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

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By Dave I mean David Davlianidze, the unflappable Georgian expat—hawk-nosed, brilliant, soft-spoken—in whose boat shop on Shelter Island, NY, our eccentric craft had taken shape. In the days after Georgia gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1992 and was plunged into civil war, this gentle, free-spirited economist and entrepreneur carried a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver and ran with other gun-toting “paramilitarists” in order to guard the money he was making by importing cigarettes from Austria and selling them out of what he refers to as his “boutique” in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. His introduction to the Land of Hope and Glory, which we shall visit in due time, was as outrageous and picaresque as that of a character in the boldest and most subversive fiction. He had for months been an outlaw. But for most of us he was all hero—a guy you could trust with your life, as we did literally from the moment we signed on.

The question no one dared ask during the days leading up to our departure was whether our trust was justified. Would the spidery and eccentric vessel Dave had built hold up on the Atlantic? Would the beams connecting the hulls do their job? Would the boat surf, as any rowboat riding the trade winds has to do?