It is near nine hundred sea miles from Merritt to Amity. A bad drive. A good boat-ride. Distance is a different thing on a boat. You need to look at the sky more, see the hours in your past, the hours of your future. Can't do that through a windshield. Best you can do is see the next ten minutes. On the water you can see the journey whole. You got the ocean and the sun on your right, the land on your left. Just a bird soaring over the country and not part of it. Every hour it changes and there is always something to do. Check this, check that, coaxing and fixing as you fly, walk about, eat, piss over the side, throttle back and fish for supper. Got your boat to talk to and thank. Just you and your god and the whole weather mapped out above you, changing as you power along at little more pace than a stroll through a park. 

I look to the shore. There, in the white-faced towns looking back at me are the tax-men, the bosses, the cops, all of 'em getting paid out of picking our pockets. Me, I'm free, and the ocean is free.