Handsome, resplendent in its suit of black and white, a lonely loon was drifting into the creek, riding the flooding tide. I wondered why it hadn't gone north like its companions. A few yards beyond, a drab brown mallard hen warily escorted a new hatch of ducklings, buzzing in circles around her like bumblebees. In the backwaters, mullet were jumping, silver torpedoes flashing clear of the olive green waters, crashing back in fountains of glinting spray, leaving only widening ringlets spreading across the stillness of the bay.

This was a season of catch-up: the "honey do" list around our fisherman's cottage had grown out of hand, pressure building. I had managed to rationalize the nagging down chair hammock swing to the must-do - or else. There was only one answer, and that was by establishing priorities. To any waterman, the boat comes first.

It had started with an aged hammock that we had carried with us from Maine to Mexico, from the Arctic Circle to Apalachicola. Crewman Tom Kellum had been polishing the brass - retired Coast Guardsmen find polishing brass to impress passing boatmen an ideal way to spend the spare hours. Deciding that it was time for a break, he unrolled the old green netting, strung it up between a cleat on the windshield bulkhead and the towing bitt aft, carefully adjusting it to the desired tautness. He eased into its folds, only to hear a pop, pop, pop as overage nylon began to break, lowering him not so gently to the deck. Undeterred, he picked up the net needle and began making emergency repairs, tried it again, with the same results.

No cruising boat of any quality should be without a hammock. I realize that hammocks may not be fashionable in some of the more modern plastic creations that careen across the waves in imitation of jet fighters, but those kinds of working craft aren't designed for cruising. I'm speaking of real boating folk and their craft, those who anchor out in the byways, cruise the waterways in a sense of exploration, visit seaside villages, poke up rivers and watch the sunsets from their cockpits. Not those who have only the mission of going to the fishing grounds and getting back before sundown to brag of their catches.

With hammock failure, I could see a crisis looming. Sure, the crew could lounge on the berths, but berths are for sleeping, or sitting snug on a cold, rainy night, but for the kind of on deck observations so essential to the boating mood, there is no substitute for a suitable hammock.

My wife hints that a lounge chair on the deck of an ocean cruise ship could make an adequate substitute, but such contraptions do not fit well on the typical cruiser. You can always buy a hammock, but there is much less satisfaction to be found in mass-produced items. The challenge is in the creation. Just last week I was inspired to higher goals when Gene Huntsman announced that he had just completed a bird house.

The inspiration came only after he showed me a castle designed for the elite of the bird world. He had come upon a hollowed log, about 10 inches in diameter, maybe the same in length. Now challenged, he had fashioned a conical roof of cedar slabs, turret-like, reminiscent of a Russian cathedral - Orthodox, to be sure. Bound together with polished bronze straps, a bronze hanging ring, he affixed a bottom and finished it all off in gleaming spar varnish.