Word: seamanship
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...adventure. She went on to officers' school in Newport, R.I., then landed in a Navy personnel office in Yokosuka, Japan. Once again, McGrath started daydreaming. "I was proofreading stuff that I really didn't understand," she says. "I wasn't doing what I had trained for--navigating, driving boats, seamanship and engineering." She hitched a ride on a Navy support vessel touring the region. "They had me stand watch, do a man-overboard drill, let me drive the ship," she says. "I went, 'Wow, this is neat.' I remember thinking, 'Yes, this is what I want...
...Hungry Ocean (Hyperion; 261 pages; $22.95) is a much quieter ride. It is written by Linda Greenlaw, a commercial fisherman who is as accomplished at her form of seamanship as the sailors of the Vendee Globe are at theirs. In The Perfect Storm--an account of the savage Halloween gale of 1991 in the Atlantic off Massachusetts--author Sebastian Junger described Greenlaw as "one of the best sea captains, period, on the East Coast." The Hungry Ocean is Greenlaw's account of a 30-day trip aboard the 100-ft. sword boat Hannah Boden as it steams out with...
This happens with tedious predictability. Then comes the title weather disturbance. It's predictable too, though excitingly staged by director Ridley Scott. It does not, however, sweep away quite as many of the boys as one would like. Thereafter comes an investigation of Sheldon's seamanship, during which the survivors rally to his defense. The movie climaxes with a manly group...
Conner is the defender thanks as much to his off-water politicking as to his seamanship. His clout with yacht-club cronies led to a new interpretation of the rules, allowing him to replace a broken keel with a better model. Hours before the last semifinals race, in which he would have been eliminated in a 5-min. rout by the mostly women's team aboard Mighty Mary, Conner negotiated a deal to turn the two-boat finals into a three-boat series. In his last finals race, Conner must have cut a deal with an even higher authority...
Whichever sex is at the helm, the margin of victory may depend more on technology than seamanship. If the Australians won in 1983 -- the first and only time a challenger has wrested away the Cup -- it was mostly because of their newfangled keels flanked by little wings to diminish underwater drag. If Koch, a multimillionaire with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from M.I.T., trounced four-time winner Conner and the Italian finalist, Gardini, in the last Cup, it was because he built four boats only to settle on the one with the sleekest hull, stiffest mast and lightest sails made...