A Mile Down
Subtitle: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea
Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press
Published: May 10, 2005
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9781560257103
Subjects: Boating; Sailing; Sailing - Narratives; Boating And Sailing; Biography & Autobiography; Sports & Recreation; Biography/Autobiography; Sports & Recreation / Sailing; Personal Memoirs; Sailing - General
First sentence: THERE'S MORE ART in this world than we think.
Description: If you've ever owned a sailboat or had a friend who did, you know how it begins: with a dream. You dream about the ship, and gradually the dream consumes you. Practical considerations lose all meaning ... until, inevitably, the dream morphs into a nightmare. David Vann is familiar with that nightmare. His begins in Turkey: a thirty-year-old tourist, he stumbles across the steel frame of a ninety-foot sailboat that cries out to be built. From friends, family, and credit cards, he borrows the $150,000 to construct the ship. The Turkish builders take shameless advantage of him, eventually charging him over $500,000. On the edge of financial ruin, Vann starts a chartering business. But, when some new part of the ship isn't falling apart, he encounters freak storms. As his debts escalate, Vann begins to wonder if he is merely repeating his father's dreams and failures at sea-which ended with his father's suicide.