There are bright points, however. The stomach muscles you develop from five days of dry-heaving will remain well-defined until you turn 40. There is some schadenfreude on the VHF radio: conversations between dismasted racers and a nonplussed Coast Guard flyer who had no idea there were going to be three hundred small sailboats out in the middle of the Gulf Stream this week ("You people do this for fun?"). There's also an eight-track tape player, for your listening enjoyment. I mentioned this was 1979, right? There is only one tape on the boat: "American Pie" (plus a few other great hits of the same time period) as interpreted by (I think) Henry Mancini and some pops orchestra, conducted very up-tempo, with the melody line covered by somebody whistling. Possibly it's Jiminy Cricket himself. As if it weren't bad enough to merely have this thing on the boat, some damn fool keeps playing it. Tweet tweet tweedledeedledy-deet. It's quite catchy, like the plague, and it doesn't kill you right away, either. The eight-track player is next to the chart table, on the other side of the cabin. Every time you try to crawl across the cabin to eject the infernal piece of plastic and toss it over the side, some helpful putz bundles you up and puts you back in your bunk with a couple of damp saltines.

2/3