A charming memoir of midlife by the bestselling author of Mayflower and In the Hurricane's Eye, recounting his attempt to recapture a national sailing championship he'd won at twenty-two.
“There had been something elemental and all consuming about a Sunfish. Nothing could compare to the exhilaration of a close race in a real blow—the wind howling and spray flying as my Sunfish and I punched through the waves to the finish.”
In the spring of 1992, Nat Philbrick was in his late thirties, living with his family on Nantucket, feeling stranded and longing for that thrill of victory he once felt after winning a national sailing championship in his youth. Was it a midlife crisis? It was certainly a watershed for the journalist-turned-stay-at-home dad, who impulsively decided to throw his hat into the ring, or water, again.
With the bemused approval of his wife and children, Philbrick used the off-season on the island as his solitary training ground, sailing his tiny Sunfish to its remotest corners, experiencing the haunting beauty of its tidal creeks, inlets, and wave-battered sandbars. On ponds, bays, rivers, and finally at the championship on a lake in the heartland of America, he sailed through storms and memories, racing for the prize, but finding something unexpected about himself instead.
ISBN-13: 9780143132097
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Publication Date: 03-06-2018
Pages: 240
Product Dimensions: 5.21(w) x 7.98(h) x 0.63(d)
Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of In the Heart of the Sea, winner of the National Book Award; Mayflower, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Bunker Hill, winner of the New England Book Award; Sea of Glory; The Last Stand; Why Read Moby Dick?; Valiant Ambition; and Away Off Shore.
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The Race
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Second Wind"
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Copyright © 2018 Nathaniel Philbrick.
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Table of Contents
Author's Note xiii
Prologue 1
Part I A Pool in the Stream 7
The Race 9
Up a Creek 18
In a Bog 25
The Green Gush 31
Love's Handiwork 39
Time Travel 43
The Suit 52
Steering Without a Rudder 54
Death Roll: Coskata 59
In the Cocktail Glass 66
Strolling Through History 70
The Jibing Hamster 73
Coastal Retreat 79
Dancing with Seals 82
Part II This Is Only a Test 87
Details 89
A Different World 93
Into the Maelstrom 98
Roll Call 103
Over Early 106
What Ifs 111
Part III The Swift Monster 113
Oedipal Sailing 115
The Prop 123
Pre-Cut 126
Power in the Pond 131
The Cut 135
Part IV Down the River 139
Reassembling Childhood 141
Logistics 144
Rollin' 149
The Deluge 157
Sail to the Sea 162
Part V Showtime 169
In Limbo 171
Taking Measure 174
Doppelgänger 179
The Ultimate Captain's House 185
Day One 190
Day Two 196
Day Three 204
Epilogue 211
