Word: boated
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm (Norton; 227 pages; $23.95). The somewhat peculiar title refers to the disastrous confluence of a large hurricane and a muscular nor'easter in the fishing grounds off New England and Newfoundland in 1991. The Andrea Gail, a 72-ft. offshore commercial swordfish boat, sank with its crew of six men in the monstrous confusion of air and water that resulted. A small sailboat, the Satori, also sank, though its crew was saved, and so did a powerful rescue helicopter that ran out of fuel, ditched and lost one crewman...
Exactly what happened to the fishing boat is not known, though the 100-ft. waves of what was called the Halloween Gale were more than enough to capsize such a boat or to pitchpole it end for end. What happened to the crew is clearer, and Junger is grimly precise about the mechanics of drowning...
Less somber, but still a fog-shrouded mystery of the sea, is why it is hard to love even the sleekest boat made of fiber glass, or sheet steel, or sprayed ferro-concrete. And why, if you like boats at all, it is hard not to love even a squat, stumpy and probably leaky boat made of wood. Two amiable new books about the perilous beguilement of wood boats are Sea Change, by Peter Nichols (Viking; 238 pages; $23.95) and Sailing in a Spoonful of Water, by Joe Coomer (Picador; 256 pages...
...Coomer is another sort of adventurer, a landsman who falls in love with a 60-year-old, 28-ft. wooden motor launch with a short mast and a steadying sail. Coomer buys the boat for a reasonable price, which is much like adopting, for a reasonable price, a child who must shortly be sent to Princeton. He names it Yonder (that's the easy part), learns to hoist anchor, percolate about the harbor, and dock again. Also to sail a bit, and what to do when the diesel fails: call for a tow, then call the diesel wizard, then deploy...
...turns out; enough to fuel the writing of a book. The result is a quirky, relaxed account, as much family journal as boat biography. Coomer, who's a novelist (Kentucky Love, The Loop), has a sure way with words, as when he tells how, a new-hatched captain, he held Yonder's "taut wet anchor line in my hand as if it were the reins to the planet...