Racing Through Paradise
Buckley, William F. Jr.
The publisher is calling Racing Through Paradise the "third entry in Bill Buckley's now classic sailing trilogy." Which shows confidence, if not outright wishfulness. There is every chance that this...
...Bonnet, Medoc, 3 cases of '83 Fleurie, Barolet, 4 cases of '82 Chablis, Barolet, 1 case of '81 Ch...
...So . . . yes, these books may indeed become classics and that might not be just another case of flap copy hyperbole...
...Danny calculated that fifty cases of beer was about right, and I got the wine through a merchant in Honolulu: 3 cases of Vintage Selection Cabernet Sauvignon, 3 cases of '82 Kendall Jackson Cabernet Sauvignon, 3 cases of '82 St...
...It is a self-inflicted ordeal and one that—the reader surely thinks—is better than a day at the office . . . otherwise why would he bother reading about it...
...If I were the publisher, I would merely call this, conservatively, the third volume in the Buckley sailing series and leave it at that...
...And I wouldn't even consider reading a book by Dennis Conner except for pay . . . which I recently did, and earned every penny...
...It was at this point that Himself appeared at the companionway, in boxer shorts, to say he was having a hard time sleeping, not being able to find the leeboards...
...in a 71-foot ketch called Sealestial...
...Christopher Buckley is the entertainment officer of this cruise and among the movies he brings along is The Wackiest Ship in the Army...
...There is every chance that this book and the others—Atlantic High and Airborne—will be judged classics by someone with more authority than the author of flap copy for Random House...
...Having read a number of their books for pay, I say he is right on...
...This sort of thing violates a loose convention in adventure books...
...Gloria, 5 cases of '83 Muscadet Sevre-et-Maine, 3 cases of '78 Jean Leon Cabernet Sauvignon, 3 cases of '83 Pies-porter Michelsberg Kabinett, Reh, 3 cases of Mateus Rose, 1 case of Freixinet Cordon Negro Brut champagne...
...Well, needless to say, it was necessary to awaken Allan...
...The adventurer is supposed to suffer andwe, the readers, are supposed to admire him for his fortitude...
...In fact he woke all on hisown, the sounds on the deck now clearly panic-tonal...
...Maybe . . . but I would rather by a damn sight spend a month aboard a boat full of busy writers, skippered by William F Buckley, than a boat full of puritanical sailors under the command of Dennis Conner...
...This crew does not take itself too seriously...
...Doubtless the arrangements were almost as much of a challenge as the actual sailing, but they do not make for the same compelling reading...
...I haven't the energy to decipher which of the two vessels, Endeavour, or Sealestial, was the more vinous...
...As long as you can't be there yourself, enjoying a glass of wine and a sunset at sea, reading his account of it has got to be the next best thing...
...He said that maybe this would be the time to jibe...
...After all, Buckley's introduction to celestial navigation, written for the intelligent layman in one of those two previous volumes, has been widely reprinted and hailed as something of a breakthrough by accredited experts...
...Many of the entries—especially those of his son, Christopher—are hilarious...
...okay as a rough estimate, but there were seven or eight cases left over, which we ended up giving to a church at Kavieng...
...And work, to round things out...
...On the other hand, I will eagerly buy and read every book in the Buckley sailing series...
...As for work . . . there is much writing going on aboard Sealestial...
...So if the point is to enjoy (Buckley goes sailing for fun and elsewhere for transcendence) then what, besides wine, is required...
...Presumably it is also an offense against the convention of sailing adventures...
...He and I brought in the genoa, pondered the propeller-bound sheet, and persuaded WFB that it would be best to wait until light to raise the second jenny...
...So one hopes he will sail on, bringing back these very human and engaging volumes from each voyage...
...Buckley quotes from the journals, all of which were turned in to him at the end of the trip...
...Never mind that the adventurer is out there doing whatever it is he is doing by choice...
...Liz [the cook] served approximately one thousand man-meals, so that comes down to $2.50 booze per person per meal...
...You do not drink and you do not write and you do not horse around...
...On that point, Buckley includes a rumination on solitary sea crossers and finds them, with one exception, misanthropic and unappealing...
...Soon it was four o'clock, and our watch looked like it would pass without incident...
...Five minutes later we had managed to wrap the genoa so tightly around the forestay I thought we'd need KY jelly to get it back down...
...What's wrong with our new tack—if it could be called that—was that if sleep was difficult before, it was surely impossible now, what with the 12-foot following swells and Dick at the helm...
...Since this is a Buckley expedition, things are done—and recounted—in a way that is guaranteed to irritate the Puritans among us...
...But what about this trilogy business...
...Buckley on navigation is like reading McPhee on geology—you go much further than you ever thought you would care to, carried by the palpable enthusiasm and the charitably clear prose of your guide...
...In the way of tools, there is a new navigational device which Buckley describes lovingly, as well as a computer program he calls WhatStar, which he worked out with the help of Hugh Kenner...
...We had also managed to wrap the windward sheet one and one-half times around the propeller...
...The cost was $2,525.74...
...I don't want to have to wake Allan [the skipper] to find the leeboards...
...What you do, by God, is sail and when it is done, you will be a better man for it...
...WFB was surprisingly docile to our argument, needing no pressing, perhaps out of a sense of complicity for our present state...
...I read Racing Through Paradise without coming across a promise by Buckley that this was his last sailing book...
...In this book, the same red flag is waved when Buckley describes the loading of wines...
...Buckley's distinguishing traits...
...No reason not to expect that the more lyrical passages will stand and -give pleasure as long as people still read and sail and enjoy sharing enthusiasms, which is one of Mr...
...Buckley even tells the reader where he may actually skip over a few pages in the event he isn't all that interested in navigation...
...Tools, for another...
...Now, as to the actual book, it is "about" a voyage that Buckley, his son Christopher, and some companions took across the Pacific Ocean Geoffrey Norman is a contributing editor of Esquire...
...I'd be willing to bet that Buckley hasn't made any such promise . . . not to his publisher, not to his readers, and certainly not to himself...
...And of course, wines...
...Four major works in progress or final editing...
...Some reviewers have expressed reservations about this...
...Well, companionship for one...
...I note that Captain Cook, on his bark Endeavour, provided for seventy men at sea for one year, "Beer in Pundheons, 1200 gallons, Spirits 1600 gallons...
...He is large enough of spirit to know that the wine and the companionship and the tools raise the level of the thing once you have mastered those necessary fundamentals of seamanship without which you wouldn't be able to enjoy any of it...
...The companions, it turns out, are all working on book manuscripts as well as keeping journals of this voyage...
...Buckley is too well mannered to bitch about life at sea when he has not been pressed into service and too confident to be pushed around by some half-baked convention holding that before one can enjoy sailing, one must suffer...
...RACING THROUGH PARADISE: A PACIFIC PASSAGE William F Buckley, Jr., with photographs by Christopher Little/Random House/$25.00 Geoffrey Norman 46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1987...
...I found those pages clear and rewarding...
...I thought about going back through the book to see if there was such a promise buried in there somewhere, but decided against it...
...Of course I had read the book in one sitting and had, admittedly, skipped over some of the logistical details of putting together a cruise from Hawaii to New Guinea...
...Remember the limo in Overdrive...
Vol. 20 • August 1987 • No. 8
