Word: michel
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...crossing to Rio -- "fantastic," Janis recalls, offering further a sort of book-jacket blurb that would surely kill sales: "Nothing hairy about it!" Michel and his sextant navigated a course straight as the kerf from a sawmill blade. One day he told his family they would be in Rio at 1 the next morning. At midnight, they could see land. With scant instruction -- he had had a couple of lessons in 1976 -- Michel was now a credible yachtsman, and a diesel mechanic and carpenter to boot, what with all the breakdowns that never cease on a boat -- any boat...
...week (it takes one week for the yolk to drop to the bottom, touching the shell and commencing to rot). Second, coat them with vaseline (to clog the porous shell and keep moisture and oxygen away from the yolk). For good measure, they had taken two live chickens. Michel promised them, "If you lay one egg, I will spare your life." The chickens contributed their lives to the larder...
...boys had to be fetched from shore in a dinghy, and then Michel, who has been working at an architectural firm for a year, had to be boated home. On land he proudly drives an old rusted $500 Ford LTD. "Janis hates it," he said, coming aboard. "I had only had little European cars. I very much wanted a big, stupid machine." This was on a Friday, and Michel did a very American thing. He handed his wife his paycheck and got himself a beer...
...same place, but I don't have to. We have no future. Zero. Plans for retirement, zero. Plans for college for the kids, zero. I can tell you maybe three months ahead, but no more. We realize thinking too much about tomorrow can destroy today." A dolphin plashed, and Michel said, "I have a very small house but a very big garden...
...soon the Couvreux family will sail away again. Through the Panama Canal and up the west coast to Alaska, they think, and eventually to Tahiti, of course, and one year or another, Michel says, "we go to France so my boys can be French too." When they are at sea, the boys take correspondence courses that are accredited in France. When anchored, Michel feels schools are important for social intercourse. "They must know there are little girls" (yes, thank heaven, he said, "leetel gulls") "and good guys and bad guys and all those things...