I've always liked a good second-chance story. I think most of us do. There's something about them that just feels good. The thing you counted out, turning around when you weren't expecting it. And maybe you could use one tonight. Maybe today was one of those days where nothing much went your way. Where you got to the end of it, feeling like you'd been swimming against the current the whole time and hadn't got very far. Some days are just like that. And they feel worse at night, don't they? When you're lying in the dark. When there's nothing left to do about any of it. But here's the thing about a day. It ends. That's the one dependable thing it does. And when it does, you get another one. A fresh one. That hasn't happened yet. Whatever this one was, you don't have to carry it into the next. You get to set it down. So that's what I've got for you tonight. A quiet little second-chance story. About an old boat and the man that's putting her back together. But mostly it's just here to help you sleep. And you don't have to do anything at all. Just be here and listen. And if you're new, here's how these work. A sleep story is just that. A quiet story to listen to as you fall asleep. You don't have to concentrate. And you don't have to follow along. In fact, you're not really meant to. The idea is to give your busy mind something to rest on. So it can stop thinking so much and just let you drift off. I start each one with a little breathing and some relaxation to settle your body first. And then there's a bit of gentle hypnotherapy woven through to help you let go. And there are plenty of stories to choose from. So if this one isn't quite your cup of tea, have a look around. There'll be another one that is. And before we start, as always, please make sure that you're somewhere safe to listen. Preferably tucked into your comfortable bed. And not anywhere you need to stay alert. And now let's get you settled. If the lights are still on, turn them off. Make your room as dark as you possibly can. And get comfortable. You're kind of comfortable. Whatever that is. Maybe you like the sheets tucked in tight all around you. Snug as a bug. Maybe you like them loose and cool with plenty of room to stretch out and move. Maybe you're someone who more or less rolls themselves up in the blankets and disappears. However you do it. Do it now. There's no right way. This is your spot. It's here for exactly one thing. And that's you. Resting. And if you're ready, let's start with a bit of breathing. We'll use square breathing tonight because it's about as simple as it gets. Four counts in. Hold for four. Four counts out. And hold for four. Four equal sides. Like a square. That's all it is. Let's do one together. Breathe in. Slowly. Two. Three. Four. Hold it. Two. Three. Four. And out. Two. Three. Four. And hold. Two. Three. Four. Good job. Once more. In. Two. Three. Four. Hold. Two. Three. Four. Out. Two. Three. Four. And hold. Two. Three. Four. And now keep that going on your own. Couldn't be easier. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. Hold for four. This is one of my favorite breathing methods. It's nice because you can use it anytime. Anytime you're feeling a little stressed. Anytime you need to calm yourself. Just keep breathing this way. Slow. And even. And while you're doing that, notice how you're lying here. Just notice. Feel the weight of you pressing down into the mattress. Feel where you're warm. And feel how still you've gone. And just let my voice carry you along from here. You don't have to picture everything I'm about to describe. And you don't have to keep track of anything. If your mind wanders off somewhere, just let it. That's fine. And if you drift off before the end, well, that's the whole idea. So let's go down to the water. It's a cold, wet night in February. And there's one light on at the end of the garden. At the bottom of the garden, there's a boathouse. It sits out over the water on wooden pilings at the end of a path that runs down from the house through the pines. It's an old building. Grayboards. A rusted metal roof. A wide door on the creek side that hasn't been opened in years. And a smaller one on the land side. The creek runs back off the river here and doesn't go anywhere much. Half a mile of it. And then there's just marsh. In summer, there are boats on it. In February, there's nothing at all. The crab pots are stacked on the bank. Everything's been hauled out and stored at the marina. The water sits flat and brown green under the rain. It's been raining since Tuesday. It's been on that metal roof all afternoon. And underneath the floor, the tide is coming in. There's a work light hung from the rafters and it's warm and yellow. And it lights the boat and about 10 feet around her. The radio is on the shelf behind him. Turn down low. It's some station out of Salisbury that plays old country. He's been humming along to something for a while now. He's 50 and he's on a low stool with his sleeves pushed up. Working a block of sandpaper around the hull. Flannel shirt worn soft. Jeans with paint on them. Boots that aren't good for anything