Someone to Watch Over Her    Lee Woods I'm sitting at the nav station, feeling like an intruder. Forward, heaps of cushions, lines, sails, and crumpled yellow slicks spill out of the V-berth. Sunlight, shining through the forehatch, glances off the cover of a tattered magazine. Lady Di's tantalizing eyes, blurred by saltwater. In the main salon, chart drawers tilt down, half open, revealing a Tri-Ominos board game, a Caribbean cruising guide, starfinders, and stacks of universal plotting sheets with faded compass headings. The port settee sags beneath sea boots, wadded shirts, an up-ended radar screen and boxes stacked to the overhead. Stained-glass cabinet doors stand open. Inside, a pair of sunglasses stares back at me. It was okay to go aboard, some had said; she's for sale. Still, I'm uneasy amid the clutter. I lift the nav table lid and scan the contents. A stack of color snapshots on top of scattered black and white documents. Two men and a women, their arms draped around each other in giddy, choreographed poses. Cliffs in the background. Cobblestone streets. Rocky coastlines. The Mediterranean, maybe…Greece, Yugoslavia. I rush through the stack of photos, dealing captured moments like a deck of cards. In the corner, two Customs receipts. The crew names are smeared. They cleared BVI on January 21, 1987, en route to St. Vincent. Then Montserrat on the 27th. They must have cleared here, in St. Lucia, but the receipt is missing. The galley is a mess. Skewed spice racks, overturned pots, knives and forks thrown about like pick-up sticks. A bowl with dried bits of vegetable soup. At my feet, an empty El Diego cigar box rests against a manual bilge pump stuck down in a foul black ooze. I scoot aft, into the master's cabin. More disarray, more clothes and lines coiling their way into dark recesses. Hydraulic steering, a disassembled vane. A pink headband with the scent of cologne. Suddenly a shadow passes overhead. "She's a Berthon." A lazy British accent calls from the finger dock. I step up the ladder and shade my eyes. "Good morning," I say, "she's what?" A tan man in baggy jeans, his watch cap tilted toward brackish red eyes, gestures toward the manufacturer's placard on the cabin. "A Berthon," he says, "a real passage-maker she is." I squint, trying to read the worn letters: Berthon Boat Co., Ltd., Lymington, England, 1972, Number 966. Yank that I am, I do not know the name. Still, I can sense a pedigree. A double-head rigged ketch, about 48 feet, with a long, graceful entry. Gentle tumblehome. Names I know but don't know, each darkened by time and dust: Brooks & Gatehouse electronics; a Pinta autopilot; Morse cockpit engine controls; a Camper-Nicholson teak wheel; spars by Proctor, sails by Howe & Bainbridge; a Walker & Sons taffrail log; a Sestrel compass atop a binnacle by Henry Brown & Son, Ltd., Barking & London. It's been twenty years. Are they still in business, the fathers and sons? The Englishman is gone. I step to the dock and walk away, glancing back at her name: Stargazer, Southhampton. She's been sitting here, someone had said, for two years. I walk on, feeling her presence behind me. Nearby, cockpit conversation drifts from well-groomed Beneteaus. I think of her one last time, and for a moment I hear in my mind a haunting, familiar refrain: There's a somebody I'm longing to see...I hope that he... turns out to be... someone who'll watch over me. Comment on this article Tell us your story