Little Ship of Fools
Описание книги
The dramatic and hilarious story of sores and survival on a human-powered journey across the ocean.It was to be an expedition like no other—a run across the Atlantic from Morocco to Barbados aboard an experimental rowboat. There would be no support vessel, no stored water, no sails, no motor. The boat's crew of sixteen included several veterans of U.S. college rowing, a number of triathletes, a woman who had rowed both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and a scrawny, bespectacled sexagenarian – our chronicler, Charles Wilkins.When he joined the expedition, Wilkins had never swung an oar in earnest. In a tale both harrowing and hilarious, Wilkins takes the reader along for seven weeks of rationed food, festering sores, breathtaking sunrises, sleep deprivation, and mile-high waves alongside a devoted crew of misadventurers.Little Ship of Fools is a fascinating and funny story of courage, adventure and human spirit
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In the Land of Long Fingernails
Walk to New York
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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).
If I had a training predicament it was this: that, while I was supposed to be putting on weight, the better to survive the physiological dunning of the Atlantic, I was actually losing it, couldn’t gain an ounce no matter how many gallons of oatmeal and pounds of spaghetti and handfuls of cashews I consumed. My intention was to get up to 180 pounds from my customary 160, but I knew from experience that I would have to put the weight on gradually—couldn’t hope to add that much muscle and lard during the last couple of months.
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