Tiller called to say he was worried about Headwind: “He’s up on his skiff on the trailer in his carport, leaning forward but not moving. His jaw’s clenched and he’s gripping the wheel like he’s up on plane on the bounding main,” Tiller said.

“You know him better than anyone. Do you think he’s having a fit? Should I call 911?”

Tiller stumbled upon that scene while walking his dog, Lefty. They were in Headwind’s alley when a cold front caught them. In a sudden, it wasn’t a fit day out for man or beast.

Tiller and Lefty, blinded by rain, ducked for cover.

Any carport in a storm, you know.

Lefty was first to notice Headwind, up on the boat.

Lefty said “Woof!”

That didn’t get Headwind’s attention, but it got Tiller’s. He wiped his eyes, looked up and said “Hey, Headwind.”

Headwind didn’t respond, Tiller told me: “Not a word. It’s raining sideways and a nor’easter is blasting, 40 knots I’d bet, right in his face.

“I shouted Ahoy! but he isn’t responding. His voice is silent, his countenance grim. He’s dressed in a yellow slicker and sou’wester, its untied chin straps whipping at his leathery neck and hoary whiskers. He’s got one hand on the helm, the other up and pointing north, into the teeth of the booming gale. He looks like he’s posing for Winslow Homer.”

That’s mighty vivid language for Tiller. I asked what he had been reading.

“Never mind that,” he answered. “Is this an emergency? Should I call 911?”

I told him to calm down, that I would be right over.

While he waited, I suggested, he should sing the chorus of “Eddystone Light” in a lusty baritone.

You know that one, right? Yo ho ho, the wind blows free. Oh for a life on the rolling sea! (It isn’t as singable in Spanish, is it? Yo ho ho, el viento sopla libre. Oh por un vida en el mar ondulante!)

Tiller can’t sing and Headwind has no ear for music but both enjoy sea songs. It couldn’t hurt.

You may think I’m not treating this apparent emergency with sufficient urgency, but as Tiller said, I know Headwind better than anyone. By the time I donned my own slicker and sou’wester, I had diagnosed his condition as early winter fishing-doer’s frustration.

I had it too. I guess so did you — starting in December. Remember?

Headwind’s episodes are more severe than ours, I guess because he’s older. His loss of a day’s fishing requires more recovery time.

December frustration looks a lot like late autumn frustration, but worse. We had been blown out already three or four times since Thanksgiving. How much of such can anyone take?

Indeed, we were blown out that very day — a big disappointment even though all the late night marine forecasts foretold it. We were betting against the National Weather Service. It’s awkward because we have friends who work there.

(“If you can’t handle being wrong, you don’t belong in meteorology,” one of them once told us.)

Headwind and I had spent the previous evening preparing tackle, studying marine charts for likely lees and tide graphs for tidal stages, planning how to avoid soiled water, converting knots to miles per hour — all the stuff that serious fishing-doers do, even when the odds are lousy that we’ll even get the boat on the road next morning. We planned on taking Headwind’s skiff. It’s longer, wider and higher than mine, and steadier in a blow. It meant more work for him, loading stuff that he would have to unload if the forecast was correct. The readier we were, the more it was going to hurt to call it off.

Neither of us was shocked at 5 a.m. when we awoke to see that the latest forecast was worse than the two or three previous. If there had been even small increments of improvement, we might have texted as follows:

Me: ?

He: Si´

This time it was:

Me: ?

He: X

I mumbled a curse and went back to sleep.

Headwind wept, wailed, gnashed his teeth, rent his garment and finished with a tantrum. He threw on his foul weather duds, rushed out back, leapt aboard ship, shouted every curse I hadn’t and went catatonic.

That’s how Tiller and his dog Lefty found him, pointing accusatorily into the huffing nor’easter.

That’s how I found him too. Tiller and Lucky were crouched in the lee behind Headwind. Gusty gusts were still a-whistling.

reminded Tiller he was supposed to be singing “Eddystone Light.”

“I had to stop,” Tiller said. “Lefty started harmonizing and I didn’t want the neighbors calling the cops on us.”

He’s a smart dog, that Lefty. Tiller trained him as a fishing practice assistant.

They do it at the local soccer field. Tiller ties a hookless lure to his leader and heaves a cast. Lefty chases it.

As soon as the lure lands, Lefty picks it up and runs it back to Tiller, who reels up line as fast as he can.

He says that’s a pretty good simulation of playing a hooked fish that swims toward him instead of away.

I asked Tiller if he had touched the patient.

“No way,” he answered. “You don’t want a man in a trance snapping out of it suddenly and taking a swing at you. Lefty would have misunderstood and jumped in. I don’t know where Headwind keeps his first aid kit.”

Good judgment, I told him. We can break the trance, but at a distance. Grab one of those rods, the 7-footer. Climb down off the boat. Now, if Headwind throws a fist he won’t hit anything. Tiller did as I said.

I further instructed him to take up the rod as a dueling sword, stand sternward of Headwind and goose him with the tip.

“Should I shout ‘en garde!”? Tiller asked, giggling.

I thought that wouldn’t be appropriate. Headwind doesn’t understand French.

You’ve probably guessed by now that our idea worked. Headwind snapped out of the trance and asked what we were doing there. We made him wait until he invited us into the house for stimulating beverages. He didn’t remember a thing about his episode.

“I can’t believe that happened,” he said when we told him what happened. “I will have to see it in print to know it’s the truth.”

Before we went our separate ways, Tiller declared a quorum of the Fish or Cut Bait Society.

“As chairman of the steering committee, I ask that all of us observe a moment of thoughtful silence in honor of Mark Ercolin, who has sailed away,” Tiller said. “Mark’s light-hearted yet always informative monthly column on matters of maritime law enriched us for many years. So did his friendship. May his memory be a blessing.”

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