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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"My summer hols . . . ", 20 May 2004
To some, Americans are best examplified as a people "blundering into success". This book is certain to reinforce that view. Carter relates the assembling of an "unlikely crew" to duplicate a "Viking" voyage from Greenland to North America. The voyage required two attempts [as you learn from the map preceding the text], and succeeded only after hilarious and desperate adventures. But it did succeed.Carter's account is intensely personal as he explains his motives to duplicate the "Viking" [apparently Carter was never taught the word "Norse"] voyages leading to the "Vinland" landings. Long debated, "Vinland" became a real place with the revelation of a Norse settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland-Labrador in the 1960s. With Norse voyages to "Vinland" recorded in 1000 CE, Carter's target date of exactly one millenium later seemed appropriate. The only hitches were that Carter didn't know how to sail, didn't know anything about the Norse, their history, their boatbuilding techniques or their navigation methods. A shaky start compounded by a crew of similar qualifications. During the voyages, personality clashes make their inevitable appearance. Although discussions about the route to follow are understandable, the debate over toilet paper use seems almost a diversion. The primary issue of discussion is the rudder - it's shape, use and mounting. That question remains fundamental since the rudder determines as much as the winds which track is best. By the time you close the final page of this book, it's difficult to avoid feeling emotionally soiled. Carter reaches his thirty-sixth birthday on this voyage. The writing, however, is more in line with that of a sixteen-year old. Carter spends so much time at whingeing about missing his family, self-abasement over his inadequacies as a "leader", recounting the losses of wives and girlfriends by his mates, that reaching the Newfoundland coast seems anticlimatic. That this inept and mismatched team survived a journey that once took countless lives is hardly reassuring. If ever the gods were arbitrary in their machinations, they seemed to have proved it here. That an amatuer crew survived an expedition against all odds is a mildly entertaining read, but hardly an inspirational one. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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