The publication date for Eight Survived: The Harrowing Story of the U.S.S. Flier and the Only Downed World War II Submariners to Survive and Evade Capture will be October 5, 2010. That's the day by which copies of the book should have been delivered to bookstores.
The publisher is in the midst of selecting which black-and-white photographs will be included in the book. My editor, Keith, is supposed to be making sure we have permission to use each of the pictures. If we don't then that is the last thing I will have to accomplish.
Next to last is getting a portrait of myself to go on the book. At Monica's suggestion, I asked our friend, Gene Smith ( genesmithstudio.com ,) to take the picture. He has agreed.
The G-Man, as we call him, is a superior professional photographer. His work has illustrated the outsides of the boxes of a certain international toymaker, for example. He is also a sailor of long standing. His "rod" is a Pearson 323.
Gene wanted a specific costume for the shoot. "I'd like to get one of you in one of those great Hemmingway/Sub-mariner wool turtlenecks," he wrote in an email.
Honesty requires me to say that vanity compelled me to reject his suggestion. I think they left out a vertebrae or two when they built my body. The result is a short torso which, I think, makes a turtleneck look absurd.
So we're working on the wardrobe. Who knew this would be so difficult? I think the publisher would have been happy if Monica had snapped a quick one with her digital camera.

Robin was fine when I visited her today. Her deck was blanketed by a foot of old snow, kept cold by a two-inch-thick layer of ice lying on the teak beneath the snow.
John Morrison, who risks his life every time he accompanies me, joined me for the drive to Cambridge, Md., where Robin floats on one side of a dock and his boat, Chautauqua, on the opposite side. He brought with him a red plastic shovel with an aluminum three-piece handle kept together with shock cord.
John began shoveling his deck and I, who was not so well prepared, went to look for something resembling a shovel. Near the marina office, I found a spatula/wire brush hanging from a propane grill. The spatula part seemed close to a shovel, so I brought it back to Robin and began emptying the foot of sloping snow from the cockpit.
In time, I thought of an alternative means of excavating the snow. Inside Robin's cabin, I found a sturdy white plastic dust pan. Soon, the snow was mostly removed. But in the same span, the northwesterly wind, which was in the process of blowing the water out of the Chesapeake Bay, had increased.
I was done with my work before John finished, and I stood on his finger pier, buffeted by the wind as I looked across the dock to Robin, thinking of all the improvements and maintenance she needs. She looked sturdy as she strained at her dock lines. But I knew about the leaking ports, the substandard electrical wiring, the ancient mast in need of painting, the split caprail, damaged by a piling in an earlier storm.
In Robin, I could understand how boats become derelict. Some times it may be a result of carelessness. Other times, it may be a lack of resources. But at some point, a boat -- like an untended garden or a love ignored -- can be beyond restoration.
When the snow melts and my battered shoulder is healing, I will focus my energies on bringing Robin back from however far she has slipped. With all of her history, she deserves it.

It is snowing again on the east bank of the Delaware River. When I left for a walk with Thelma to the river's edge, the sun was setting behind clouds. When we turned around to come home, I could see snowflakes falling 100 feet ahead. We walked into the swirling flurries before we got home.
This is not supposed to be a big storm -- maybe 2 to 6 inches. In years past, the television weather people would have called that amount a blizzard. They've become more nonchalant after a winter of three feet or more of snow.
The earlier storms have pruned most of the white pines in the region. There are large limbs littering much of the countryside, their yellow-white wood ripped jagged from tree trunks, their needles providing nice habitat for all the little birds wintering in these parts.
I'm reminded of the soft sound of snow falling in a pine forest. A wind piling the fallen snow in drifts whispers through the pine needles. Footsteps swish through the accumulated flakes or, when they grow deep, thwump quietly as you wade ahead.
Standing under spreading pine boughs laden with snow, you keep your neck covered or risk a cold attack of flakes sifting under your collar from their perch. Walking in the open, where the wind is stronger, flakes invade your nostrils, freezing your sinuses.
