Title: A Young Man’s Dream / An Old Man’s Reality
Author: Wyveda I. Philbert
Publisher: Author Reputation Press, LLC
ISBN: 979-8885147514
Pages: 230
Genre: Memoir
Reviewed by: David Allen
Hollywood Book Reviews
“Saturday, April 19, 2003: We left our dock in Alva, Florida, on a beautiful sunny morning on our 31-foot Bombay Clipper pilothouse sailboat (without her mast) named “Whoosher.”
So begins this beautiful story of a couple — very much in love — who find that love amplified a thousand-fold as they journey across America’s waterways. “It’s a whole different way of life when you live around water,”writes Wyveda Philbert, co-pilot and ship’s mate with her husband Joe, on board their sailboat named Whoosher.
This wonderful memoir — a travelogue in the form of a ship’s diary, including destinations, locks and canals crossed, and distances covered daily which immediately put me in mind of my other friends who would regale us non-stop with wild and crazy stories of their travels on America’s Intracontinental Waterway (ICW, for short.)
In this freewheeling high-spirited narrative, with gratitude and wonder as constant companions, Wyveda, Joe, and friends explore eastern America through her waterways and captivate us in the narration. The ICW stretches from Buffalo and the Erie Canal all the way down to Florida and to points west. It is an unending spectacle of commerce, fisheries, boating, and life – and the Philberts know how to live. Wyveda and Joe explore and illuminate a side of life — the nautical — that is continuous and parallel with the land-lubbing world.
“Ever since he was a teenager,” Wyveda writes, “a young man named Joe dreamed of taking the boat trip called The Loop, or The Great Circle…when we got married, Joe told me about this dream. I said, “Sure, I’ll go,” not thinking he would ever do it. I was never around boats or water and didn’t even have a clue what he was really talking about. I can’t even swim!”
Like the intracontinental waterway itself, the tradition of marine narrative is long and winding. Robert Stone’s Outerbridge Reach set the literary high bar for tales of man and woman at sea. Two Years Before the Mast also comes to mind, especially with the authoress under discussion foreswearing all knowledge of things marine and nautical.
With time — and rather quickly, as it turns out — Wyveda masters and comes to adore the sea girt world. Readers, navies or not, will likewise find themselves increasingly at home in this strange, wonderful, and ubiquitous constellation of levies, locks, and canals – and of the open water beyond. Wyveda Philbert writes, “As we were throwing out the anchor, two big swans greeted us as they swam past the boat. I jokingly asked, “You guys want a cracker?” They turned around, made a beeline to the boat, and started talking to me.” Delicious. Who among us can’t relate?