Tag: sailing

At the Mercy of the Sea

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Kretschmer, John. At the Mercy of the Sea: the True Story of Three Sailors in a Caribbean Hurricane. International Marine/McGraw Hill, 2007.

Reason read: August is the best time to be on the water. Read in honor of the perfect month for a sail.

John Kretschmer begins his story on November 14th, 1999. His main focus begins with his friend, Carl Wake, captain of the 42′ sailboat La Vie en Rose. Carl was sailing from the Chesapeake Bay to the Caribbean in time to meet Kretschmer for Thanksgiving so this part of At Mercy of the Sea is heartbreakingly personal. [How could it have been Carl’s first and last at-sea voyage?] Tragically, Carl meets up with Hurricane Lenny and does not survive the storm’s wrath. In addition to Carl’s story, Kretschmer also follows the tragedies of Steve Rigby, sailing English Braids and Guillaume Llobregat, captain of Frederic-Anne, also victims of Hurricane Lenny.
Hurricane Lenny was an anomaly, a dangerous freak storm that defied logic. Understanding how a hurricane is supposed to behave plays a huge part of the drama. Part of At Mercy of the Sea is the biography of a hurricane from birth (African, Gulf of Mexico or other) to its landfall slow death. Kretschmer carefully outlines what typically happens from start to finish, beginning with the naming of each hurricane. In this way, he is able to illustrate just how unusual Lenny turned out to be.
Confessional: Like The Diary of Anne Frank, I had a hard time reading towards the end of At the Mercy of the Sea. As the pages turned, the story brought me closer and closer to the demise of the sailors. I knew it was coming, but dreaded the end all the same.

As an aside, last month I read a book about the Vendee Globe race. When Kretschmer mentioned it I was thankful I had more than a passing knowledge of what he was talking about. He also mentioned the book A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols, which is on my Challenge list.

Line I adored, “Retreating into the past is one way to keep your sanity – or disturb it, depending on what you run into there” (p 10). Kretschmer is not wrong. He is able to make keen observations about the psyche of a sailor too long at sea, probably because he has been there himself.
Other lines I really liked, “My wife was weary of my dreams and, worse, downright sick of my realities” (p 70) and “The only way to savor the essence of life is to nearly lose it” (p 173).

Another confessional: reading about hurricanes brings me face to face with conflicting emotions. I got married in the middle of Hurricane Ivan. I was twelve miles out to sea. According to Kretschmer, Ivan produced the highest measured significant wave height, fifty feet.

Author fact: Kretschmer is a professional sailor in his own right.

Book trivia: I would have liked to see photographs of the sailors or, at the very least, their boats.

Music: Louis Armstrong’s “La Vie en Rose,” Edith Pilaf, Neil Young’s “Rust Never Sleeps,” Pink Floyd, and Jimmy Buffett.

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

Berserk

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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).

Always a Distant Anchorage

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Roth, Hal. Always a Distant Anchorage. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988.

Reason read: October is Library Friend month. I had to borrow this book from Byfield, Massachusetts; a town I have never heard of before.

Hal and Margaret Roth had an epic mission to sail around the world. Good thing they had the kind of relationship that could withstand being trapped together on a boat for nearly two years (46 months)! Their boat, Whisper, was a 10.7 meters long, black hulled fiberglass vessel that weighed 7.2 tons.
Their journey took them from the coast of Maine to Bermuda and the Virgin Islands, though the Panama Canal, across the South Pacific, winding through Tahiti and Fiji, crossing the Coral Sea and Australia, Bali, Africa, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and finally back through the Atlantic and the Caribbean, ending in Somes Sound, Maine. The amazing thing is, Roth did not come from a sailing background. Luckily, he was a gifted writer and this is his account of that epic journey (with excerpts from Margaret’s journal thrown in). Weather, fishing, the mechanics of boats and sailing, the culture and customs of each community and port, getting to know and establishing relationships with other sailors, even being shipwrecked on coral reef and observing drug runners. Everything Roth writes about is fascinating. He loves the word “squally.”

As an aside, Roth’s description of Greece makes me want to visit even more.

Quote to giggle over: from Margaret’s journal, “I don’t know why men have to swear when they fix things” (p 81).
Another quote, “I don’t mind the prayers and the ritual washing that used up my buckets of fresh water, but I wished the pilot had made some sign to me that he was giving up steering” (p 219). One last quote, “What was life anyway but a collection of new timbers, the seasoning and shaping into a useful hull, the long voyage, a gradual collapse, and the final rotting away (p 303)?

Author fact: Roth also wrote We Followed Odysseus which I will be reading a few years.

Book trivia: the hand drawn maps are fantastic, but the photographs are great too! I wish there had been more of the couple. On the back cover there is a photograph I must describe because it is so intimate and lovely: Margaret is cradled between Hal’s legs. She is clutching his bare foot while he has one arm casually slung over her shoulder. His hand barely brushes her breast…

Nancy said: Always a Distant Anchorage is “the perfect choice for those who dream of one big voyage” (p 201).

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

Turn the Page October

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Fiction:

  • The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson – in honor of October being Star Man month.
  • Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric (EB) – in memory of Mehmed Pasa Sokollu’s passing. He designed the bridge over the Drina river.
  • Playing for Pizza by John Grisham (EB) – in honor of the Verdi Fest in Parma that takes place every October.
  • Call It Sleep by Henry Roth (AB) – to remember the Tom Kippur War.

Nonfiction:

  • Oxford Book of Oxford edited by Jan Morris – in honor of Morris’s birth month.
  • African Laughter by Doris Lessing – in honor of Lessing’s birth month.
  • Always a Distant Anchorage by Hal Roth – October is Library Friend Month & I had to borrow this from a distant library.

Series continuations:

  • Tandia by Bryce Courtenay – to finish the series started in September in honor of Courtenay’s birth month.
  • The Race of the Scorpion by Dorothy Dunnett (EB) – to continue the series started in August in honor of Dunnett’s birth month.
  • Finding the Dream by Nora Roberts (EB) – to finish the series started in August in honor of Dream Month.

Fun:

  • Joey Goes to Sea by Alan Villiers – a gift from my aunt Jennifer.

Early Review for LibraryThing: nada. I have the promise of three different books but they haven’t arrived yet.