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boat’s anticipated performance. Boats do not get better with age. In fact, immediately following the maiden voyage, a vessel begins a steady and stunningly quick-paced decline. But what about me? It was too late to abandon ship with a Mayday from second thoughts. And there was plenty of time for bailing out the swelling self-doubt.
    I had left the dock in the most exhausted state I’d ever felt and was embarking on an endurance test. My legs were already weary of standing at the wheel when I exited the canal into Cape Cod Bay, and I shuddered at the numbers on the GPS that indicated 144 hours to go to reach our destination, a vague spot east of the Grand Banks that I had programmed in to get us headed in a general direction. I would only grow more tired as the trip wore on. What was more tired than dead exhaustion? Now that we had left landmass far enough behind to take a chance, I flipped on the automatic pilot and prayed that it would function well enough to allow me to sit down. It did. I briefly recalled a severe ocean storm that had kept me on my feet and fighting the wheel for forty-eight hours straight. I hoped that I would have some time to get into shape before Mother Nature scheduled any marathons.
    I sat and mentally measured my tolerance and ability to endure what I knew the next sixty days had in store for me. Out of necessity, I had, early in my career, developed my own techniques for the heavy, physical-strength part of swordfishing. I had developed female ways of putting moves on what most people would consider man’s work. Today I was not only female but I was also on the waning side of middle age. A lot changes in a woman’s body between the ages of thirty-seven and forty-seven. Lack of real, tough work had resulted in a fifteen-pound weight loss—and all muscle at that. So I was now smaller and not as physically strong. I would certainly have to develop all new techniques to do what the job required. I would have to, as my old boss Alden had advised in answer to any complaint I registered over eight years of working for him, “toughen up.”
    As the sun went down and we steamed into the Gulf of Maine, I contemplated my own seaworthiness. The ocean’s expectations and demands are so high that anyone who goes upon it must be worthy on many levels. I wondered how I would respond to the sleep deprivation that would surely begin when the first hooks were baited and set. I had always been able to function on four hours a night. Adrenaline had been my caffeine. Would adrenaline flow at the rate it had ten years earlier? Or had that dried up? I could, I reasoned, compensate with coffee. What about my hands? I inspected knuckles that were just beginning to show signs of arthritis. I would need to grab and pull a minimum of twelve hundred snaps from the main line every day we fished. And the snaps were made of the heaviest-gauge wire—gorilla snaps, we called them. I hoped that Archie had brought a bushel of ibuprofen. I wondered how my legs and back would stand up to pulling leaders tight with huge fish that resisted being caught. I had loved every strain generated by hundred-fish days a decade before. Perhaps I would need to stretch and warm up with a few calisthenics each morning. Good thing I had such a mighty crew. Would I have the balance and strength to keep my feet under me in heavy weather? My legs weren’t as strong as they could be. I should have kept myself in better shape. What if my legs buckled every time a giant green wave broke over the top of me? That could be dangerous. Jesus, even my eyes were shot, I realized as I donned my magnifiers to check the navigational chart. I’d never needed those before. No, I thought, age would not be an asset in the physical realm.
    I found a notebook and pen and made out a watch bill that listed the guys in order of the watches they would soon begin. Ten years earlier I would have started the first watch myself at 10:00