The blunted rays of flannel-gray February daylight melt into the mirror-still harbor, unbroken sky-gray and harbor-gray split by a jagged band of misty black firs and skeleton maples on the far shore.

A dirty-white maxi catamaran lies beached on a sandbar 100 yards from the bulkhead, storm-broken and adrift in last week’s howling rain, now heaving quietly in the milky shallows, high centered in soft mud.

My oldest son and I survey the beached hulk with binoculars through our front window, trading conjectures and turns with the field glasses.

Through the cross-eyed spherical prisms I inspect the hull, fouled with several seasons’ barnacles and eelgrass. Holes patched haphazardly with mats of sulfurous yellow fiberglass and resin dot the chalky white gel-coat. A rusted crab pot from a decade-distant summer sways rhythmically in the murmuring tide, tied to a pitted cleat on the starboard side with a length of fraying yellow poly-cord, strands of papery seaweed dried in the trap’s sagging net.

Near the bow, the boxy outline of a series of recently-removed stick-on hardware-store numbers cut clean white squares in the dirty salt-fouled paint, an anonymous cheat, like the band of pale, secret skin under a wedding ring, exposed in dim tea-lights and the crooning carnal purr of a cocktail lounge at closing time.

We see a heavy-set man paddling toward the catamaran, standing unsteadily in an open dinghy, using a battered oar as a paddle, Volga boatman-style. Perhaps it’s the catamaran’s owner, arrived to retrieve his decrepit sailboat after the storm. He circles the derelict, struggling to keep the squirming tender steady, shifting his weight from side to side with shaking legs.

We reflexively hold our breath; several times it seems as though he might lose his battle with balance and belly-flop into the chilling green water. But after a few uneventful minutes, his curiosity apparently satisfied, he paddles out to deeper water, still standing precariously in the dinghy.

We never saw him again. Several days pass. Every morning, the catamaran is still there. Every time I look out the window, it’s still there. Every night when I let the dog out, it’s still there. I realize that some sort of action must be taken, and resolve to contact the state in the morning, adding to my mental list of necessary errands that I never write down, ensuring that I often forget them entirely.

The next day my wife Maria receives a lengthy text from one of our neighbors. The gigantic sailboat marooned in the harbor has been discussed at length by the rather tightly organized group of longtime neighbors on the eastern shore.

It’s rumored that someone is living on the catamaran — stuck in the mud at the end of the harbor, cold, damp, dark, without heat or power. If there was someone living on it, that had to be the worst commute of all time.

The neighbors on the eastern shore had already reported the catamaran to the Department of Natural Resources, and proceedings were underway to list the catamaran as a derelict marine vessel, which allows the state to take legal action to dispose of the mess.

One morning, the decrepit catamaran was gone. We heard that a tugboat arrived at high tide early one Saturday morning and dragged the derelict catamaran to deep water.

On Vashon Island, no one is here by accident, except possibly the guy living on the beached catamaran. Everyone took a ferry to get here. But we have more in common than the cost of a ferry ticket.

Every resource on Vashon is finite. The island itself is finite. We cooperate with one another in ways that other communities do not to protect our shared resources, our families and our fragile way of life. Many of us have concluded, perhaps convinced by an extended power outage, that we are all in this together.

When islanders speak with one voice about our common needs, for safety, clean water, electricity, food, adequate ferry service, preserving our unique island life, we often find those needs met, assisted by our friends (and islanders) in county, state and federal government. For example, there is no bridge to Vashon. Nor is there a gigantic gravel operation on Maury Island. Or a traffic signal.

At the recent community meeting regarding proposed amendments to the Vashon Town Plan to enable a massive edible-marijuana operation to be housed in the now-dilapidated K2 Ski factory, those in attendance seemed to be evenly split, for and against the idea.

Let’s refocus those conversations on our common needs. Our community finds its strength in the shared necessities that both define and unite us. The wiser path is pretty obvious to me.

— Kevin Pottinger lives with his wife and four children on Vashon.