astern, via a line that twirls in exact synchronization with the blades. The residual problems being that the propeller device, while authoritative as regards the umbilical line, occasionally attracts sharks, which devour it (at fifty dollars per propeller, one hopes it is their last meal); and regularly attracts ocean dross—seaweed and like stuff—that binds the propeller, whose irregular movements then constipate the register, causing great pain to the dead-reckoning navigator. That my beautiful new speedometer, after all this planning, would not work was a blow that required deep reserves of manly courage to absorb.
But always, before finally giving up, one invokes the intercession of Reggie; and now he was fiddling with this and that, the ends of a voltmeter in his mouth—when, suddenly, it began to work! Captain Jouning, an immensely resourceful man, was both pleased and chagrined at someone else’s having figured it out, and keenly read the instructions over Reggie’s shoulder, to discover that—mistakenly—Reggie had crossed two wires that the instruction booklet had said
on no account should be crossed!
(Beard-McKie, under
Errata—
“On page 34, paragraph 2, in the sentence that begins, ‘The most important thing to remember …’ substitute
never
for
always.”)
Crossing them, however, caused the speedometer to work; and we there and then solemnly sealed the Sealestial Covenant: that no one would ever inform Brookes and Gatehouse that we had violated their operating instructions.
The wine was poured, we were on course. The wind was from the east at about twelve knots. The sun was sinking, over there to the left, in the general direction of Puerto Rico. Suddenly the babbling stopped, almost as if we had all been following the instructions of an orchestra leader; we heard only the lap-lap of the waves, patting firmly the headstrong hull of our ketch, white-gold in the falling light, the surrounding water turned now a viridian blue, oddly diaphanous, St. Thomas receding astern. No one spoke.
It is a period, I have found, that almost always comes, choosing its own rhythmic moment—the moment when, collectively, everyone on board recognizes that a journey has truly begun. Up there, toward which we are pointing, a thousand miles away, is a tiny little coral island. The object is to reach it, to arrive there without injury to ourselves or to our vessel. No one formally proposed a toast, but looking about—at Tony, with his floppy white hat so carefully tilted to shield his sun-sensitive face from those final ultraviolet shafts; at Dick with his jaunty captain’s hat, reluctantly putting on his shirt as he yielded to the demands of lowering temperature; Van, hatless, with his light blue crew-necked sweater, squinting at that morning’s New York
Times
, glass in hand; Reggie carefully screwing back the holding flange on the speedometer; Christopher, snapping away with an anfractuous photographic apparatus at the setting sun—I guessed that we were all thinking related thoughts.
Book Two
5
On the first Atlantic crossing I thought to ask everyone to keep a journal. The results, as to Danny and (my son) Christopher, were wildly successful. At twenty-three Danny’s style was Huckleberry Finn; at twenty-one, Christopher’s was Henry James. The counterpoint was striking, preeminently responsible, in my judgment, for the success of the book in which their journals are so extensively excerpted.
I found then what I now rediscovered, namely that when on a long cruise you ask your friends to keep a journal a) everyone will agree to do so; b) some will, some won’t; c) some will keep them perfunctorily; d) others will attack them wholeheartedly. Tony’s journal took me a full day merely to read over. It must be twenty thousand words long. Tony’s father is a writer (the novelist John Leggett) and clearly Tony was being not only dutiful, but was giving way gladly to a hard case of
cacoëthes scribendi
. Even
But always, before finally giving up, one invokes the intercession of Reggie; and now he was fiddling with this and that, the ends of a voltmeter in his mouth—when, suddenly, it began to work! Captain Jouning, an immensely resourceful man, was both pleased and chagrined at someone else’s having figured it out, and keenly read the instructions over Reggie’s shoulder, to discover that—mistakenly—Reggie had crossed two wires that the instruction booklet had said
on no account should be crossed!
(Beard-McKie, under
Errata—
“On page 34, paragraph 2, in the sentence that begins, ‘The most important thing to remember …’ substitute
never
for
always.”)
Crossing them, however, caused the speedometer to work; and we there and then solemnly sealed the Sealestial Covenant: that no one would ever inform Brookes and Gatehouse that we had violated their operating instructions.
The wine was poured, we were on course. The wind was from the east at about twelve knots. The sun was sinking, over there to the left, in the general direction of Puerto Rico. Suddenly the babbling stopped, almost as if we had all been following the instructions of an orchestra leader; we heard only the lap-lap of the waves, patting firmly the headstrong hull of our ketch, white-gold in the falling light, the surrounding water turned now a viridian blue, oddly diaphanous, St. Thomas receding astern. No one spoke.
It is a period, I have found, that almost always comes, choosing its own rhythmic moment—the moment when, collectively, everyone on board recognizes that a journey has truly begun. Up there, toward which we are pointing, a thousand miles away, is a tiny little coral island. The object is to reach it, to arrive there without injury to ourselves or to our vessel. No one formally proposed a toast, but looking about—at Tony, with his floppy white hat so carefully tilted to shield his sun-sensitive face from those final ultraviolet shafts; at Dick with his jaunty captain’s hat, reluctantly putting on his shirt as he yielded to the demands of lowering temperature; Van, hatless, with his light blue crew-necked sweater, squinting at that morning’s New York
Times
, glass in hand; Reggie carefully screwing back the holding flange on the speedometer; Christopher, snapping away with an anfractuous photographic apparatus at the setting sun—I guessed that we were all thinking related thoughts.
Book Two
5
On the first Atlantic crossing I thought to ask everyone to keep a journal. The results, as to Danny and (my son) Christopher, were wildly successful. At twenty-three Danny’s style was Huckleberry Finn; at twenty-one, Christopher’s was Henry James. The counterpoint was striking, preeminently responsible, in my judgment, for the success of the book in which their journals are so extensively excerpted.
I found then what I now rediscovered, namely that when on a long cruise you ask your friends to keep a journal a) everyone will agree to do so; b) some will, some won’t; c) some will keep them perfunctorily; d) others will attack them wholeheartedly. Tony’s journal took me a full day merely to read over. It must be twenty thousand words long. Tony’s father is a writer (the novelist John Leggett) and clearly Tony was being not only dutiful, but was giving way gladly to a hard case of
cacoëthes scribendi
. Even
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