You might stop under a particularly large pine whose branches provide a protective canopy. This would be the time to snap off dead lower branches, pile them in a pyramid and, with a hand full of dried, brown needles, strike a match and start a small fire. The smoke curls up, the pine wood crackles when it heats. It is difficult to find a place where the smoke doesn't drift into your eyes.
But you settle down into the snow that you've flattened with your snowshoes and listen . . . to the hush, to the quiet.
This is the essence of tranquility.

The view from the top of Sugarbush Mt. on race day, Feb. 5, was spectacular. Standing in the starting gate, I could see two downhill gates straight ahead before the trail dropped out of sight. Above, the sky was its buest hue and the landscape as far as you could see was a patchwork of white farmland and gray forests.
I had skied the day before in Massachusetts to see whether I was sufficiently impaired by my January injury to back out of the downhill race. I took my first ride up the chairlift and fell within 150 yards of getting off. I fell on my right side, so no harm was done to my damaged left arm. I recognized right away that the only reason I had fallen was because I was skiing too slowy, too timidly. My mind wasn't focused on the activity at hand.
So I skied the rest of the day at speed, and everything went well. The trail I was using -- a decent single black diamond -- often was mine alone, so I could open up a bit. I felt in control most of the time. At two o'clock in the afternoon, I recognized I was getting sloppy and I quit for the day.
Monica rode with me to Vermont early the next morning. I was in time to make a few inspection runs along the trails that have the downhill course.
It seemed to me that the course had been set more open than in the previous two years, and my reaction was surprising. I had spent the last 12 months visualizing the course as I knew it. When I now suspected it would be faster, I was frightened.
There was a practice run, and when I got in the starting gate, trying to focus on carving my turns with my shins jamming into the boot fronts and my weight on the downhill ski, I vowed to go all out. I don't know what my time was for that run, but when it was over, I knew I hadn't skied well at all. In fact, I hadn't remembered to do any of the things I'd spent the last year visualizing.
But the fear was removed in that run, I thought, and when I got in the starting gate for the actual race, I was fairly relaxed.
The race takes you south along a trail that straddles the top of a ridge. There are about seven or eight gates that lead you to the right, left, right, left and right before a set of three gates take you in a long sweeping turn to the left, onto another broad trail that sends you east down the fall line.
I had passed the fourth and fifth gates and was headed to the right at some speed when suddenly I felt my left ski tracking straight down the mountain, as if it had a mind of its own.
I managed to recover control of the ski and make it to the bottom of the mountain in one piece. But after I saw my time -- six seconds slower than my best time last year -- I realized what had been going on with my left ski up in the third turn.
I had been skiing like a rank beginner.
My weight had been on my uphill ski. There was no way I could turn because the left -- or downhill -- ski had no weight on it. And as I reconstructed this miserable run, I came to understand that at every point along the course, my form had been flawed.
It was a repetition of my failures in each of the two prior years.
I had allowed fear -- lurking fear that I almost didn't recognize -- to steal my courage and my chance of making a decent race out of it.
I was disappointed in myself. I acknowledged the character flaw that prevented me from excelling. The very presence of gates -- flags mounted on poles driven into the snow -- had shut down my brain. Instead of forcing myself down the steepest, fastest course, I had reared back, avoiding gravity, allowing timidity to choose my technique.
For a few hours, I pondered the notion that good sense should dictate no more downhill raciing -- and perhaps no more skiing -- for me.
By the next day, I was trying to think of a way to get back north and back into races.
But that will have to wait another year. I have turned 68, and there may not be that many years left to do the things I wish to accomplish. But for now, I have to get the torn rotator cuff in my left shoulder repaired and rehabilitated. I'm told this will take several months.
At present, even the act of typing on a keyboard is painful, so sailing -- and perhaps even writing -- may be restrained, too.
