But blue-water voyaging was never far from his mind. "I always wanted to cross an ocean," he said. This was particularly true as he neared the age of his father's death: "I don't want to die thinking of a lot things I never got around to doing."

Gradually over the years he and Sawyer expanded their cruising range in Kestrel, adding voyages up the coast to New England and off the coast to Bermuda. Gradually but systematically he upgraded his sturdy little boat with things like redundant navigational systems, self-steering systems, cabin-reinforcement and extra sails. Repeatedly he resisted the siren's call of larger, more modern vessels in favor of keeping one whose every nut, bolt and cranny he knew with the intimacy of the seagoing engineer and craftsman he had taught himself to be. Kestrel became the "organizing principle" in his life when he retired from federal government attorneydom..

Explains Atkisson: "Wasn't it Pliny the Elder who said 'If a man requires occupation, let him acquire a vessel'?"

JOHN ATKISSONKestrel's bashed-in bow after striking a trawler.On July 8, 2005, 24 hours after her argument with the trawler, Kestrel was safely docked in Crosshaven where she would get a new nose job. Atkisson flew back to Washington for 10 months to ponder how two vessels sailing blind could find and run into each other on an otherwise empty ocean. And to contemplate darker possibilities: Had Kestrel been 100 yards further along on her course, the trawler would have cut her in two.

Undaunted, he flew back to Ireland in May, 2006, and embarked for Dublin where he was joined by Sawyer for a seven week sailing tour of Ireland, Scotland and the Hebrides. It was something of a pilgrimage for both, descended as they are from Ulster Scots plus, he says "whatever contribution was made by marauding Vikings." During those seven weeks they sailed 986 miles, through 10-knot tidal rips and 18-foot tides, dodging 40-knot ferries and looming freighters, Draconian wind shifts and some of the most beautiful scenery they'd ever experienced.

But sailing in Scotland and Ireland, Atkisson said, required "exact navigation every second . . . a bit like repeatedly crossing a Gulf Stream studded with cliffs and boulders." When they returned to Crosshaven, Sawyer flew home to work on a book project. Atkisson stocked up the boat to sail to Spain.

Crossing the notoriously rough Bay of Biscay was easier than anticipated, he says, in part because he had shipped a crewman for the leg from Crosshaven to Spain, and partly because he routed Kestrel west of Biscay's stormiest shallows.

But he said the most memorable aspect of his trip down the Iberian Coast, better even than the beautiful, festive cities of La Coruna, Spain and Lagos, Portugal, was "the wonderful welcome I received everywhere, in part because I'm a former drunk."

Mariners, he notes, have always been notorious boozers, and a goodly number are now on the mend. In every port city in the world some sort of 12-step meeting is underway almost any day. "And if you land in another country and don't know anyone, that's a great place to meet people." Perfect strangers took him into their homes, fed him meals, loaned him cars and committed other kindnesses beyond number, he said.

"I think my voyage had real meaning for them," he said. "It seemed to reassure them you can accomplish something difficult . . . with your life even after many years wasted as a barfly. And, of course," he said after a pause, "it represented that to me, too."

BEING A GOOD GUEST

But there was also the mystical kinship with the wind and sea, which no sailor can ever adequately explain.

"There is something truly glorious about being out there in blue water in brisk conditions on a boat you know intimately to be as well-prepared as any that has ever made the trip before, secure in your own knowledge of how to . . . take on whatever the sea may present . . . " he says. "If you are confidant in your boat and . . . your own seamanship you can even enjoy a storm . . . yawing and pitching over large, relentless waves through a pitch black night with surges of bioluminescence trailing back along the hull."

The lure, he emphasizes, "is very definitely not 'man against the elements'. That attitude can get you killed because you're tiny out there and the sea can easily and casually erase you without a trace. I wanted to go with the elements. At every sunrise in the tradewind passage I silently and prayerfully asked the ocean for permission to be its guest that day . . . .

"I saw some really beautiful dorado, really big ones, trailing the boat, and they would have been really tasty. I love dorado. But I said to myself, hey, it's their ocean. They're keeping me company. I'm going to leave them alone."

He awoke in wonder in mid-Atlantic at the dust on his deck from Sahara sandstorms a thousand miles to the east. He marveled at the cobalt blue of the deep ocean. And he delighted in the accuracy of the classic trans-Atlantic sailing instruction as old as Columbus: From the Canary Islands sail south until the butter melts, then turn right.