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

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By the time the ensuing quarrel derailed, Steve had pronounced Roy a liar and closet fraud, and Roy had declared Steve an insubordinate meddler (in words slightly more colorful) who could not accept authority and who would not now, ever, be part of the crew that would eventually row Big Blue to her rightful moorage in the record books.

When I spoke to Steve shortly after the announcement, he told me he was “devastated” that his eight months of training and anticipation—in effect the reshaping of his life to the exotic prospect that lay ahead—had come to nothing. Even if he could patch things up with Roy, there was the more concrete obstacle of the sugar bush.

We had barely absorbed this new and shattering reality, when an announcement came that it was now all off for a year. The proposed February departure could not be accomplished either, after which, for nine months, there would be too great a likelihood of tropical storms and hurricanes. For crew members such as Steve, this opened new possibilities—if and only if he could work things out with Roy. A new concern, however, was whether he could withstand another year of the sort of training that, at this point, had taken a toll not just on him but on his marriage.