THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 10, 1996 TAG: 9606080033
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: 73 lines
THE SOMETIMES STORMY relationship between fathers and sons rarely gets as tempestuous as the waters off Cape Horn, so it seems an odd place to go for knitting the frayed lines of a relationship.
Nowhere on Earth are seas higher, winds stiffer or the sea floor more littered - to borrow from Melville - with the bleached bones of drowned men.
But rounding the Horn is what David Hays and his son, Daniel, did. And they did it the hard way, moving from west to east in their 25-foot sloop Sparrow.
Their adventures were captured in a remarkable book, ``My Old Man and the Sea.'' The pair used alternating voices to tell the story of their 17,000-mile odyssey from Connecticut around the tip of South America. Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, N.C., it became a New York Times best seller.
Tomorrow, the accomplished sailors - they were the first Americans to sail around the Horn in a boat shorter than 30 feet - will be in Norfolk to meet the public and autograph copies of the HarperPerennial paperback version. You can meet them at Prince Books, 109 E. Main St., from 12:30 till 2 p.m.
There is a touching revelation in the book's introduction, written by David, the father.
He recalled that a year after the voyage, his wife had asked him who his ideal person was.
The faces of heroes from Lincoln to Roosevelt flashed before his eyes. He blurted the answer: ``My son.'' And he began to cry.
David and Daniel Hays both seemed to be smiling when I reached them by phone in Denver last week.
When asked how to explain the book's popularity, David pointed out that it can be appreciated from more than one point of view. About half the folks who attend autographing sessions are sailors.
``There are lots of better sailors than us,'' David noted. ``We were just very persistent.''
Their writing refreshes with its clarity. There is, for instance, the cat Tiger, which was taken aboard at the last minute as a gift. Here's Daniel's description of the cat's morning:
``It begins when he sits bolt upright from a sound sleep and leaps eight inches straight up. Because the boat is rocking, he lands four inches to the left and thus assumes he is under assault. He sprints over the wet-gear locker, into the quarter berth and frantically scratches a roll of sailcloth. Next he tiptoes back along the handrail, falling into the basket of fruit and attacking an orange.
``He then springs out like a pingpong ball and attacks the entire toilet, a bite on the rim and a paw at the hose. Next a pen rolling on the floor is investigated with attack eyes. Then during his cat leap at the pen, a fly buzzes by, catching his attention, and he crashes into the bulkhead, his eyes following the fly. Then that look that only cats have, the look that says, `What fly? I did that on purpose.' ''
The book has enough facts to satisfy the veteran sailor, but there are also satisfying layers of humor under the hard crust of salt.
A sample, recounting the days as they approached Cape Horn:
``On New Year's Eve we blew the uncurling paper whistles that came with our gifts, and there were three party hats. We opened our fortune cookies. Mine: `You are soon to go on a long journey.' Dan's: `Watch out for bad companions.' Tiger's: `You will be drawn to the glamour of the stage.' ''
And shortly thereafter:
``One evening I was amazed to see Dan crying at the climax of `La Traviata,' but excitement subsided as I saw that he was slicing onions.''
There is excitement aplenty elsewhere. For example, the knockdown of the Sparrow while rounding Horn:
``I only knew we were down because the water covering the porthole was not wave froth but solid green - I was looking straight down into the ocean. A felt boot liner that was drying knocked the lamp out of my hand and onto the bunk. The water roared like a train running over us.''
David Hays, 66, is founding director of the National Theatre of the Deaf. Daniel Hays, 36, is a field supervisor of a wilderness program in Idaho.
To borrow a phrase Daniel might use, their book - like Horn - can blow you away. by CNB