I did not need to go home.

But I wanted to demonstrate to myself how much I was a man.

There lay my skiff astern.

The last of a strong ebb was running out in channel in the teeth of an ocean breeze of forty miles an hour.

I could see the stiff whitecaps, and the suck and run of the current was plainly visible in the face and trough of each one.
I set sail, cast off, took my place at the tiller, the sheet in my hand, and headed across channel.