Daily Speculations The Web Site of Victor Niederhoffer and Laurel Kenner

07-Aug-2006
Bo Keeley Reviews The Saga of Cimba, by Richard Maury

'The most eloquent prose hymn ever written to the exhilaration, the beauty, and the sheer joy of being at sea.'

So promises the jacket of The Saga of Cimba by Richard Maury, and I cannot disagree after finishing the book last night over an Oreo shake at Carl Jr.'s. Most of you will enjoy this good story written remarkably well, better than a great sea tale '40,000 miles in a Canoe' by Cpt. John Voss.

Pick a page, say  number 48 on which the Cimba greets a wall of water: 'The Cimba climbed a wave, and, looking far to windward, I saw a black shape reared from horizon to horizon. As we dropped down a slope I knew that we were fated to meet the greatest sea I had ever come upon. We climbed again, and I caught sight of its long moving body, already much nearer. This time as the schooner sank my heart sank with her. She was too small, too thin, for the purpose. I was minded to rouse Domboy, yet somehow did not do so. Instead I watched the inflexible purpose, the unfaltering purpose, of the wave, which now gleamed in one great moonlit plane, now darkened into heaving shadow, disappeared, lifted again, and rolled on and down toward us. When it was still some distance off I could hear the roar of the cap above the gale. It closed in, traveling at eighty miles an hour.'

A classic!