Chapter 6: The Yard

Grand Marais sat at the end of a hundred miles of two-lane road.

I drove all of them with the windows down.

I reached the boat yard at ten on Thursday morning.

It was a gravel lot at the edge of the harbor, with a long metal shop and a stack of sailboat cradles.

A sign on the shop said Halvorsen Marine in faded red paint.

A thirty-eight-foot sailboat hung in the air in the middle of the yard.

It hung in two slings under a travel lift, and it was not moving.

Three men stood around it with their arms folded.

A woman stood under it with her braid over her shoulder and a wrench in each hand.

"If anybody says the word 'wait' one more time," she said, "I'll hang them from the other sling."

"It's the left hoist," one of the men said. "It's jammed."

"I can see it's jammed. The boat is sitting on the jam."

I got out of the truck and walked over.

She looked up at me, and I stopped.

She was tall, with a face weathered by the lake wind and light blue eyes.

There was grease on her jaw.

"Can I help you?" she said, in a tone that suggested I could not.

"I'm Finbar. Hattie sent me. About the docks."

"The vet. Right." She looked me up and down. "Engineer?"

"Civil. County roads."

"Can you read a load?"

"Yes."

"Then look up there and tell me why my boat won't come down."

I looked up.

The left sling had folded the lift's lower strap over the edge of a steel guide.

Every time the hoist tried to lower, the strap bit into the guide and stopped.

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