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

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WHEN WORD CAME from Roy Finlay in mid-October that the boat was not ready and that, given the shipping time to Morocco, we could not mobilize until February, I was surely the only crew member who felt even a remote sense of relief, in that I now had time to get properly into shape, as well as to sort my finances, get my will updated, and so on. Some of my fellow crew members were outraged. A few had taken specific time off work in order to participate, or had other obligations in February and couldn’t make the adjustment.

No one responded more adamantly than Steve. He and Janet have a maple syrup operation on the island, and he had to be there tapping trees and boiling sap during late February and March. I had access to some of Steve and Roy’s correspondence at the time. I am not free to quote from it, but will submit that Steve went at the captain with an all-but-animal rage over his perceived delinquency in not providing fair warning as to what was going on with the boat. It was Steve’s contention that Roy must have known weeks earlier not only what shape Big Blue was in but what sort of effort would be required to get her to Morocco.