Some people sit down in the depth of winter to peruse seed catalogs and dream of harvests. We’ll be doing some of that in our household, and you’ll no doubt sample some of the results here.

Some find it a good time to revisit highlights from the previous year or further back. Yup, that too.

The snowy months also offer delightful travel opportunities, and not just to warmer climes. Even if you stay close to a wood fire or the equivalent, taking time to sift through brochures can stimulate plans for trips long or short later in the year. Consider my upcoming posts based on my week on the waters of Penobscot Bay at the beginning of autumn in that vein.

Quite simply, retirement and winters aren’t a blank stretch in my life.

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One movie I viewed as a kid in the Dayton Art Institute’s tapestry-walled auditorium left a lasting impression on me. I think the film was scheduled to be shown outdoors but this was the rain site. What I do recall is its presentations of windjammers racing along under full sails. I was still far from any actual encounter with the ocean or sailing, but from that point on I did realize I had no interest in a traditional cruise, or what I’ve seen as a floating nightclub. No, if I went out on a cruise, it would be under sail. Not that the option quite came in front of me.

Instead, the closest over the years were jaunts on ferryboats in the Pacific Northwest and then the Northeast, along with whale watch daytrips and, especially, my boss’ 32-foot sailboat in the Gulf of Maine.

One impression I gleaned from those outings is how differently a geography fits together when it’s experienced from its waters rather than its land. That awareness certainly came into play in my history research for Quaking Dover.

Being on the water filled in some blanks.

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As a lover of maps, from childhood on, I’ve also learned how the mere fact of being in a place transforms the charts. A location becomes real when I’ve walked around in it. Or, as I learned in my time on Penobscot Bay, if I’ve walked around in a boat just offshore.

Listening to new friends in Maine presented a series of towns I could place only vaguely – Castine, Stonington, Brooklin, Islesboro, Southwest Harbor – along with related locations like Vinalhaven, Isle au Haut, Blue Hill, Swan’s Island (not to be confused with Swan Island in the Kennebec River), or Little Cranberry. I could nod along with a blank look. My week on the water filled in more of that comprehension.

Now, let me fill in the name of the ship in question here – the Lewis R. French – and the fact she was a schooner, a very special distinction, as I would learn.

And as you’ll see.