But by summer, if all goes well, I should be back on Robin and, I hope, working on a new book project.
The good news out of all of these experiences is that I seem still capable of learning, and that is the best news of all.

Here's my review of Overboard! by Michael Tougais.
You might read this book in one sitting. The story pulls you along that well.
If you go offshore, or if you think you might ever go offshore, you would be served well to read Overboard! There are many lessons in its 200 pages, but here's a warning.
Don't let the story of these three boats dissuade you from blue water voyages. Remember: Almost everyone survives.
Tougais has a couple of writing habits that gnaw at my ankles, even though my mind brushes them aside because I want to know what happens next. For my taste, he reminds the reader too often -- and often with the same adjectives -- just how enormous the waves are out there. And he goes into some minute details about the folks onboard that I don't think help the narrative. He is to be excused because clearly he became friends with many if not all of the sailors whom he interviewed and, I guess, has difficulty distinguishing between facts that an uninvolved reader needs and ones that close relatives might find important.
But these are mostly stylistic issues, and you may not be bothered by them. As I said, I'm sure you will be enthralled by the story. Get a copy when Overboard! is published.

I'm reading the proof of a book to be published soon -- Overboard! It is about a storm near the Gulf Stream in May 2005 that took the life of a well-respected sailor who had already made 48 trips to and from Bermuda.
I'll let you know how I like it. I read the first 25 pages last night. I know the story fairly well, having covered it for Soundings magazine.
In the book, the doomed skipper tells his crew that there will be good times and unpleasant times on the voyage, but they will remember only the good. That is true in my experience.
But already, the book is reminding me of the unpleasant times. The seasickness. The surpressed fear. The what-am-I-doing-out-here moments.
So while this may be a good book, it may not be entirely pleasurable.
The author is Michael J. Tougias, whose earlier books include Fatal Forecast and The Finest Hours. I've read neither.
It's probably good that I'm reading it a year and a half before the next Bermuda One-Two. By then, I'll have forgotten the bad parts!

As for the skiing, the tutoring I'd hoped to get in downhill racing never came about. So last week, at the invitation of an old friend from college, I drove north for five days of skiing in New Hampshire.
It was perfect skiing weather, temperatures rising in daylight to about 5 degrees, lots of snow, not too much wind. It was my plan to use the week to train for a race at the end of the week , and four days of preparations seemed just about right.
As you know, my passion is downhill skiing, where one embraces gravity just as you might seek the winds of some notorious point of land to test your sailing skills. In gravity, one finds god (or God, depending on your preference.)
On Monday and Tuesday, we skied in New Hampshire. My friends lack the obsessive genes that guide me, so most of our skiing was rather tame. Once in a while, I'd break out ahead of them just to let the boards know what I expected of them. That was important, because these were the new skis, ones designed precisely for high speed traveling.
My planning for this winter began last winter, when I went on a spending spree and purchased the best downhill skis in the northern hemisphere. These tools are so exotic that when I went to the local ski shop in New Jersey to have the bindings mounted on the skis, they told me I didn't qualify to use them. I signed a release stating that no matter how splintered my femur might find itself, I wouldn't sue. Thus I had a complete set of skis and bindings to take north with me.
Very quickly, I found what made these particular skis work. I was not disappointed. They have the soul of a good thoroughbred, the eagerness to point dowhill and to gather speed yet the willingness to turn when you simply wish it, to turn and to hold their speed.
Speed is a problem on a commercially developed mountain, where the business model of the developers is to draw as many customers as will squeeze onto those slopes made barren of trees and where their machines make snow, regardless of the weather. Speed endangers the masses on a ski slope the way a driver on cocaine endangers other motorists on a freeway.
I know all of this, and I am controlled by it. If you go too fast, you could kill someone. Far more important, the ski cops will kick you off the mountain. If your sin is sufficient, you could be banned for life.
