Story: 5. ) Shipboard Reading / from A BOOK IS LIKE A SACRED ISLE: A Rain of Booklight; A book about books

 Shipboard Reading    

   Shipboard reading was sparsely spread between shipboard chores; there was always so much to be done and there were few spaces left in the day for ‘doing nothing;’ (which is what reading was considered to be during our days at anchor in the little coves and bays of the islands of the seas.) Of course, one occasionally read the pilot books – seamen’s instruction books concerning the waters one sailed in – if one didn’t want to be shipwrecked, that is! But when there was time in the evening and kerosene to spare I could fill the cabin’s gimbaled lamps and read and escape.  With no engine, no battery, no electronics, on board our tiny ocean going sailing yacht, there was no power, of course for books in dimensions other than paper and cardboard. And we were none the worse for it; except when we were shipwrecked off the Sahara Desert – (we hadn't read the pilot book for that area!) – for we couldn’t contact anyone to come and rescue us!
   But in easy going days when we were at sea I could sometimes tie up the tiller, get her self-steering by the set of her sails, and bring out a book and read to my heart’s content in daylight hours – with one eye open, for a look out at the ocean ahead, of course. You never knew what might be there: a basking shark, a whale, a ship, or another yacht; (or the Sahara Desert!)  Lying in the sun listening to the song of the sea creaming past us, the reflecting water, glinting its own story of the sky, the skimming fulmars and shearwaters the near-land cry of the wheeling seagulls, I could read and dream and not get seasick. Wonderful books were read this way! Their excellent worth made evident; for they quickly bore a much-loved look; caught by the sea spray when we crashed into a wave they flew off the cockpit seat into the scuppers and got wet. But, unlike electronic books, (except those in watertight cases, I suppose?) they survived the ordeal and lived to see another day at sea decorating our shipboard bookshelf, which told a tale in itself, of who we were and how we lived, and what we liked.
   Shipboard reading was great! An escape upon escape! 

 

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