The skipper wrestled with the wheel of the restored Gar Wood wooden boat. He had left his dock on Hurricane Bay on the West Shore of Lake Tahoe and headed east-southeast, toward Glenbrook, twelve miles away on the far side of the mountain lake. He’d barely gone one hundred yards from shore before he thought his mission was crazy. He shouted at the wind while he drove the troughs of the five-foot winter swell. “Nobody kicks Ian Lassitor! Nobody!” He took his right hand off the wheel just long enough to pull his flask out of the cup holder that dangled on a gimbal mount beneath the cockpit dash. He swigged enough Jim Beam to spread warmth down to his frozen toes, jammed the flask back into the holder, and grabbed onto the wheel again. The man angled downwind at the same rate as the waves rolled south. He steered between the wave crests. Now and then, the swells became uneven. The waves didn’t line up. A wave trough ended like a little box canyon. The skipper had no choice but to drive the little wooden boat directly up a wave that loomed above him like a small mountain.
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