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

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Likewise, I nourished my own modest fears and uncertainties, in the hope not just of weathering but of welcoming the consequences of this thing I had chosen to do. And therein I located both the thematic and narrative arcs of the next few months of my life—arcs animated increasingly by my improbable makeover as a high-stakes rower, an extreme athlete, or, more pertinently, an extreme convert to the uncertain art of keeping the adventure alive.

WHILE THE CREW trained, David and his Shelter Island kinsmen were at work on the boat—strengthening it, rebuilding parts of it, generally gussying it up and fitting it for the ravages of the sea. David believed that Roy, whose idea was to keep the boat’s weight down at any cost, had somewhat under-engineered the vessel, perhaps leaving it vulnerable to the tough going ahead. Roy’s earliest plan had not even included a cabin; crew members were to have slept in compartments in the hulls or on an open platform between them. In defense of Roy’s standards, it should be said that in 2006 he had built an ocean rowboat named Orca, a gorgeous tri-hull (two of the hulls were in effect sealed hollow outriggers) in which he and three others raced across the Atlantic against a boat named La Mondiale, piloted by the famed Scottish ocean rower Leven Brown. Coincidentally, it was La Mondiale’s crossing time of thirty-three days (Orca crossed in thirty-four) that established the world record we were about to go chasing.