Читать книгу Little Ship of Fools. Sixteen Rowers, One Improbable Boat, Seven Tumultuous Weeks on the Atlantic онлайн

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First, though, I had something to attend to in the darkness of the cabin—and must at this point grant a moment’s shore leave to anyone of delicate nature. For even so early in my story, I must thrust into the limelight a part of my anatomy typically off limits to non-professionals or to those whose house key does not match my own. By which I am referring to my ass. To what was left of my ass.

My problem astern, I am embarrassed to report, had begun earlier that evening, barely out of Agadir, when, in a moment of distraction and weariness, I had dropped my precious gel seat cushion overboard into the sea. It was an item that had taken me weeks of sampling and experimentation to decide upon and buy, and as I stood on the bridge watching it disappear into the depths, a little part of my optimism for the trip disappeared with it.

Now, in the darkness, tummy-down in the bunk, I raised my hips a few inches and, using my thumbs as grappling hooks, eased my Class-3 high-tech rain pants onto my thighs. By this time I had endured three watches in succession with no seat pad, or with replacement pads so woeful (a pair of gloves, a folded sweatshirt) that none at all might have been an improvement. With the help of my stubbly chin, I pried open a tin of Penaten Medicated Cream and, working blind, pressed great sticky gobs of the sweet-smelling emollient onto the weeping sores, one of them as big as a Ritz cracker, that had been grated into my backside by the rowing seat.