For the past several days I have been reading what may well be a masterpiece, WE, THE DROWNED, by the Danish author Carsten Jensen, which came to me via BookBub. Centered around Marstal, a small Danish island whose livelihood came from the second largest sailing fleet in the country, it begins around 1850. I have now read 500 of the 670 pages and am up to the time between the World Wars. Despite two ships ‘keeling’ over and one sailing under the ‘forestay’, the writing and understand of ships, the sea, and people, men, women, children, is exceptional. I wonder if the keeling and forestay are not errors by translators who aren’t sailors. I don’t think Jensen would have made them. Although the novel is sometimes troubling, I haven’t enjoyed a book more in a long time.
Here are four excerpts.
This last brings a smile as I prepare to sail the North Atlantic at 80.
Of that sailing I have begun to consider because of the hurricane season a return from Iceland via Canada and the east coast of the US rather than the UK and the Azores. I am merely sharing thoughts, not seeking advice. This is not Facebook. The distance from Reykjavik to Nova Scotia is 1400 miles.
I went to the chart stores of both iSailor and iNavX. iSailor has everything I need at very low prices. To my surprise I found that iNavX no longer offers Navionics charts which for me renders it useless.
I went to see the beautiful skin cancer doctor yesterday. One minor consequence of the pandemic is that some of her beauty is masked, but she also has a charming manner which is not. As usual she froze parts of me and chopped off two others to be sent for biopsy. I can’t make a flight reservation for Hilton Head until I know if I will have to return to be chopped again. Results next week.
Tomorrow Carol is going to drive us to Saint Louis where I will take some photos and videos of a few places from my long ago unlamented youth which will be useful to my probably nonexistent future biographers and possibly of interest to others.
The temperature in Saint Louis on Saturday is forecast to be 72ºF/22ºC. Right now it is 30ºF/-1ºC here. I don’t know what to wear.
Not offering advice. I am offering a mooring in Newport, RI for up to two weeks (which is all the time that I think the harbor regulations allow me to loan my mooring).
ReplyDeleteThank you for your king offer, Any. I will keep it in mind.
ReplyDeleteI did modify the sentence about advice. It was a bit harsh.
All the skin cancer doctors I have encountered have been extremely good looking. I wonder if it is a requirement?
ReplyDeleteWebb said...
ReplyDelete"Thank you for your king offer."
Not quite 'War and Peach' but long live the King anyway!
Heh heh
I'm not sure "keel over" is wrong. Obviously if it means heeling over, yes, but if it means capsizing or turning turtle it might be right. There is even a Yakima car top rack called that, intended to carry a dinghy upside down by gripping the gunwales.
ReplyDeleteSo I think in the idiom of keeling over, you aren't collapsing so much as you are toppling head first. That makes me think the idiom of "head over heels" is completely topsy-turvy--it should be "heels over head"