OCEAN AWAKENING
Of all the yachting books I have read, not one starts like The Boat They Laughed At, by the inimitable Max Liberson: ‘I tapped the large man on the shoulder, interrupting his current occupation which was hitting the security guard repeatedly on the head while he lay in the road. He turned and looked at me. At first he was somewhat at a loss for words.
‘I asked him, “Just what exactly do you think you are doing?” With this he lost his temper and shouted to his mate who was standing behind the security van they were robbing. “Shoot him!” To my horror, the other man had an automatic pistol in his left hand…’
This unusual opening paragraph sets the scene for a rollercoaster read. Max is down on his luck as a dispatch rider in London, but a set of curious chances leads him to a beamy, shallow-draughted ferrocement 42ft schooner, which he buys for the princely sum of £1,500. His pals in the Essex mud laugh at the boat and, in response to a wind-up, Max decides to sail her to the Caribbean and back, which he promptly does against all the odds.
Max shows himself to be not only
