A Good Book

I cruised through amazon.com a week ago and bought a couple books (Their new book browsing tool is wonderful). I've read enough "how to" books for the time being and I wanted some real-life stories written by people who have done what we want to do. I bought "A Year In Paradise: How We Lived Our Dream" by Stephen Wright Watterson (ISBN 0-9706167-0-8), a story of a retired couple in their early 60's that sail their 30ft sailboat from Sandusky, OH to the Keys and back in a year's time. The author is an excellent writer with a dry sense of humor very similar to mine and descriptive skills that transported me right to the cockpit of their boat, where the aroma of baking cookies was wafting up from the galley below. I wanted to leave tomorrow.

Now I'm reading "At the Mercy of the Sea" by John Kretschmer (ISBN 978-0-07-149887-6), the antithesis of the previous yarn, which has me riding out terrifying nightmares of hurricanes at sea.

I've chosen both books in an attempt to be realistic about my expectations, aware that while everyone seeks the romance of the sail, there are both inconvenient and dangerous aspects to cruising on a sailboat. I decided this is a price I'm willing to pay to squeeze every last drop of living out of whatever days the Lord may grace me with.