Sailing stories for young readers

I GREW UP ON THE Swallows and Amazons series of children’s sailing books. The author, Arthur Ransome, was a very interesting character who wrote on a wide range of subjects. He was a newspaperman, too, a foreign correspondent, at one stage of his career, and Wikipedia has a lot to say about him. But these days he is still best remembered for the books he wrote about the adventures of the Walker kids in their little open sailing dinghy and their frequent rivals, a pair of particularly capable sisters.

When I grow up, I want to write sailing books for kids like Arthur Ransome did, but meanwhile, about 20 years ago (and just for practice) I wrote a book called Danger, Dolphins & Ginger Beer (Atheneum)

I made the protagonist a 12-year-old girl, which was very appealing to my New York agent, Julie Fallowfield. (Actually, she was my wife’s agent, but June allowed me to borrow her). Julie had no trouble selling DD&GB to a children’s imprint of Simon & Schuster, in New York. She also sold it to the German publisher Carlsen, of Hamburg, who translated it into German and called it Segelsommer mit Delphinen (Summer Sail with Dolphins).  You’ll notice that they left out the ginger beer part. I don’t think Germans know about ginger beer. They prefer the real stuff.

Anyway, this exciting, fast-paced story about a family sailing around the world takes place in the British Virgin Islands and it generated hundreds of fan letters from young readers in American schools where it was used as an English text-book. It’s now out of print, I’m sorry to say, but still available on the used-book market. It’s also still available as an audio book from Good Old Boat magazine.

I wrote two follow-ups to DD&GB: So Long, Foxtrot Charlie and Sally Steals an Elephant. They involve the same Sally Grant and her two younger brothers. These books never sold in print form (which is incredible considering how good they are) but  both of them are available as audio books from Good Old Boat magazine. 

All three in this series are splendid books. I have to say this myself, because nobody else is likely to.  What is more certain is that they help fill a large gap in boating books for middle-grade readers.

Today’s Thought

You cannot write for children .  .  . They’re much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.

— Maurice Sendak, Boston Globe, 4 Jan 87

Tailpiece

“How do you like your new babysitter, Johnny?”

“I hate her, Mom. If I was bigger I would grab her and bite her on the back of her neck like Dad does.”  

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He's tracking you all the time

A DINGHY SAILOR I used to know once confided in me that while he loved sailing, he was afraid of the ocean. He would never get a bigger boat, he said.  He had no desire to go to sea, there to be caught out in a storm and drowned.

I sometimes wonder how many others there are like him, how many whose apprehension rules their lives to this extent.  I suppose we all know people who buckle up every time they drive a car, not because the law requires it, but because they believe it might save their lives.  And there are people who won’t take an elevator, who refuse to ride in an airplane.  But is there any point in all this precaution?  Is the continual worry worth it?

I was reading one of my favorite authors the other night, a fellow now known as Alfred George Gardiner but who in his time, during World War I, was known only by his pen name, Alpha of the Plough. He wrote a column for The Star, a London newspaper, at a time when sudden death from German bombs was all around him.

Here’s what he had to say about those who lived in constant fear:

“You cannot be alive unless you take life gallantly. You know that the Great Harvester is tracking you all the time, and that one day, perhaps quite suddenly, his scythe will catch you and lay you among the sheaves of the past.

“Every day and every hour he is remorselessly at your heels. A breath of bad air will do his work, or the prick of a pin, or a fall on the stairs, or a draught from the window. You can’t take a ride in a bus, or a row in a boat, or a swim in the sea, or a bat at the wicket without offering yourself as a target to the enemy. You may die from the fear of death.

“I am not preaching Nietzsche’s gospel of ‘Live dangerously.’ There is no need to try to live dangerously, and no sense in going about tweaking the nose of death to show what a deuce of a fellow you are.

“The truth is that we cannot help living dangerously. Life is a dangerous calling, full of pitfalls. You, getting the coal in the mine by the light of your lamp, are living with death very, very close at hand. You, on the railway shunting trucks, you in the factory or the engine shop moving in a maze of machinery, you in the belly of the ship stoking the fire — all alike are in an adventure that may terminate at any moment. Let us accept that fact like men, and dismiss it like men, going about our tasks as though we had all eternity to live in, not foolishly challenging profitless perils, but, on the other hand, declining to be intimidated by the shadow of the scythe that dogs our steps.”

