by John van Vliet
In the morning, as I point my sailboat’s slender bow out past the breakwater at the Lake City Marina, the old diesel engine putt-putt-putting below my feet, there is no wind. Ampersand, my vintage 38-foot sloop, wrinkles her own reflection across the flat-calm steel-gray surface of the broad Lake Pepin. Six miles to the east, I can make out the rooftops of the town of Pepin; to the north, the tiny village of Stockholm lies nestled in a shadowed fold of the high limestone bluffs. The calm of mornings like this belies the wind at noon.