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

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For others who had stayed with the voyage, it was the last hatchet blow, and within days the crew was down to seven or eight committed rowers. One of them, fortunately, was Nigel Roedde, Steve’s son, who was determined to see the voyage through, thus significantly increasing the chances that Steve would find his way back aboard.

As rowers abandoned ship, my own sense of commitment deepened. By this time, I had borrowed a rowing machine and was often on it for three hours a day. At the height of Roy’s flare-up with Steve, I emailed them both, confirming my participation, hoping it would not be read as a betrayal of my friendship with Steve. Which clearly it was not. When I visited Steve and Janet at Christmas, Steve and I “raced” on a pair of machines in their rec room, after which he informed me that I was now functioning at “the fitness level of the average twenty-five-year-old” (he did not mention which species, although I assumed he was talking about human beings and on that basis permitted myself a moment or two of satisfaction over the progress I had at times doubted I was making).