I wish my dinghy-sailing friend could have read this. Who knows what oceans he may have crossed and how much he might have profited by it.

Today’s Thought

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

— Carl Jung

Tailpiece

Paddy Murphy was enjoying a pint of Guinness in Bert’s Bar when the bar-keep came along and said: “Here’s a puzzle for you. My mother had a child. It wasn’t my brother. It wasn’t my sister. Who was it?”
Paddy scratched his head and pawed the floor but eventually had to give up.
“It was ME, you fool,” cried Bert.
Paddy thought that was a very good joke and decided to tell his wife when he got home.
“My mother had a child,” he said, “It wasn’t my brother. It wasn’t my sister. Who was it?”
His wife was flummoxed. She gave up.
Paddy was triumphant. “It was Bert over at Bert’s Bar, you fool!”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)   

Close is not necessarily safe

BEWARE OF THE FALSE FEELING of safety you get when you’re close to land. Most water-related deaths occur near land, not out at sea. Be particularly careful in a hard dinghy. If it founders or capsizes you might never make it to shore.

Inflatable dinghies are less likely than hard dinghies to capsize, but they are more likely to be blown out to sea if the engine fails.

Most of us suffer from the delusion that if we can see the shore, we can swim to it. But that doesn’t take into account the effect of the current or the coldness of the water. In areas where the water is cold, you’d be lucky to survive for an hour before hypothermia set in.

The biggest danger lies in overloading a hard dinghy. Choppy waves may flood the boat and lead to capsize. So check the dinghy’s safe carrying capacity label. If there’s no label, multiply overall length by beam in feet, and divide by 15, to find the maximum number of persons.

Here’s a tip: Make up a small safety pack for your dinghy (besides oars and lifejackets): flashlight, compass, bailer, and spare drain plug. A hand-held VHF radio could be a lifesaver.

Today’s Thought

He is safe from danger who is on guard even when safe.
— Publilius Syrus, Sententiae

Tailpiece

“Why did they transfer your boy friend from that submarine?”
“He likes to sleep with the window open.”

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No thrill without danger?

HAVE WE MADE our boats so safe that we have deprived ourselves of the tinge of danger that is an essential component of adventure? In fact, is it possible to have a real adventure under sail if there is no possibility whatsoever of danger?

Thomas Fleming Day, author, editor and boat designer, used to think that an auxiliary engine in a yacht was not so much a safety feature as a distraction from adventure. "Its chief drawback," he said, "is that its use tends to make cruising less toilsome and hazardous."
 The effect of the engine, he believed was to discount skill and pluck and to remove from voyaging the uncertainty that is the chief charm of the cruiser's existence. "The fact that you leave port with a certainty of getting to your destination on time, barring accidents, makes somewhat monotonous an event that otherwise containing a large element of chance induces a corresponding degree of excitement."
Day also believed that there was probably no pastime so tiresome to an active man as powerboating, especially in familiar waters. A steam yacht, he said, was "a lazy man's palace and an active man's prison. Except when there is a race or a difficult bit of navigation, I would as soon run a trolley car as a power boat."
He found his pleasure in physical exertion, he added, and in "opposing what skill and knowledge I may possess to the task of getting the better of the elements."
And yet, despite all this brave talk, Day, like most of us, eventually allowed that an engine, just a small one, mind you, might be a handy thing to have, especially when it didn't actually interfere with any adventures. "As age and rheumatism tighten their grip, my heart is gradually weaned from the sail," he confessed, "and I find myself thinking seriously if, after all, it will not be better to have a little power under the deck to fall back on at certain times."
What Day failed to appreciate, perhaps, is that it is not only danger and uncertainty that generate the thrill of adventure. It has long been my contention that inexperience and poor preparation are the true parents of adventure.
And as for auxiliary engines guaranteeing arrival in port on time, I can personally testify to the fallacy of that argument. In fact the yachting literature is replete with accounts of engines that, failing at the wrong moment, actually contributed to adventures filled with more than enough danger, uncertainty, and heart-racing excitement to satisfy the average sailor.
Today's Thought
Without danger the game grows cold.
— Chapman, All Fools.
Tailpiece
"Doc I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home.'"
"That sounds like Tom Jones syndrome."
"Is it common?"
"It's not unusual."
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