Berserk

Mercy, David. Berserk: My Voyage to the Antarctic in a Twenty-Seven Foot Sailboat. Lyons Press, 2004.

Reason read: June is the month to celebrate the ocean. Nothing celebrates the ocean more than sailing on it.

From the very onset, David Mercy is a little berserk. Who signs up to sail to the Antarctic with two other men he met only a week earlier? Mercy does. He agrees to travel in a twenty-seven foot sailboat with a twenty-one year old Norwegian and an immature Argentine. The book opens with the three of them, practically strangers, in the middle of a hurricane off Cape Horn. But Mercy is no stranger to adventure – he has already been to the Congo, Outback of Australia, Tibet, China, India, the Bering Sea, and Mexico. He has been on every continent save one. Antarctica. Mercy is not tethered to the normal trappings of adulthood – no job to clock, no romantic or plutonic relationships to miss, pets nor even a vehicle to look after; nor is he afraid to try new things (like touring the La Paz prison system with a cocaine-dealing inmate). This is the perfect time to sail to the Antarctic with a couple of strangers. What could possibly go wrong?
Aside from the adventure it was to reach the Antarctic, Mercy’s story is primarily about getting along (mostly not) with his shipmates. His rash choice to travel with these men is a little suspect. “Jarle had seemed competent enough in the ten minutes we had spent together” (p 31). Sure. Then there’s whiney Manuel. This man wants to go home at the first sight of whitecaps or hard labor. Stating the obvious, the infighting begins immediately. I don’t know about you, but I would think it a red flag to travel to the Antarctic (or anywhere) with someone who has never heard of Shackleton. Just saying.

As an aside, I am not a fan of inconsistencies. Mercy says “I undress, stripping off my wet clothes” but several sentences later someone “grabs me by the collar of my Richard III sweater” (p 5). What gives? Did he undress or not? Is it that I don’t understand what a Richard III sweater is? As an another aside, Mercy seems fashion-centric. Besides the Richard III sweater (whatever that is), he is wearing a Peruvian llama-wool cap. But, I digress. Back to inconsistencies. At one point he dons a Viking helmet but a few sentences later he was forced to cover his head to protect his scalp from dive-bombing skuas. Wait. I thought he was already wearing something to protect himself? What happens when the writing skills do not match the caliber of the adventure begging to be told? You sigh and move on because, overall, it’s such a great story.

Author fact: Berserk is Mercy’s only work in LibraryThing. He calls himself a director and producer of film.

Book trivia: Berserk contains no photography even though they all took turns with a camera. Bummer. I would have liked to see the whales or at least a penguin.

Playlist: AC/DC’s “High Voltage”, Iron Maiden’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, Metallica’s “Sanitarium” and “Unforgiven”, James Hatfield, Grateful Dead, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Nancy said: Pearl said “Here are some books about sailors whose grasp of the fundamentals is much better than mine…and many of whose outcomes were far worse” (Book Lust To Go p 201).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “See the Sea” (p 201).