Girl overboard! – Photo by Kristianne Koch

I stood on the bowsprit as we sailed Biscayne Bay.

The wind swept the swelter of the sun from my skin.

A bucket of Noon rain ...Read more]]> Author Ann Lee Miller shares an excerpt from her memoir, Boat Daze, due out in 2016 about growing up on a yawl.

Girl overboard! – Photo by Kristianne Koch

I stood on the bowsprit as we sailed Biscayne Bay.

The wind swept the swelter of the sun from my skin.

A bucket of Noon rain had dumped and now steamed up from the decks of the Annie Lee, taking my troubles—real and imagined—with it.

“Annie!” Dad hollered from the cockpit. “Check our depth.”

I startled and scrambled for the world’s longest mop handle and jabbed it into the water until it struck bottom. 
“Six feet!” I read from the notches Dad had carved in the pole.
“Six and a half… six and a half!” We drew four feet, so I knew we were okay for the moment. I rammed the pole through the seaweed into the muddy bottom again.
“Six—”

The ANNIE LEE sailing away after I fell over the side – Photo by Kristianne Koch

The pole stuck fast in the mud.

In a split-second reflex, I clung to the stick and the Annie Lee sailed out from under my feet.

The pole sunk deeper in the mud as I wrapped my arms and legs around it—suspended over the bay like a girl shish kabob. “Daaaad!” I clung to the pole while my brain registered I wasn’t reading this in Nancy Drew, but living it.

My brother jumped up and down on the aft deck screeching, “Daddy, Daddy! Annie lost the boat!”

I caught a fleeting glimpse of R.J.’s sun-toasted face gone pale as my toes touched bay.

“This water is freezing.” I yelled at the Annie Lee’s transom. “There’s mud down here! I hate seaweed! God only knows what’s slithering around in here!”

Cold fingers of water and fear climbed my ribs as I inched down the pole. Dad would rescue me, but the barracuda and hammerhead I’d met this summer still lived between my ears.

In up to my neck and treading water with one hand, I kicked slimy kelp.

Treading water, debating swimming for the ANNIE LEE
Photo by Kristianne Koch

The chill crawled up my scalp as my hair slurped sea, morphing into soggy noodles.

Water lapped into my mouth and I tried to spit out the salty taste and my fear, but they hung around.

I peered at the shoreline. I could swim that far if I had to.

Clouds bunched their way across the horizon, white bumper cars converging and parting.

In the distance, Dad dropped sail. The anchor would be next. I knew Dad wouldn’t about-face the Annie Lee in shallow water to fetch me.

Should I swim for the boat and drag the stupid pole along?

While I debated, Dad landed on cat feet in the dinghy, shoved the oars into the oarlocks. He glanced over his shoulder to get a bead on my location.

Dad’s shoulders and arms flexed and relaxed under his T-shirt as he stroked.

Dad always loomed larger than life, but today as I watched him, he approached super-hero status.

At last he coasted up beside me. He grabbed my forearms and hauled me into the boat with a grunt. I couldn’t read his tight-lipped expression.

I inhaled the scent of Dad’s sweat and safety as I landed in a soggy lump in the bottom of the dinghy.

Dad braced his legs and yanked the pole from the bay in one heave.

The pole clattered where he dropped it—one end extended over the bow, the other oozing mud into the water behind the dinghy.

As I launched into a litany of every little detail Dad needed to know about my lapse overboard, I thought about how good it felt to be rescued.

I usually felt left to fend for myself.

Normal was bumping my knees against the ring where Mom and Dad went rounds in a marital bout. When they shed their mouth guards and gloves, and stepped off the mat into Mom and Dad, they were black and blue and beat.

I walked alone two stints of kindergarten—Miami and LA. My barracuda and shark were a graffiti-scrawled tunnel and a freeway bridge where cars whizzed by my elbow, blowing exhaust in my hair.

At seven, I rode two Miami buses to ballet, poised on my knees with my hand at half-mast beneath the pull cord.

I fixed my own breakfast every day. And once or twice I forgot and fainted in school.

My third grade picture—put down for posterity in the family album—is a shot of the Pippi Longstocking braids I did myself.

Mom pasted a smile on life, as if a Groucho Marx nose and mustache could make happy.

But when I really needed them—like today—my parents came through.

They whisked me to the hospital when I downed a bottle of baby aspirin as a kid.

Mom carted me to the orthodontist to un-buck my teeth, the orthopedist to fix my inward-turning feet—with ballet, saddle shoes, and nighttime boots nailed east and west on a plywood board.

Dad taught me how to pinch a penny, skin a fish, and feel things deep down in my gullet.

Back on the Annie Lee, before my suit completely dried, Dad spotted the cove he’d been looking for. We’d tie up along the seawall and head inland.

But we dropped sail too late and came in hot against the concrete.

A crunch sounded as the Annie Lee sideswiped the rough wall, skinning off a two-foot section of fiberglass, resin, and paint.

I gritted my teeth. We should be called the Four Stooges instead of the Fettermans.

But Dad went grimly about tying the Annie Lee to nearby pines, positioning the bumpers to insure there’d be no more blunders today.

