Rescue at Sea (4th in a Series)

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Part 4. Cast and Crew We were five aboard Restive, four old friends, the fifth picked up from an Internet site, a seafarers’ match.com where captains look for crew and sailors look for boats.

  • George: the captain. A veteran sailor with years at the helm and many Bermuda races in his topsiders. Had lovingly overseen every aspect of Restive’s design, construction and launching in 2006. Calm, focused, confident, a skipper’s traits, and ones that had enabled him to build the boat in the first place. Born: 1945. Friends since 1955.
  • David: a Marine combat engineer in Vietnam who spent his subsequent career with a large construction company. A keen mechanical aptitude and a fascination with deciphering how things work. An unruffled sailor, he innately grasped Restive’s nuts and bolts. An indifferent swimmer. Born: 1945. Friends since 1958.
  • Fred: a man of remarkable physical strength and unflagging good humor (except when reading my blog). A tough and fearless seaman – also the cook, although rough seas limited his culinary creativity. Born: 1945. DaveFriends since 1963.
  • Dave: an MIT-trained engineer. Built his first boat from a kit at the age of nine and has been sailing ever since. A genius at determining what was wrong and fixing it. A generation younger. Friends since the night before we sailed.
  • Your scribe: a rookie. Born: 1945.
  • Restive: A wooden 48-foot sloop, both seaworthy and beautiful. Built more perhaps for seafaring than comfort. But, hey, we were ancient mariners.restive052108BARN-4035

As we set off, we little knew how critical these attributes would soon prove – especially the personal ones.