ROCKLAND — I had my last sail with Emma a couple of weeks ago. There was breeze enough for a rookie, just what I needed to get more familiar with the dinghy's gunter rig that carries a lot of sail for a 10-foot waterline.

I stepped the mast at the dock and rowed out to Bella, the 20-foot Vivacity we keep moored just outside of the Trident pier. There, safe from the risk of banging into another boat and the embarrassment of thinking someone might be watching my takeoff, I unfurled the sail and let go. For an hour or so, I went back and forth, between the mooring field and the Breakwater.

With my hands occupied the entire time, I wrote nothing and made no pictures to share. I do remember the joy of learning the movement of water and wind and the blush of fall that was beginning on the hills as I looked north and west. I remember vividly the red-gold line of maples above Boston Financial's parking lot.

I hove to in the midst of some empty moorings near the Fish Pier, furled the rig, and rowed back across to the dinghy dock. I exchanged greetings with the couple on Coel Mor as they shared a picnic before their last weekend sail of the season.

Last Friday afternoon, Oct 11, Joe and I went out to Bella, hoping for a sail. The slack flag at the Public Landing appeared to be taking a furlough day in solidarity with federal workers. The harbor was the proverbial mill pond, a mirror reflecting, in constantly shifting curvature, the always changing world above and around it.

That day was all pictures, first from Bella's cockpit as we had our lunch and let the mooring keep us in place, later in The Donkey, Joe's 12-foot skiff.

Joe and I met in the summer of 1983. We were each 30 years old and ready to find a mate. On the second weekend in October of that year, while enjoying the beauty of a small island in the Essex River, north of Cape Ann, we agreed to work together for the kind of relationship that builds a family.

This year, at the end of another wonderful weekend, and after the last of the family headed south and west, we put away the boats.

At the last of the city's docks still in the water, John Hansen was cleaning out Wild Rumpus, a beautiful chocolate brown double-ender. He invited me aboard to see the cabin, a space wide enough and tall enough to accommodate more than one standing person in a boat underway. Wood where it's useful and well cared for, gelcoat where it's not. Beautiful.

Joe rowed The Donkey to her winter dock, where I picked him up with Emma. My boat's rig was already in the van and the trailer that serves as a Bella's cradle was waiting at Sharp's Point South for her twin-keels to set down for the season.

I rowed Joe and our gear around to Bella and tied Emma to a stern cleat. Joe cast off the mooring and we sailed off and out toward the bay.

After a short discussion and the setting of the pocket alarm that would remind me of a chorus rehearsal in Camden at 6:30 p.m., we poked our nose out past the Breakwater. Our exit is marked by three or four rollers, but there's not much of a swell outside. There is wind, however, all from the south and west, so we turned back after a short run that, if time allowed and there hadn't been a farmload of mussels attached to our bottom, might have taken us to the Fox Islands before long.

It's a good thing we did. It takes a few tries to get past the lighthouse and we got repeated views of Rockport's steep brick village, folded in the soft, gold-tipped hills, and a small forest of masts hugging the right-hand shore.

Several tacks finally get us pointed just right to slice the entrance and end up inside the invisible line that separates harbor from bay. Once past the Army Corps' protective obstacle, we were into the wind and heeled over about as far as Bella likes to be, dodging lobster buoys.

Although the season is closing for most sailors, working boats are active as ever. Western Sea steams toward the breakwater, outriggers ready. The ferries Captain Charles Philbrook and Captain E. Frank Thompson pass on their steady route between Rockland and Vinalhaven, back and forth across the western bay. There are quite a few lobsterboats on the water with us. A few are fishing their traps. One pair, with a towline between them, comes in at a good pace from somewhere to the east. I suppose some of these will go up on stands, Joining Bella and those others that begin waiting for the thaw even before the frost has arrived.

We came about for a final long tack to the docks at Sharp's. Two boats were behind us, along the Owls Head shore; one would pass us for certain, long before we reached our destination. By the time we arrived, their kids were running on the lawn by the docks and the grownups had packed most of the day's gear into the family car.

I row Emma over to the ramp at Snow Marine Park and tied her to the long dock that will probably be gone by the end of the week. I threw over the fenders, dropped the oarlocks in the boat's bucket, and lifted the bucket and oars onto the dock. I put my life jacket and the boat cushion into the zip bag that says Surprise on it, took a final look to see that the rudder and centerboard were secure on the floor, and climbed out of Emma, checking the knot that will hold her there until Joe can bring the trailer over and drive her home.

I picked up my gear and walked over the to Jim Sharp's dock to see if I could help Joe with Bella, before it's time for me to walk home and get ready for chorus.