 We tumbled out onto land and traipsed after Dad.

My mood had swung south with Dad’s. I swatted a mosquito from my sweaty neck and braced myself for an afternoon digging clams with my fingernails or wading through mangrove swamp hunting antique bottles.

Dad stopped and my nose bashed into his shoulder blade.

A rope swung in the breeze from the high reaches of a banyan tree. Sun dappled the smooth green water below.

My mouth dropped open.

A tree-gnarled Nirvana.

I glanced at R.J. and saw my grin written on his face.

Dad climbed down the bank and scouted the rope’s span for rocks and logs. Satisfied, he caught the rope with a dead branch and pushed it into my waiting hands.

I swung out into air and let go. Cucumber crisp water closed around me, encasing me in a delicious coolness I’d thought frigid when I fell overboard.

Dropping like an ice cube into the delicious, cool cove – Photo by Kristianne Koch

An hour later, I perched on a sprawling tree root at water’s edge, breathing hard. Rivulets ran down my arms. I wrung the moisture from my hair and watched my family swing and drop like ice cubes into the cove.

R.J. did a cannon ball, Dad a jackknife, and Mom, a graceless plop.

I laughed at R.J.’s next let-go. His arms and legs flailed in mid-air before landing in the water.

I savored this sweetest day of childhood—not realizing it would shine through the stormy seas ahead.

I savored this sweet day of childhood. – Photo by Kristianne Koch

About Ann Lee Miller

Ann Lee Miller earned a BA in creative writing from Ashland (OH) University and writes full-time in Phoenix, but left her heart on a yawl in Miami where she grew up. 

Over 100,000 copies of Miller’s debut novel, Kicking Eternity, have been downloaded from Amazon.

When she isn’t muddling through some crisis-real or imagined-you’ll find blogging sailing memoir at AnnLeeMiller.com.

Ann’s fifth novel, Chasing Happy was launched September 1, 2015.

After an epic fail in the hetero world, Ash Jackson heads cross country to Arizona to figure out his bisexuality and make peace with himself and God.
     Nashville Star Samma Templeton’s music career bankrolls her future husband’s political campaigns. But she throws up before every concert and feels relegated to an item on the senator’s calendar.
     When Ash moves into Samma’s apartment building their childhood friendship resurrects, and Samma must choose between promoting a political agenda that will benefit millions or following her heart. Ash must face his inner demons for the girl who was his past and feels like his future.

Chasing Happy is available at Amazon and most on-line retailers.

Read also on this website:

• Pint-sized Maritime Explorers, by Ann Lee Miller
• Living Aboard—Same-Old-Same-Old When You’re 12, by Ann Lee Miller
• Cruising Children Speak: Cruising children tell us about their experiences growing up aboard.

If chores built character, I’d be a twelve-year-old Mother Theresa. Today, on a perfect summer morning, I stood in Annie Lee’s porthole-less gloom washing last night’s marinara from ...Read more]]> Author Ann Lee Miller shares an excerpt from her memoir, Boat Days, due out in 2015 about growing up on a yawl.

Photo by Kristianne Koch

If chores built character, I’d be a twelve-year-old Mother Theresa. Today, on a perfect summer morning, I stood in Annie Lee’s porthole-less gloom washing last night’s marinara from Mom’s sailboat emblazoned Melmac.

Fish bones floated in the dying suds, making me shudder. Picking bones out of spaghetti was wrong on so many levels.

Six-year-old R.J. had found something more interesting to do than dry dishes. Dad puttered above deck. Mom slept off her hospital night shift in the bow. The boat echoed quiet—always. Sometimes I wished Mom and Dad would yell at each other like the hotheads on the rundown cabin cruiser next door.

My bargained-for freedom – Photo by Kristianne Koch

I bargained for my freedom by promising Dad I’d wash down the cockpit after lunch.

Matt and Kate Canfield, eight and nine, and I left our little brothers lying on their bellies peering over the edge of the dock at a blowfish inflating like a speckled balloon. We climbed down the Pier 1 ladder, sneakers clenched in our teeth by the laces, into the bay.

We treaded water, looked both ways, and darted into the channel.

A marine engine gunned a couple piers over, and I scrabbled faster with my three appendage stroke, shoes aloft in one hand.

No Wake signs were posted at the end of our pier, but boats barreled through the marina channel at high speeds a dozen times a day. I glanced back at Pier 1 to see if our parents stood on the T of Pier 1 drinking coffee and chatting, ready to shake their fists at law breakers, but no luck.

My shoes felt like they weighed ten pounds, and my breath sucked in and out of my throat.

Kate and Matt matched my snaggled crawl.

A Checkmate powered toward us, looming twice as big as it looked from the dock.

 “Oh, crap,” Matt panted.

 “Hey! Don’t run us over!” Kate hollered.

 The rumble of the engine drowned out her voice.

 We swam for all we were worth.

We swam for all we were worth – Photo by Kristianne Koch

The pilot saw us, cut the engine to a crawl. “Are you kids crazy? I coulda killed you.”

Lucky for the pilot we were winded, or Matt would have had choice words to say about his speed.