else anymore. Everything he used to put on at six in the morning is upstairs in the closet and he hasn't looked at it since August. His hands are different now. There's a callus across the base of each finger from the sanding block. And the pads of his thumb have gone tough and there's linseed oil down in the creases that doesn't wash away anymore. On the sawhorse beside him, there's a plate with a sandwich on it and two cookies brought down 20 minutes ago. His wife came down the path with it under an umbrella and she put it where he'd see it. She stood for a minute and said something about how he'd been at this since one. She thinks this is the best thing that's happened to him in years. For about 30 years, he was hardly ever out here. He left the house before six and got home after dark and the weekends filled themselves up. In the boat, sat in the boathouse the whole time. He talked about the boat a fair amount but that was all. Just talk. Then he had a health scare in the spring. Turned out to be nothing but it was enough. And by August, he'd stepped back from the firm. The boat is called Windward. She's 28 feet of wooden sailing boat and she's up on her cradles with the mast down and lying along the floor beside her. And you can see what she was the moment you look at her. Long and low and narrow through the bow. She's been sitting still for 11 years and she still looks like she's going somewhere but up close, she needs everything. The paint on her sides is cracked all over and lifting. Dark green now. Down low on one side, there's a patch of wood. That's gone soft. He's going to have to cut out the bad part and fit a new piece of wood into it. And he's not looking forward to it. She's built the old way. Out of long planks laid edge to edge along her whole length. And every joint between them is packed with a filler that keeps the water out. 60 years of sitting in the sun has dried most of it hard. So it has to be scraped out of every joint and packed back in fresh. He's done about half and it's slow work. Her deck has gone gray. It should be the color of honey and every bit of wood on her that was meant to be varnished and gleaming. The handrails, the trim, the long wooden arm at the back that you steer her with. Has worn down across the flat back end of her. And gold leaf gone dull and lifting at one corner. It says, windward. He hasn't touched it. It's the only thing on the whole boat he hasn't touched. And it'll be the last thing he does. He's four months in. He's done the worst part of the paint stripping and most of the seams. He sanded straight through a plank in October and had to learn how to cut the bad piece out and fit in a new one. He put a coat of primer on in November before the wood was ready. And he spent four evenings taking it back off. He sits back on the stool and runs his hand flat along the section he's been working on. Feeling for anything he's missed. Going to be beautiful, he says. Then he picks up the sandpaper and carries on. Long even strokes back and forth. And the note changes as the paper wears. Coarse and dry at first and then finer and softer. He does maybe 40 strokes and stops and runs his hand over it. Then 40 more. There's dust coming off it and it hangs in the light from the work lamp and settles on his forearms and on the floor and on the plate with the sandwich that he still hasn't eaten. The place smells like linseed oil more than anything. And then sawdust, which is dry and fine and gets right back into the back of your nose. Then rope and the turpentine in the brush jar on the shelf. And underneath all of it, the cold salt air coming up through the boards. The rain keeps on above him and the tide is still coming. There's a place on the boat where the wood is different. It's a rough oval about the size of both his hands together. And the paint over it is thinner than everywhere else. And the wood underneath has been worn shallow and smooth. Not damaged. Just used. He found it before and he still doesn't quite know what it is. Something that happened in the same spot over and over for a long time. And he's never worked out what it is. But it was feet. For a stretch of her life, someone sat right there on the edge of the deck above it with their legs over the side and their heels resting against the hull. Not once or twice. Enough times over enough years to wear the paint thin and take the wood down shallow underneath it. It would have been summer mostly out on the bay in the evening with the sail down and the anchor out and the boat lying to the tide or coming slowly back up the creek at the end of the day with nothing left to do but sit the kind of hot still evening where the water goes flat and the only thing moving anywhere is a heron working along the edge of the marsh bare feet wet from swimming drying off against the warm side of the boat. It's the best seat on her. He doesn't know that yet because he's never sat in it. But he will sometime in the summer when she's on the water and he's found out how to sail her. He'll be out there in the evening with the sail down and the anchor holding and he'll sit on