Most mornings I am at a desk before I have fully woken up. But every so often I leave a little earlier than I need to and spend the extra time down at the harbor instead of in the kitchen.
This was one of those days. A regular weekday, nothing on the water planned, just a free hour before work. I pulled on the Sausalito Hoodie in Ocean Slate and walked down to the Sausalito Yacht Harbor, out along the boardwalk, to look at the boats before the day started asking me for things.
There is not much to report, which is the point. The harbor was still. The water had the flat, pewter look it gets before the wind shows up. Hulls sat quiet in their slips. I read the names off the transoms the way you only do when the day has not started yet, half-planning boats I will probably never own and trips I will probably never take. Most of my sailing happens in my head on mornings like this, and that is its own kind of good.
Ocean Slate is the right color for it. It is the blue-gray of the harbor at that hour, before the sun warms anything up, and on a walk like this it sinks into the surroundings instead of standing apart from them. There is a longer story to where the color comes from, which I got into in a closer look at the same hoodie. But out here you are not thinking about any of that. You are not dressed for anyone. You are dressed for the water and the cold and your own company, which is most of what I want a layer to do. There is a version of this same morning I take with my wife, on a bench at Tiffany Park, but this is the one I keep for myself.
Halfway along, I stopped at a Flemish coil someone had laid on the dock, a line flaked flat into a clean spiral, the kind of thing that takes an extra minute and serves no purpose except that it looks right. There was no one around to see it but me. I stood there longer than I will admit, glad that somebody had bothered. That instinct, doing a small thing carefully because it is worth doing at all, is most of why Avelamer exists. I just usually put it into a hem label instead of a dock line.
Then the hour was up. I walked back, got in the car, and went to work like everyone else. But I carried the harbor with me the rest of the day, and that is the trade I keep making: an early start for a little water before the desk.
A walk, some boats, a coiled rope, a layer worn for no occasion at all. The best mornings here usually are.
Kevin
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