BOOKS
Bahía de Caráquez, Ecuador, Wednesday, July 25, 2007

One of our main pastimes aboard Vilisar is reading. In fact, while many cruisers are off climbing mountains, scuba-diving, hang-gliding or otherwise up to various hardy physical activities, Kathleen and I are usually to be found each with a book in hand. So, while the others appear to be on a round-the-world sports meet, Vilisar’s crew appears to be on an extended reading tour.

Most ports-of-call for yachts have some sort of book exchange. While mostly these exchanges are a jumble of books and magazines in some unneeded corner of the marina complex, in some places some kindly person has actually organized them into some semblance of a lending or exchange library. I remember the one at the Club de Cruceros in La Paz, Mexico, with fondness: the three sides of the square room lined with shelves and the books neatly classed by types. With no trouble at all you could avoid the romance novels, which to be frank make up the bulk of such book exchanges, and get straight to the historical, biographical, politics and economics that I like. Sometimes too you will even find back numbers of Harpers or The New Yorker.

Every once in a while you find a gem. Of course, not many of the books are the latest creaming of the best-seller lists. But you will find enough to keep you going. We stock up for long voyages. And, as you might expect, you find lots of sailing-related books: how-to books on rigging, boat construction, navigation, sail-making, cooking at sea, etc. Included in this category are also cruising guides (usually somewhat out of date and for cruising grounds that you too have just recently left astern), marine charts and tourist guides for faraway countries.

Soon after I moved aboard Vilisar in August 2001 I also resolved to follow the wine-drinking maxim of a German acquaintance of mine. I don’t recall anymore who it was, but he said that he drinks the best wines he could afford. “Life’s too short for plonk!” was his motto. He was a lot younger at the time than I am now. So I resolved to avoid reading literary plonk. Even when I am reading something lighter between two heavies, I try to tuck into something well written. Scott Turow, for example, rather than some finger-exercise, murder-mystery fluff.

I also resolved to read all the classics that I was supposed to have read at university. I actually took courses back then in “The English Novel”, “18th Century Poetry” or “Modern Drama”. But I never seemed able to cope with the volumes and volumes to be read. I am still not a fast reader: I don’t actually use my finger to follow the line of print or mouth the words as I read. But I do amble my way through the books. Here now was my chance to delve. What a pleasure too! It just proves once again that youth is so wasted on the young. The problem was to find the vintage amongst the plonk.

But, as I mentioned, every once in a while I would find a genuine classic at a book exchange. I had read Flaubert’s Madame Bauvary years ago but re-reading it now many years later and older was a real pleasure. At the moment I am reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Surely I had dipped into this huge work years ago. Now it’s been on board Vilisar for aover a year and Kathleen is in a Fly Lady mood, embarking on a “21 Fling Boogey” and threatening to take it back. I had been postponing getting started at it because it was over 700 pages – and that’s only for Part I! But once started I could hardly put it down. I am sure now I had never read it before. Unfortunately, I once saw the film and all I can recall is Henry Fonda as Pierre, as wooden a piece of acting as you could find anywhere. It almost spoils the book for me.

The photo of the stack of books at the foot of my berth give some idea of what’s more-or-less on the front burner:
Allende. City of the Beasts
Austen. Sense and Sensibility
Blanchet. The Curve of Time
Brink. The Other Side
Cawthoren. Vietnam; A War Lost and Won
Dos Passos. U.S.A.; The 42nd Parallel
Faulkner. Three Famous Short Novels
Fedors Guide to New Zealand
Flaubert. Madame Bauvary
Forrster. A Passage to India
Fromm. The Art of Loving
Hardy. Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter
Holy Bible (King James Version)
Horgen. The River; The Rio Grande in North American History
Hughes. A High Wind in Jamaica (Is this slush? But it’s maritime.)
Kent. To Glory We Sail; Enemy in Sight; A Tradition of Victory (OK, these are kind of superficial too. But must-reads for yachties. I picked up the whole set of Hornblower novels and this smattering of Kent and O’Brian at a boaters’ flea market in Mexico)
Lonely Planet: Baja California
McMurray. Cadillac Jack
Noam Chomsky. Hegemony or Survival
O. Henry. 41 Stories
O’Brian. H.M.S. Surprise
Obama. Dreams of my Father
Orwell. Animal Farm
Parkinson. The Law
Prentice Hall Handbook for Writers
Randall. Sandino’s Daughter
Ruddick. Writing That Means Business
Theroux. The Kingdom by the Sea
Thomas Wolf. Look Homeward Angel
Lovell. Straight on Till Morning

These are just the ones at the foot of my berth. There are lots more stashed around the boat somewhere. Sometimes they get shoved down a hatch and, occasionally mildewed, are happily rediscovered months later. They are what I could get. There’s no system.

For regular reference we pull out books from our more permanent onboard library:
501 Spanish Verbs
British Admiralty. Sailing Routes for the World
Calder. Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual
Charlie’s Charts of Polynesia
Church of England Prayer Book (1662 Edition)
Clay. South Pacific Anchorages
Cornel. World Cruising Routes
Episcopal Prayer Book & Hymnal
Field Guide to the Birds of North America
Groene. Cooking on the Go
Hinz. Landfalls in Paradise
Hyam. New Thai Cuisine
Jafrey. Foolproof Indian Cookery
Joy of Cooking, The
Merck Manual, The
Meyer. The Book of Living Verse
Moosewood Collective Cooks at Home, The
New York Times Atlas of the World, The
Parsons. Spanish for Cruisers
RCC Pilotage Foundation. South Pacific Crossing Guide
Sailmaker’s Apprentice, The
Smith. The Marlinespike Sailor
Spanish-English Dictionary, The New World
Sunset. Breads
Sunset. Chinese Cooking
Toss. The Rigger’s Apprentice
Webster’s Dictionary (11th Edition). (Used a lot for writing, for proofreading and for Scrabble)
Cassell’s German & English Dictionary
Stonehouse. Sea Mammals of the World

This is just a sampling. We carry a few dozen books that stay with us all the time.

We exchange reading experiences and, if one of us has had a good or a bad read, the other moves the book up on the priority list or dumps it unread in the return-to-book-exchange bag.

Early morning and late evening are the main reading times aboard. Since we moved aboard Vilisar in August 2001 our day-to-day life has become more attuned to the daylight hours: we are awake at dawn and, when it’s dark again, we move inside. After light evening meal we play Canasta or Scrabble before cracking open the books again. The reading lights over the berths are usually out by 2100. I usually wake up again, refreshed, after about six hours and can find to read or write for a few hours again during the dog watch.

Good books get passed on to friends. Occasionally however, Kathleen, the chief thrower-outer around here, culls the books and we tote plastic bags of read or “forget-about-it” books back to the nearest book exchange. This is like parting with friends but there is only so much room on a cruising boat.