Into the Blue

She was a 40 foot Bermuda-rigged sloop, with linen sails a mahogany deck and brass fittings; he took the east wind out of Key Largo, as the dawn picked up the spray and pitted his tanned face, dolphins and flying fish, played with the hull, trying to beat each other in a race to pierce the blue brine: nothing was like this, and nothing was like doing this, and a wry smile stretched the flesh of his leathery face, now massaged by the warm leeward-wind the heat haze threw up mirrors at the hull sides, mixing the dazzle of the ocean gaze with the press of the impatient sea; it’s fecund smell and the glare of the polished wooden deck, fired in to his senses, mixing sounds, heat and water; a maelstrom of ocean sense; and then he and the boat, peeled off into the blue forest of sea and sky,with a heading for Havana set.