[Public-List] Great literature....

Gordon Laco mainstay at csolve.net
Fri Oct 29 09:22:55 PDT 2010


Hello friends - 

I am re-reading Beiser¹s ŒThe Proper Yacht¹.   What a wonderful piece of
literature it is...

³Still, my heart always sinks when I see a skinny, humpbacked short-ended
boat with a grotesquely small sail plan for its size bobbling around in
rippled water that should hardly disturb a rowboat.  I am unable to clear
from my mind the feeling that such boats result from the putrefaction of
more normal ones, the gases of decay having bloated shapely hulls into
pitiful blobs.²

And...quoting Arthur Ransome in the preface when dealing with the moral
dilemma of putting money into real estate vs a yacht....

³Houses are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of
moving them.  They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the
vegetable not the animal world, rooted and stationary incapable of gay
transition... The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content
thenceforward with a single anchorage.  The desire to build a boat is the
desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting
place... When it comes, the desire to build a boat is one of those that
should not be resisted.  It begins as a little cloud on a serene horizon.
It ends by covering the whole sky, so that you can think of nothing else.
You must build a boat to regain your freedom.²

Ah, perfect....


Gord #426 SURPRISE (and working on TOUCH WOOD, whose rescue would be simpler
if I started from scratch on a new boat...)




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