the side with his legs over and his heels against the hull because that's where a person ends up sitting and the wear will make sense to him then. But for now he runs his thumb across it smooth smoother than anything else on the whole boat. The sandpaper has gone dull and stopped cutting. He tears off a fresh piece folds it around the block and carries on. This is the part he likes best. The old filler between the planks has dried out over the years and it has to come out before the new can go in. Getting it out is slow and it's the kind of slow he's come to like. There's a tool for it a thin hooked blade on a wooden handle and you run it down the joint and the old stuff lifts and comes away in a dry crumbling line. You can't hurry it push too hard and the blade jumps the groove and digs into good wood and then you've made work for yourself. So you go at the speed that the tool wants to go which is not very fast. The rain's steady on the roof the tide is most of the way in now and the boathouse has gone quiet the water underneath high and full and barely moving. When the groove is clean, he takes the new filler and works it in.He gets three done, and sits back and rolls his shoulders, and he goes to have a look at the lamp. Down in the little cabin, there's a bracket screwed to the bulkhead, where an oil lamp used to hang. The lamp is long gone, but the bracket is still there, brass under the tarnish.And above it, on the deckhead, there's a dark stain, a soft, brown patch smoked into the wood by 60 years of that lamp burning under it. He's going to have to sand it back and build the varnish up clean again, and he will, but he hasn't yet. And every time he's down here, he ends up looking at it, because that's the thing that's easiest to see.Somebody hung a lamp there and lit it at night, not for working. You don't work by an oil lamp, you light it. When the day is over, and you're staying out, anchored somewhere up a creek with the sail down, and it's dark, and you want a bit of warm light while you sit, the stain is every one of those nights layered up on top of each other.All the evenings this boat spent lying quietly at anchor with a lamp lit, and somebody aboard, in no hurry to be anywhere, going nowhere, till morning. He looks at the stain a moment longer, then he climbs back out. You get to a point where the light's not good enough, and the hands are done, so he stops.He wipes the blade on a rag and puts it back in the box where it goes. The filler gets capped, the brushes stay in the jar. He stands there a second, looking at the boat, and then he reaches up and turns off the work light.For a moment, he can't see anything, and then his eyes catch up, and there's a little light coming in through the small window and the gaps in the boards, enough to make her out. The long low shape, the mast, lying alongside on the floor. He finds the door.He steps out into the rain and pulls the door shut behind him, and then he goes up the path through the pines to the house, where the kitchen windows are on, and somebody is moving around inside, and the light of it reaches partway down the path to meet him, and the boathouse is left to itself. The rain keeps on above it. The tides turned and started very slowly to go back out, and in the dark in there, the boat sits by herself.The boat is just a boat, of course. She's wood and copper, and old paint. She doesn't think, and doesn't feel, and doesn't know she's been out of the water for years, but you would be forgiven, standing in that dark boathouse. For thinking she does, that a boat might remember the particular thing she was made for, the water, taking her weight, the way she'd lean and settle and come alive, the sound of it moving fast along her hull, the pull of the wind carrying her somewhere. You'd be forgiven for thinking she's been patient a long time, and that she can feel herself slowly coming back to the thing she was. Second chances are beautiful things, and the funny thing is that you so rarely see them coming.This boat sat still for years, and had no reason to expect anything else, and then a man had a scare, and slowed down, and wandered into a boathouse, and everything changed, and you get a second chance. Every night, tomorrow is always a second chance, a clean one, handed to you, over and over, no matter how today went, what ever happened today, you get to set it down, so let today be over now. Your bed is warm, the day has been set down, out of reach, and it can look after itself until morning.There's nothing left that needs you, feel how heavy you've become, your legs sunk down into the bed, your arms, wherever they've come to rest, your hands, open and empty, holding nothing at all now. Somewhere out there, the rain is still on the roof of the boathouse, and a boat is resting in the dark, one day closer to the water than she was this morning, and she's fine, everything's been seen to, everything's where it should be, and so are you, you're exactly where you're meant to be tonight, here, in your own bed, warm, and safe, and done with the day, so let it go, let yourself sink, and let the dark hold you.