though i hadn't seen or spoken to sheldrake in over thirty years, it seemed impossible that his heart was the thing that had finally failed him.
i never got close to him, nobody did. but by the time we made tampa, i was sure i knew who he was, that i understood what he saw, what nourished his soul and tested his faith.
he had taken us to worship, where, what was for him, the holiest of holies. and, for us too by the end.
though he had moved on with his life, now even for the years, to hear him eulogized by strangers, seemed strange. he had been a hewner of stones, a pilot by the silent stars. like me, alone among many. but most of all for us, the crew of the brigantine albatross, he was always and would forever be.  our skipper.
he was everything i had expected, part ahab part queeg and even bligh. he spoke in whispers and answered all queries with efficiency and directness. he had gone to sea for the first time at fifteen, the same age as bill butler. and as he looked upon us that first day it must have been as though he were staring into a mirror.
we were all thirteen individuals. we'd arrived the sum total of our limited experiences and the result of our parents' best, if not narrow, expectations.
 some of us were there for discipline, some for escape. but i could see a small piece of myself in all of them and though i fought the notion, for me, i knew now, this would be home.
and so it was the albatross that took to the open sea with the wind in her snapping canvas and a bone of white foam in her teeth.  in each of us were feelings of anticipation and hesitation for the man at the wheel and of the unfamiliar world he was leading us into.
the storm lasted sixteen hours and it set us all on equal footing. it was the first time that we shared an episode on an even plane. as we stood our watches we were equally out of control of our situation, regardless of our physical abilities or social backgrounds. and though our real feelings lay hidden beneath bravado and defiance, we were no longer strangers.
curacao seemed out of a dream, somehow make-believe. but, as ohio drew further and further away, it was home that began to seem unreal, drifting somewhere in the foggy reaches of our memories. and i knew that each of us was falling in love. but not only with these wonderful women or the swaying palms and porcelain beaches.  we were falling in love with the experience we were sharing, and with who we were becoming.
as robin rang him out, we waved in silent protest against skipper's decision. and in the days that followed the low morale was matched only by a sense of arrogance that perhaps the master should step down and let his students take over.
with staff and string he showed us how to build a sextant. as we rode the trades, he shared the ancient secrets of how to read the waves and follow stars. and some mornings later, bathed in the orange glow of a sunrise, panama rose from the sea like a phoenix.
we had journeyed over six thousand miles to the very edge of the earth. like darwin before us, we would witness the bliss of nature in the absence of man. and it was as if the albatross had forded time, leaving it behind. in the heat of those equatorial days, on the virgin onyx beaches and shifting coral dunes, one could expect to find sunning iguanas, nesting frigates and perchance.  the footprints of god.
in the fading hours of that pacific dusk, with nothing left to confess, for the first time we felt safe, capable, sure of who we were and where we were going.
we slashed at the sharks as if striking out at the finger of god. and we all begged silently for the ability to understand what had happened. but, if there was a god that day, his answer came only in the moaning wind and our questions were left to drift unanswered, in the titanic ocean of our deepest grief.
stand away.
they didn't take his ticket that day. but why he never returned to the sea, i'd never know. perhaps he hadn't been able to free himself from the anchor of grief that had driven him to his knees aboard the gran rio, or that he no longer cared for the solitude and isolation of command without his alice. or maybe it was just that the waves that had spoken to him for so long, had grown silent. whatever it was, that thing, it had always troubled me. because, fate offers up no reasons. and maybe that's what i have traveled these thirty four years to say. maybe that is all i really know.  and, that one man cared.
rest easy old salt. for together again, we'll sail.
some time later we learned that one of our long boats had been recovered. several young men found it washed up on a nameless beach somewhere on the island of hispaniola. no one seemed to know who they were or where they came from, but they seemed to know of the albatross. sometimes in my dreams those faceless young men reveal themselves as my lost companions, and on the twilight coral sands of forever, between my slumber and conscious state, we race naked again, so open and in love with those precious moments, running, ever laughing, ever young, ever free.