Heidi Coutu and I had been enjoying the easy life of a warm July week moored in the inner harbor of Menemsha on the western end of Martha’s Vineyard. Heidi—then my girlfriend, now my wife—is a professional oil painter, and in the normal course of rotating her work, we had a vague plan to sail to Nantucket to pick up some of her art at a gallery there.
Our seagoing summer home, , was a 1973 C&C 35 Mk I. She was in good condition with new standing and running rigging, and I had installed a diesel in place of her original Atomic 4 engine. She had a single-spreader rig and a solid fiberglass hull