We touched bottom and hauled ourselves, chests heaving, onto the beach.- Photo by Kristianne Koch

We touched bottom and hauled ourselves, chests heaving, onto the beach. We brushed sand from our feet and donned our semi-dry tennis shoes while spitting out smart-mouthed retorts we should have said to the speedboat driver.

Matt unrolled a soggy notebook paper map of the portion of the island we’d explored last time—which wasn’t much. Two steps off the beach, we’d yelped and yanked sand spurs from our feet—thus the extreme effort to transport shoes today. Kate must not have minded the sand spurs since she grew up to be an acupuncturist.

We hiked into the scraggly trees, Kate in the lead, as usual, even though I was three years older. As an adult, I still happily traipse after Kate.

We hiked through underbrush, so pristine and scratchy on our shins, we were sure no man had ever gone before us. At the tip of the island, wind gusted our salt-stiffened hair against our faces—raising squawks of surprise from me and Kate.

Matt’s summer-shaggy head bent over a perfectly preserved fish skeleton. “Duh. Why do you think they call it Windbreak Island?” He’d go on to earn three master’s degrees.

We harrumphed and marched down the beach on other side of the island, Kate scooping up half a conch shell and rubbing her thumb over the smooth, pink underbelly.

I bent to pick up a piece of blue glass, admiring how the sun warmed it green—the dank quiet of the Annie Lee seemed far away.

“Look! Another island!” Kate shouted.

Matt came up beside us, his fish skeleton forgotten.

The three of us stared, open-mouthed—like Columbus sighting the New World—at the second island snugged behind Windbreak Island.

A ribbon of light water stretched between the islands as though they held hands. It took my brain a second to recall from multiple sailing aground experiences that light color meant shallows. “A sand bar!”

Matt tore past me, his legs pumping as fast as he could make them go.

Kate and I took off after him.

I chased Matt across the sandbar – Photo by Kristianne Koch

Matt careened across the sandbar, high-stepping through calf-deep water until it sloshed above his knees and he face-planted in the surf. He righted himself, and pressed on until he made virgin soil. He turned and faced us, chest puffed out, grinning.

Kate and I sloshed up and collapsed under a tree.

Matt was all for exploring the new land, but Kate and I smacked at the sand fleas munching on our skin and voted for home, food, and a long list of necessities for our next trip—by dinghy.

We waded back across the sandbar, our shoes heavy with grainy silt and water.

Sun fried us from above and reflected up in white rods from the water till it burned fleshy orange through our eyelids.

Kate and I stepped into the brush at the narrow belly of Windbreak Island.

Matt stopped to poke a bug-brown horseshoe crab the size of one of Mom’s Melmac plates.

My stomach growled. “Hurry up!”

Matt ignored me.

Kate and I trudged onto our beach, deciding to swim back to the pier in our shoes.

“Let’s go,” Kate said as Matt appeared.

“Wait!” Matt dug furiously, flinging sand through his legs like Deliah, their English bulldog. “I have to bury my treasure.”

In went his sinister horseshoe shell, Kate’s conch piece, and my blue bottle chunk.

The three of us dropped to our knees and pushed sand over the hole—one of a thousand moments that cemented us like cousins for life.

Matt marked the spot with a stick, hatted by a crumpled Michelob can.

Burying my treasure – Photo by Kristianne Koch

 We slumped into the cool green arms of the water, looked both ways and swam for our lunch.

About Ann Lee Miller

Ann earned a BA in creative writing from Ashland (OH) University and writes full-time in Phoenix. Over 100,000 copies of her debut novel, Kicking Eternity, have been downloaded from Amazon. Her other titles include Avra’s God and The Art of My Life. She guest lectures on writing at several Arizona colleges. She may be reached via Facebook or her website where she blogs on Fridays about sailing as a kid.

Ann’s novel, Tattered Innocence, is on sale in all e-formats through June 15 only for .99 at Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, and Smashwords.

Back cover:

A tale of passions indulged, denied, and ultimately forgiven: On the verge of bagging the two things he wants most—a sailing charter business and marrying old money—Jake Murray’s fiancée/sole crew member dumps him.

Salvation comes in the form of dyslexic, basketball toting Rachel Martin, the only one to apply for the first mate position he slapped on craigslist. On a dead run from an affair with a married man, Rachel’s salvation is shoving ocean between her and temptation.

Rapid fire dialogue and romantic tension sail Jake’s biker-chick of a boat through hurricanes, real and figurative. A cast of wannabe sailors, Rachel’s ex, Jake’s, a baby—go along for the ride. The many-layered story weaves together disparate strands into a seamless cord. Mother and daughter look eerily alike—down to their lusts.

Their symbiotic bond, forged in the blood of childbirth on the kitchen floor and cemented by their secrets, must be cracked open. A son must go home. Sin must be expunged. Tattered Innocence is for anyone who’s ever woken up sealed in a fifty-gallon drum of their guilt.

Read also on this website:

• Living Aboard—Same-Old-Same-Old When You’re 12, by Ann Lee Miller
• Cruising Children Speak: Cruising children tell us about their experiences growing up aboard.