So on Monday and Tuesday, whenever there was anyone else on the trail ahead of me, I backed down on the throttle, did more turning to limit my velocity.
But you can contain the passion only so long. Eventually, the pull of gravity is too great. You must yield.
On Wednesday, my friends Charlie and Mike decided we should try skiing in Maine. We drove about 50 miles east and found a mountain covered with snow that was perfect for speed -- little powder on a surface that was frozen just short of ice. The loggers had shaved the timber off of the mountain slopes and shoulders in a way that invites acceleration. The wind was stronger there, but not lethal.
In the morning, I behaved myself. Charlie and Mike skied under control. It was like being on a date with your mother. My eyes wandered.
Finally in the afternoon, Charlie declared he had had enough and went inside. Mike and I rode the lift to the top, where Mike announced that this would be his final ride. As he headed one way, I broke to the right, down a trail I didn't really know. I began to release the brakes.
I've been studying videos of World Cup racers. A good skier turns using knees and shoulders and hips, body upright and squared to the trail. That's what I was doing now as I headed down the mountain. I was not going to stop until there was no more trail in front of me.
At first, there was little traffic ahead, but then trails crossed as I got half way down the mountain, and the merging brought more skiers. I took a trail to the left, pushing the speed a bit but now all too aware of the growing congestion.
Here I have to warn that, as will become obvious in a moment, I may be reporting events with less than perfect accuracy. But here goes.
As I dropped over one ridge that traversed the trail, I saw below me perhaps 200 yards of wide slope and maybe a half dozen skiers concentrated on the left side. At the far end of my view, the next ridge crossed the trail. I headed right, hoping not only to avoid the crowd but to keep up my speed, which I would guess was somewhere above between 35 and 45 miles per hour. This is not racing speed. In this setting, a speed of between 60 and 70 could be expected in the course of a well designed race course.
In fact, I had become drawn to racing simply because it is only in such an organized event that one can ski the way I want to ski.
I probably threw a couple of gentle turns in my route down this fairway in order to limit myself, but I was in the grip of gravity. I know now that in skiing, I get as close to a religion as I'm ever likely to be. The longer one can maintain that delicate balance between falling and soaring, the more the rythm of your body's movements drifts into its own musical arrangement, the farther the experience travels from the physical to the spiritual.
Now, about three quarters of the way to the next ridge, there was a figure approaching from the left. He was skiing directly toward a large mound of snow, rounded like a scoop of ice cream, at the right edge of the ridge, next to the trees.
I was aiming for the ice cream dome.
He was aiming for it.
I had enough speed to get there first -- I thought. I pointed the skis straight for the mound, drifting to its right side, nearer the trees.
I'd never skied over the mound, didn't know what was on the other side. I hoped that the far side of the mound would fall precipitously. I had absolute confidence that as I dropped over its face, I would be able to steer left, barely avoiding the trees and bushes.
And then I was at the very top and edge of the mound and I had successfully slipped past the other skier -- that much I know. There was no collision with him, no blood on the white ice.
My next conscious observation was of the beautiful tiny piles of snow just beyond my cheeks. I could see the slender trunks of small bushes. I let my head fall down slowly and tried to make some sense of what I was seeing.
It was clear that I was lying face first in snow some place on a mountain. The next thing I noticed was that my left arm was not where it should have been. I moved my fingers and could see them out there, gripping and releasing. The fingers looked like they were in Idaho. In fact, the arm looked as though it belonged to someone else. I tried to reach it with my right hand, but that arm was pinned uphill, unable to move.
I looked back at the snow. It was very pretty, I noticed.
I'm home now. They gave me some excellent drugs in the emergency room and got the shoulder back into its socket. At first, we tried it without drugs. I yelled a bit. The two doctors didn't mind, I think. But the arm muscles wouldn't yield to their pulling.
The next races is in two weeks. I expect that both the arm and the brain -- it was a very little concussion this time, I think -- will have healed enough.