Posted by Fred Boynton on November 06, 2005 at 17:06:08 from 63.21.99.29 user Voyager.
In Reply to: Learning to sail posted by Jock on November 04, 2005 at 13:52:46:
The S&A books have had two life-long influences on me: 1) Thanks to them, at age eleven I learned to read for pleasure, not just for homework or hobbies. The only work of fiction on my bookshelf, which was in no danger of falling off the wall from the weight of its contents, was Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of Mr. Tod," an alarming omen if ever there was one. In addition to star charts like Dick might have had, I had a book on knot-tying. The other book, completing the total of three on the shelf, was optimistically titled "Primer of Celestial Navigation" (1948 being well before today's electronic navigation). It was Greek to me, but the diagrams were every bit as intriguing as any S&A secret code. My microscope kit had included several ready-made slides (Roger would say, "talk about slice of life!"), and I turned the convoluted contours of one hapless specimen into my own Secret Water.
The stories fit me like the proverbial shoe: active outdoor life, traditional family, travel to summer vacation site where I pretended the school half of my life didn't exist; I could walk right into the stories without having to suspend any disbelief. The geographical accuracy of their setting didn't matter to me; just the realism. After a fifty year break I aquired the books again and, although I remembered the stories fairly well, what startled me was that I remembered the illustrations so exactly. They appeared, one after another, as substantial as long-lost friends showing up at the front door: "Surprise!" Friends, however, age. I work my way through the books twice a year, reading a few pages before lights-out.
2) The books, especially WDM, undoubtedly led to my taking up sailing and, like Tom, doing my first cruising in an open 18-footer, with a tarp thrown over the boom at night. And from '63 to '73 blue water voyaging in "Westerly," a 25ft British Vertue class sloop, living out a dream (I grabbed a chance; no regrets). Other influences: a tour of Irving Johnson's 96ft brigantine "Yankee" in '48. He and his wife Electa made seven 18-month circumnavigations with 20-24 high-school age crew members, always stopping in Galapagos and Pitcairn, sometimes Easter I also, the stuff of dreams.