Our own, Bradley Angle, was published in the Letters to the Editor section of San Francisco’s famous sailing magazine, Latitude 38. Check out his article here, or below.
THE CURVE OF TIME BELONGS ON EVERY SAILOR’S BOOK SHELF
It’s hard not to be pedantic when browsing a sailor’s bookshelf, including Latitude’s. I scrapped my pedantic rant and figured I’d stick to something more hopeful: The Curve of Time by Wylie Blanchet. Blanchet’s story of sailing around Vancouver Island in the 1920s with her five children is pretty amazing. Once you get into her style of longing prose, you’ll soon realize she’ll never speak of anything being arduous. She doesn’t much talk about anything directly — her language moves with grace and purpose through the past, attempting to recreate years of sailing with only her children, aka her “crew,” in uncharted waters and into dangerous frontiers. Her sea stories will stand juxtaposed to most of the 119 stories Latitude has on its shelf.
Blanchet’s The Curve of Time is at the junction of the boating and literary worlds. This story is dreamy like Moitessier, but Blanchet never ditched her family. It is a great maritime biography without the ego and lone-genius bull. It’s sea adventure garnished with the reflections of a mother and steward of the land. It’s a call for sailors to remember the basics of the world they love — the people, the places, the small moments. Wylie Blanchet wrote her memoir like an epic, and some 30 years after the fact. With her five children, she packed full a 25-ft boat and shoved off for adventure on the British Columbia coast. With a quiet narrative voice, almost like an internal dialogue, Blanchet captures all of the features one would expect in a sea story, but she does so through a somberness that attracts and a pining that creates no anxieties.
The Curve of Time captures us with what it leaves out, and it sells us with the way what is left in is spoken. We never learn much about her children, though they are there through the turning of every tide. We don’t learn much about her 25- ft boat, but we know Blanchet and her children kept it in repair and operating themselves. We only learn about her deceased husband through extrapolation. When the family enters a risky inlet for the night, we learn of the stars and the trees. For those Latitude members who want sailboats in their sailing stories, this is not for you. If you want family adventure, trials and tribulations, and the deep reflective thoughts of a single mother and salty sailor, this is a must.
The Curve of Time belongs on every sailor’s shelf, every poet’s shelf, every philosopher’s shelf, and every historian’s shelf. For those who need inspiration, motivation, and a reality check, this book is all you need.
Bradley Angle
