Episode 20: Reading the Glass

My guest today is Captain Elliot Rappaport, a life-long sailor, licensed captain of ships great and tall, leader of oceanographic expeditions across the globe, and a professor for more than 30 years at the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine. Elliot is the author of “Reading the Glass”, the product of some four decades of seafaring experience. I want to start by reading a couple of short passages from the book to give you a flavor of the book’s tone and style…  

There is no night in the arctic summer, just a diffuse, cold glow that struggles up from underneath the horizon and dissolves slowly in the sky, the sea surface black and laced with mist like exhalations from a chest freezer…

The barometer has plummeted from 1016 to 994 millibars. It feels like a good time to shorten sail. We put extra hands to work and reduce our canvas by about half – to one small headsail, the foresail, and a storm trysail…

The crew members whose watch is coming to an end say goodbye with a smirk and disappear into their births. A light breeze from the north sets in… an hour later, a storm is raging.

By breakfast, the gusts reach Wind Force 10, a severe storm, an icy spray whips over the open deck like birdshot.

I have to tell you, Elliot’s book reads like an adventure story – it’s extremely well-researched and informed by actual events… and it’s aimed at illuminating a topic all sailors critically want and need to know. The weather. Understanding how weather affects voyages of any duration… and the critical choices made while at sea.

I wanted to know what prompted Elliot to write the book.