Alan Meadows yawned and looked at the morning sky and rubbed his flat gut affectionately.
The breakfast of mixed grains and skimmed milk following by one piece of buttered toast topped by a skimming of peanut butter (for taste) was better for his health than bacon, eggs and two pieces of fried bread.
Oh yeah?
"Yeah," he grunted from the deck of his boat Miranda that was on 'the hard'.
Taking one last look at the blue sky with disappearing colours of sunrise heralding yet another fine day, he went below, turning on lights as he went down to the walk-in engine room. There he admired the new diesel engine designed to go faithfully (forever according to the over-enthusiastic salesperson), pushing along the former fishing boat with up to six guests living in luxury at 8.5 knots.
Workmen with heavy-lift gear had completed installing and testing the engine the previous day. The equipment was used to first lift the cruising boat as Alan now called it, on to the permanent slipway he'd constructed and hauled it up on to 'the hard' by the twin bow anchor chains that had been hauled up the slope and bolted around two sturdy trees.
He cleaned up and then went topside for coffee and sat on the aft deck under the sunshade enjoying the almost 200 meters of calm water to the tree-covered hillside opposite him. He lived amid several seawater-filled sunken valleys called sounds totalling almost 120 miles, several of them interconnecting.
"Ahoy there," called a woman in a kayak, obviously American.
"Hi it's tough going out there against the outward-going tidal current. You should be paddling closer to the shore."
"Thanks I'll take your advice."
"Would you like coffee?"
"Coffee? Oh yes please."
Alan went down the ladder to the ground and pulled the bow of her lightweight craft up to rest partly on dry gravel.
"Thanks, I'm Olivia Kennedy."
"Hi Olivia, I'm Alan Meadows, an early retiree."
She looked at him inquiringly as if her mind was ticking and he said he'd received an offer for his light engineering business that he couldn't refuse and so had retired late last year at the age of forty-three.
"Oh I wondered if that meant you'd taken early retirement. You don't look forty-three."
"But I am and I don't look as beautiful as you do."
She looked a little hesitant and then said, "Oooh a compliment so early in the day."
"Yeah well it doesn't hurt to be nice to people," he said, watching her unzip the protective skirt around the cockpit to keep her and any possessions around her dry. He put out a hand and she stepped out and said thanks.
"You'll have to climb the ladder on to Miranda because that's where the coffee is."
Olivia frowned and asked weren't boats meant to be in the water.
"That's the general idea but Miranda is three months into a 9-month conversion plus modernisation from a fishing boat into a pleasure cum workboat."
"That means I can cruise the sounds for pleasure, take up to six paying passengers living aboard or ferry freight for people living along the extensive network of sounds. Most permanent residents have boats but I'm talking about bulk inert freight including small vehicles, penned farm animals including horses and heavy items. That hoist on the aft deck can lift up to 2½ tons."
Olivia appeared interested and so he continued.
"My business plan suggests I could end up making a tidy profit from the freight side of my combined business. Getting a regular inflow of six to eight passengers regularly could be hard graft but my friend Claire came up with one promising idea and that was to entice an independent film company to make a documentary of the Miranda carrying eight foreign tourists up Arundel Sound and filming their adventures along the way."
Olivia said ah, an all-purpose boat and he said yes, and was fitted as a fishing platform as well.
Alan asked if she was okay with ladder climber as he should look away because she was wearing a dress.
"It's okay, I'm wearing panties."
"Um look, I didn't mean..."
"Yes I know, you were attempting to be a gentleman. You go first and I'll try to look up the legs of your shorts."
Alan grinned and said he liked her already.
Up on the deck Olivia looked around including at the decking and said, "Much of this looks new."
"Yeah and you American women would call it a makeover."
"Why are you doing it? I mean spending so much time, energy and money."
Alan said it was his project into retirement transition, that he'd had no intention of turning into a couch potato or seeking alternative employment working for someone or buying another business. He committed to the challenge of building his own new business,
"My parents used to bring my sister and me down here most summers when we were kids and I never forget the natural beauty of the place and the fun we had here. As soon as the deal was signed for my business I came down here looking to buy a suitable property and found this site containing a long disused cottage in need of tender loving care."
"Then I looked to buy an older boat that would fill my early days of retirement upgrading her. Eventually I found this sturdy carvel timber fishing trawler advertised online and immediately knew I'd found my project."
"God you must have been a good boss. You appear to have vision and energy and single-minded purpose."
"Well I had a bit of those things I suppose. Come into the wheelhouse where I'm living at the moment as I'm now ready to begin refitting the gutted interior on the deck below it and down in the former hold that will become three double cabins and next to that is the engine room and at the forward a deep hold handy for light cargo such as hay or grain. Whenever aboard I'd live in the roomy wheelhouse."
"What about your girlfriend?"
"What are they? No very occasional female has live here for more than I think three days with me grinding away on the conversion for most of the day and into the night six days a week. It is difficult to understand but the universal complain was boredom."
Olivia laughed and said he was funny,
