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

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The venture, to be sure, was no laughing matter.

Well, unless you consider that one of the crew was a scrawny and bespectacled sexagenarian, the pinnacle of whose sporting career had been a couple of seasons of high school basketball and a season of hockey with the Forward Pharisees of the old Toronto Church League. This notable human blight on an otherwise durable roster had, until recently, never swung an oar in earnest or even sat on a proper rowing seat—indeed, did not know the names of even the commonest parts on a competitive rowing vessel. It is worthy of Mrs. Malaprop that on training maneuvers, when a reference was made to “the riggers” (the mechanisms that hold the oars in place), the duffer in question assumed it was the rigors of the anticipated crossing that were under discussion.

I am speaking of course of myself, Monsieur la Mer, Charles Wilkins, dad of three, fervent narrator, aging expeditionist; and I must reluctantly report that when I stepped on deck wearing my glasses during the earliest hours of the voyage I was told by one of our toughest rowers, Ryan Worth of the University of Tennessee, that I looked as if I were on my way to the library.