All winter, my venerable sailboat, Blue beard , has sat on her trailer in my Music street backyard. But as spring turns to summer, I have been sensing from the stirrings of the tarp that has kept her cozy on snowy days, that Bluebeard is longing to return to the water. Not that she controls the actions of the tarp. The wind does. But in my years of tending Bluebeard, I have learned a bit about her temperament — and mine.

Like Bluebeard, who longs to be back on a pond setting sail, I, too, would like to be sailing. But there are problems. Her sail is in serious need of patching with something less unsightly than masking tape, and the fiberglass on her deck needs paint. Every summer there is ship’s hardware missing. But she and I make do without it, and over the years, aging Bluebeard has managed at least one sail a summer.

Although she is an Edgartown beach boat, her sailing waters have been either the Lagoon in Vineyard Haven or Tisbury Great Pond in West Tisbury. Long ago, she lost her Lagoon mooring. Last fall, she lost her mooring at Deep Bottom. She is clearly a boat out of water.

I suspect the Isaac Russell family that has provided a place for her to be anchored in front of their Deep Bottom camp for a decade finally deemed her too ragtag. The Russells rent their camp in the summer and, of course they want it and to look tidy. To me, Bluebeard had really looked quite sprightly bobbing in the distance, but I’m not objective. And kayaks and canoes and Sunfish are probably easier for most tenants to use than a sailboat. They are easily pulled up on a beach, whereas Bluebeard must have a mooring. Since no skiff goes with her, those wishing to sail on Bluebeard must swim out to her and clamber aboard. Most of my friends who have enjoyed high times aboard her — sailing up to the cut, anchoring her and going for an ocean swim — are advancing in age. Clambering over her coaming is becoming more difficult. So, too, is jumping overboard and tugging her off the shallow where the cormorants sun at low tide. And finding strong and generous souls willing to haul her in and out of the water in spring and fall has become difficult too. Some are octogenarians now — and although they are sprightly ones — boat hauling is no longer the gala event it once was. Last fall, the generous Russell family said they thought Bluebeard should find digs somewhere else.

So what will Bluebeard and I do?

West Tisbury civil engineer Kent Healy has come up with a solution.

We encountered each other the other morning as I strolled back from a wistful survey of Town Cove, wondering if there might be someplace there where I could launch Bluebeard. Kent was headed down to the cove to see how deep the Great Pond waters were and if it was time to open it for the season. I knew what he was doing. He asked what I was doing and I dolefully explained.

“There’s a boat landing at Sepiessa,” he said, trying to help. “Just put her in there.”

“But Bluebeard is old and heavy,” I said, “not a sleek, lightweight kayak or a little motorboat easily launched for an afternoon and hauled up onto the landing again. She’s a venerable 15-foot boat with sails — a boat of substance.” I explained that means she is difficult for aging parties, though young at heart, to launch and haul.

“Get a mooring,” Kent said. “Fishermen have them. Get a commercial fishing license and then you should be able to have a mooring. Or how about a shellfish license? You like oysters, don’t you? Then you’d have your own supply. And senior citizens don’t have to pay for shellfishing licenses, you know.”

I thought that was interesting. But long ago I oystered a little and it didn’t seem to me Bluebeard would be of much use for oystering.

If I were to scallop, that might be something else, for I went scalloping several times in Menemsha Pond and Lake Tashmoo with the late Bob Sanborn. His Boston Whaler had a rig that dredged for scallops. But there are no scallops in the Great Pond. In any case, Bluebeard has sails. Decking her out with a scalloping dredge (if it could be done) would make her even more unsightly than her critics intimate she is. As for clams, I know a boat is not a necessity. But if a fishing license would enable me to get a mooring, a fishing license of any stripe would serve the purpose.

Not wanting officialdom to know what I had in mind, I asked John Alley rather than the town hall for more information. Who, I asked, is West Tisbury’s harbor master? John shook his head sadly.

“Don’t you know,” he said, “after your years in West Tisbury waters, that West Tisbury has no harbors and therefore no harbor master?”

Trying another tack, I asked who the fishing warden was and how I’d get a commercial license. John sighed. “I expect that you’ll have to go up to Boston to see about that.”

I wasn’t sure he was right, but I called the town hall to get a fisheries department number in Boston. When I hesitantly told Jennifer Rand, town administrator, why I wanted it, she said I didn’t need a fishing license — for either shellfishing or finfishing — to accomplish my goal. It would be perfectly all right to moor Bluebeard at Sepiessa, even if I wasn’t a commercial fisherman — or a fisherman of any kind.

All my longtime boat-launching and hauling friends and relations — the Isaac Russells, the Mike Peases, Martha Moore, Phil Fleischman, the Bob Ganzes, Ralph Braun, Laura Silber, Tim Foote, Peter Meras — will not be delighted with this news. But Bluebeard is already puffing up beneath her tarp in preparation for a happy summer at Sepiessa. I am readying her anchor and her rudder, laying out her sails on the grass to look into the patching needs, thinking about buying bottom paint and new lines to spruce her up so she will show off properly in such a public place.