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Book Review of The Boat Who Wouldn't Float

The Boat Who Wouldn't Float
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HAPPY ADVENTURE'S head came up into the wind. She shook herself a bit, considered whether she would come about or not -- and decided not. She resumed her original course. Jack was later to claim that this was one of the few honest things she ever did. He claimed she knew perfectly well what would happen if we ever took her to sea, and so she decided it would be better for all of us if she committed suicide immediately by skewing herself on the rocky shores of her home port, where her bones could rest in peace forever.

HAPPY ADVENTURE was a schooner with one fatal flaw. It leaked like a sieve. So why would anyone repeatedly expose himself and his friends to the elements of the North Atlantic in a treacherous, stubborn, uncomfortable, unfloatable boat which, at last count, has sunk 8 times? Any explanation of this appalling narrative seems outrageously unlikely. But the story is true. All too true. And it's decidedly the funniest story yet from Farley Mowat, whose books have sold over a million and a half copies in this country alone.