A   few days after school let out in early July 1976, I mounted my bike on a warm, cloudless morning and headed for water. I didn’t ask permission. I didn’t tell my parents or anyone else where I was going. I just pedaled to Huntington Harbor, miles from my boyhood home on Long Island. I was in search of “tall ships,” at least a dozen of them, which had sailed into Long Island Sound and anchored in the waters where I’d often fished for flounders and eels with my dad. For weeks leading up to the