Free Three Ways to Capsize a Boat: An Optimist Afloat by Chris Stewart Page A

job finally began.
    As summer jobs go—indeed, jobs of any kind—this was a pretty good one. My duties were simply to keep the boat and myself in readiness to take Jane and her friends out on the water at any time of night or day.
    Occasionally we would take the boat across the straits to a waterfront taverna on the mainland, setting out from the simple wooden jetty close to Jane and Bob’s house. We would leave in the cool of the evening, just as the sun, drained of its noonday ferocity, sank toward the blue hills of the Peloponnese. This was a lovely hour to go sailing, on the gentlest of evening breezes and the sea almost shimmering. For a couple of hours we would sail lazily northward, trailing fingers and toes in the calm water till we dropped the sails and drifted deftly alongside the wooden tables at the quayside where we were to meet some of Jane and Bob’s friends for dinner.
    Dinner would go on for hours and I would sit with the boat tied, like an obedient dog, to my chair leg. The little harbor teemed with fish and there were candles in jam jars on the tables; the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle complemented by dishes of fried squid with the lightest coating of batter glistening with droplets of freshly squeezed lemon. Later, as the pale moon rose over the dark bulk of Trikiri, we would motor back to the island, shattering into bright shards the moonlight that lay on the still water. Jane would take the tiller and dream perhapsof her girlhood down in the Deep South, of the days when she could run fast and easy and dance all night. Bob would smoke and quietly tell stories that Jane must have heard a hundred times before, yet managed to greet with a look of amused attention. And me, I sat leaning against the mast in the dark, captivated by it all, and pleasingly troubled by wistful thoughts of my girlfriend.
    At other times we might load the boat with food and wine and sail round the island to some quiet bay for a picnic beneath the pines on the beach, and there we would loll till late in the afternoon, in the glorious scented shade of warm Mediterranean pine. Or we might sail on to the house of one of their friends who had a waterside home with its own jetty and there take a lingering lunch through the long hot hours of the afternoon. Usually I would be invited, too, but on the odd occasion when the hosts were especially superior people, I would stay on the boat, munch sandwiches, and read some poetry books that Tim had left me—the very Seferis and Gatsos recommended by the Nikoses. And I’d swim, of course. Whenever the heat or tiredness overtook me, I’d simply plunge into the water and circle the boat for a while.
    There were times, too, on those fiercely hot late summer days when there was just nowhere to get cool on the land. On those days we would take the Crabber out and sail to and fro, luxuriating in the blessed coolness of the wind on the water. I figured from the paths of conversation that this would probably be Jane’s last year with the Crabber, and it was up to me to do what I could to help make it a good one.
    If the seas were too rough, we’d stay at home, loungeabout, read, or take long siestas. The original deal had been that I would live on the boat, which was fine for the odd night, but a bit of an ordeal for much longer. Fortunately, though, my employers insisted that I take a spare room in their villa. The very essence of minimalism it was, with a red tiled floor, a bed, and a chair with a mosquito coil smoking through the night. I would breakfast alone with a book, in the shade of a fig tree, on toast and butter and honey and yogurt, washed down with “mountain tea;” lunch and dinner we would take together on the terrace.
    As late summer moved into autumn the high winds and stormy seas confined us more and more to the land. The pinewoods that crowned the hill above the town burst forth with a carpet of beautiful little Mediterranean cyclamen. At night there was the smell of wood