Billy, who has no last name, was very upset with who he called, "those people." He said that they were stealing the water. I asked him what he meant by that.

“Listen.” He breathed in a whisper.
We listened. The Coral Reefer posers were playing “One Particular Harbor”. A woman, with what seemed like a weeks worth of fries, was yelling at her kids to get more ketchup. A dog at the table next us was panting. A gull was screaming at a pelican for gulping down something a boater tossed overboard and the gull demanded that it belonged to him. There was small talk chatter going on all around us.

“Listen to what?”

“Don’t hear it, do ya?”

“I guess not. What don’t I hear?”

“Sailor’s serenade.”

I was beginning to think I had been had. This guy was just another mooch with a new angle to get free beer. I moved the pitcher closer to me. The Kid grinned and filled his glass, then put the pitcher closer to Billy again in an offering gesture. Billy filled his glass by draining the pitcher. I looked at The Kid and slid the empty to back and nodded to get another one.

“What’s the sailor’s serenade?”

“The rigging clanging against the mast. Listen. You don’t hear it. It was a lullaby. Now its quiet. It was those people.”

“You mean the people with money?”

Billy nodded. He stretched his neck to see if The Kid was on the way back with the beer. As he looked around me, I thought how he was right. The sound from the sailboats was gone. Nearby residents complained long and hard that the noise from the water was disrupting their enjoyment of living near the water. Some claim that the clanging of the rigging becomes a white noise to sailors. I don’t believe that is true. Like Billy, I hear the music of it. It is not something you can tape to play sea sounds when you’re land bound, nor is it a melody to sing to, but it is music of the sea as much as are the whales, dolphins and gulls. It does not fade, mask, or drown out other sounds. The sailor is not oblivious to the rhythm. He hears it. He listens to it and feels it. It also serves as a first alert when you are below or asleep at a quiet anchor. The light clanging signals the sailor the weather is changing even before the water tells him. Even if he chooses to rest he can monitor the weather by the tempo of the clanging of the rigging. Everyone at the marina and those anchored out now have to get protective guards or create their own shrouds to silence their boats.

Billy was right. “Those people” are stealing the water.

Ah! The beer arrived. All poured a glass. Billy took a deep swig of his and almost without pause continued with, “You know about the mooring field?”

“I’ve heard talk. They say we will have to pay for a mooring.”


Forever boats of all sorts and sizes have been able to drop a hook,or make-shift their own mooring, to sit out in the bay off Island Park, in Sarasota, for free. For those without even a little bit of romance for the sea, the picture of the boats swinging in the bay just means that bums were gathering and the town was suffering from boat people who were nothing more than free-loaders and dirty drifters. For others, the variety of boats and people on them are part of what made Sarasota the lure for coastal living in this little, big city, and added to the enchantment to live by the Gulf of Mexico.

The fishing village charm is being bought out by a sophisticated sham. You can go to a dinner theater, or musical, a black tie event, or elegant dining, but the fisherman, the romantic, the Billys and even the John D MacDonalds and Travis McGees are no longer welcome by “those people”. They want a different Sarasota. Not just newer, but different.

Billy finished his beer. I started to pour another glass for him, but he put his hand over it.

“Those people want people like me to disappear. They don’t even know me and they don’t like me. Charge money to live on the water, isn’t that a load of @#@*!”
The Kid asked Billy if he thought improvements could be made with the charge to moor your boat.

“Of course. But that’s not what they’re up to. You wait and see. This is the last free water anchorage in the whole state. They are pushing us out. They don’t want sailors here. I don’t wanna live around any bums or thieves either, but living on the water doesn’t make you a criminal.”

Billy looked out toward the bay and then back to me. He pointed first to his glass for me to pour him another beer, and then out toward a derelict boat listing near the shore.
“You see that boat? I know the guy who lived there. He’s gone and that’s OK with me. He let her go. Look at her. Nothing to do now but take her out and crush her. To those people we are all like that guy.” He took a long drink of the beer, sat back and wagged his head in disapproval.

The woman who had wolfed down the giant pile of fries and was attending to more kids than it seemed sane to keep watch over, began to get up, stumbled trying to get her thick, ketchup stained leg over the picnic table bench, and heeled over onto Billy. I held my breath, anticipating he would tell her off. He kindly steadied her to an upright position, smiled at her kids and politely informed her about the ketchup on her leg.

We finished the pitcher. Billy thanked us for the beer. He untied his dinghy and pushed it into the water, stepped in and took an effortless stroke to move quietly away from shore. Just
before he turned to row out he leaned in toward shore and hollered, “Remember, your blade was too deep.”

As we watched him row away I began to get more upset with the people sitting at the Tiki bar. I don’t know why, I just guess I was trying to empathize with Billy and the others like him that will be pushed out of the bay by the mooring field. Sarasota is not the only place that is changing with the times. It is just that you hoped it would hold onto some of what made it the charming place it used to be. Billy was right about one thing for sure. There are “those people” who cause change and make changes just because they can and not always because it is right or fair.

The Coral Reefer imitators played, ”Come Monday”, the woman who had spilled her drink onto Billy’s dinghy was sitting with a different guy than earlier and was laughing a forced laugh, and the dog at the next table over was asleep.

The Captain and The Kid