BOOK REVIEW-FIVE STARS
Overboard!: A True Blue-water Odyssey of Disaster and Survival by Michael Tougias
Gripping, exciting, and fast moving!
I don’t remember ever reading anything the equal of this well-written and exquisitely edited one-of-a-kind true life thriller.
My wife Jane and I both spent many years of our lives out to sea as captains and navigators, and we can’t believe our good fortune surviving our learning experience that generated four Travels of Dursmirg sailing books.
EXCERPTS
He glances down and notices a bottle of Yuengling beer floating in the water. God damn it, I’m going to have a beer. He snatches the bottle out of the sloshing seawater, and returns to his perch. Bloody hell, this may be my last beer, might as well enjoy it. He taps a cigarette from his pack, lights it, and enjoys a long leisurely smoke with his beer.
The Gulf Stream’s current may have been partially responsible for the two unusually large waves that hit the Almeisan, as well as the two that clobbered the At Ease two days earlier. Some experts now think rogue waves technically defined as any waves more than twice the height for the average current sea state are to be expected in the Gulf Stream in stormy weather because of the explosive combination of wind and sea current.
The kind Loch is most worried about is the mako, both the short-fin and long-fin mako; the latter can grow to thirteen feet in length and weigh 1,400 pounds. Both makos are fast, and the short-fin is said to be able to reach bursts of speed topping thirty-five miles per hour and jump close to twenty feet out of the water. Neither is the shy, retiring type, and more than one mako, having been hooked by an angler, has jumped out of the water and into the boat, fighting its tormentors in the cockpit. And in rare instances, a mako has freed itself from the hook, only to come back and ram the boat.
The International Game Fish Association says the short-fin mako is the undisputed leader in attacks on boats.
The actions of a sleep-deprived person are often similar to those of someone who is drunk, and the ramifications can be just as disastrous. Loch has had no sleep since Friday night because of seasickness on Saturday and being pitched into the sea early Sunday morning. No sleep in more than forty hours combined with expending incredible reasoning skills will slowly decrease the longer he stays awake, but he’s facing another issue due to sleep deprivation, hallucinations, which might have graver consequences.
Although a person may see most of his surroundings correctly, imaginary images may be interjected or a real image altered.
The person is conscious, but loses the ability to tell the difference between self-generated and real external stimuli
Initial hallucination begins not with his immediate desires, such as the vision of a ship, a life raft, a bed, or drinking water, but with a Nautilus weight-training
View John Grimsrud's author's page on Amazon.com
