that is the engine room and at the forward a deep hold handy for light cargo such as hay or grain. Whenever aboard I'd live in the roomy wheelhouse."

"What about your girlfriend?"

"What are they? No very occasional female has live here for more than I think three days with me grinding away on the conversion for most of the day and into the night six days a week. It is difficult to understand but the universal complain was boredom."

Olivia laughed and said he was funny,

"So you are a work hermit?"

"My purpose is to get to the water on this vessel. Oh I guess you are wondering was there a Mrs Meadows? Yes indeed there was but sadly our marriage ended five years ago. One day just on twilight, Sally who was pregnant was knocked down and killed instantly by a hit and run driver who was never apprehended."

"Oh god, I'm sorry."

"Thanks. Um since I've become known down here there has been the occasional woman."

"I should hope so."

"Will you stay for lunch?"

"Yes I would like that. I could lie in the shade under that tree reading while you carry on working."

Lunch was leisurely, green mussels as starters following by lightly simmered cod and a green salad accompanied by a fruity light white wine.

"This has been an adorable interlude," Olivia said ninety minutes later. "I must push on for the next three days and then the boat hire company will collect me and take my back down the sound. It's no use me offering to assist you working on the boat. You need my older sister Lydia for that; she's a professional potter and helped our father renovate the home we brought when our family immigrated to this country eighteen months ago. We settled way up north where dad became management engineer in charge of maintenance at the oil refinery."

"Well phone Lydia when you get back to civilisation as there is no cell phone or internet connection here. Just say she is invited to come and stay and work half the day and I'll provide accommodation and all the food and wine she can consume."

"She wouldn't be interested."

"I know and she may not be as pretty or as charming as you perhaps, but the point is just to pass on the invitation. And then at some stage your parents might like to visit. There are some good lodges nearby and if your parents hold off for another three to four months the Miranda will be back in the water and I could take them on a complimentary cruise for say three nights."

"Wow you sound generous by nature and I suppose lonely."

"Yeah well I do miss talking to people."

At the water's edge Olivia kissed Alan, catching him almost by surprise. She stepped back and said she had really enjoyed her stopover with such an interesting man.

"Where can I leave a phone message for you if I need to communicate?"

"Call the Stillwater Lodge three bays up on the left from here."

He pulled out his wallet and handed over the lodge's card.

"Jamie and Claire Johns the co-owners know me and will take messages. I have an evening meal there on Sundays and they always call out when they are going down for provisions to take my order."

"Stillwater Lodge, what a lovely name."

"What about Miranda?"

"Um..."

"She was the woman in my mother's favourite poem as a girl and she taught it to me. It was composed by Hilaire Belloc in 1929 and called Tarantella (an Italian dance) and the setting is at an inn on the Spanish side of the border with France. It starts off like this:

Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?

"Omigod, what a lovely rhythm; it does sound like a dance? But isn't it supposed to be unlucky to change the name of a boat?"

"So it's been said but there was a time when people believed the world was flat simply because someone had told them that. The name of the boat was Fish Catcher and I thought that was inappropriate for its new life. No names I tried pleased me until into my mind came the poem Tarantella, unsuitable of course, but the girl's name hit me between the eyes or should that be ears?"

"Oooh Alan, there is an air of romanticism about you. I feel you are doing all the right things for you, you have the right feelings and focus but you are without a woman."

"Yeah Olivia, you could be right and we all know you can't have everything. Go in peace and enjoy your remaining time in the sounds."

"It's your turn to kiss me"

The kiss was appropriate for two new friends passing in the night, so to speak. The kiss was lovely and soft.

Olivia stepped into her rented kayak and pulled the zipped protective skirt around just above her hips.

Alan pushed the craft out into deeper water.

"I said before and I'll say it again," said the thirty-two year old. "I've enjoyed my hours today with such an interesting man."

Alan watched her paddling away until distance melded her definition into the watery environment with shadows cast by the forest on the steep hillside rising out of the sound.

"God I wonder if Olivia had expected me to hit on her," he mused. "Perhaps the fact there was no such action could have been interpreted that I was too much of a gentleman to engage in such passionate engagement or that I was a fucking wimp, victim of my isolation."

He sighed and returned to work.

More Coming