Avid readers of my blog (well, there's my mum, at least) will know that I arrived in the US about three and a half months later than planned.
And this is a potential problem, because a) the hurricane season starts in July, and I was originally planning to leave before it - but now that's half the time i wanted and i'd probably have to skip the whole of the West Coast. b) people don't sail to Europe for the winter and I don't want to be stuck here til next April
So, rather than cutting my trip short, i decided instead to double and triple my efforts to find (or cajole) a sailboat lift in October/November. Then, while falling asleep worrying about it, came the crazy idea:
The idea hit because a mate wanted this book* from The Levellers Press in Amherst (part of Collective Copies Workers Coop), but the standard postage to the UK made it unaffordable. But he knew I was heading there and suggested I bring it home with me. Fortunately they found a quicker postage method.
It's not *so* ridiculous: I've been talking to bookshops and publishers all along the route, I'm no stranger to small-scale book distribution in the UK (thanks to selling 'How to Set Up a Housing Cooperative' and 'How to Set Up a Workers Cooperative', etc for many years) and i've got an increasing number of contacts in the sailcargo movement. And i've been striking up random conversations with people who turn out to be publishers & distributors, like La Oveja Roja/Contrabandos in Madrid.
And this is what happened today:
Waarrgghh!! Wow OMG! it's especially cool because Timbercoast is one of the few outfits regularly sailing transatlantic cargo. And their boat, Avontuur, is the boat that my fellow transatlantic hitch-hiker, Robin, had helped fit out and managed to catch up with in Mexico and sail back to Germany.
Isn't she pretty :-)
I think the obstacles to Avontuur taking me are probably bigger than the obstacles to her taking the books, but it is super-exciting that there's enthusiasm.
I was imagining me and two other people in a tiny boat, leaving from somewhere in the US and sailing back to the UK. But if Avontuur does it, they can also pick up Spanish-language stuff in Latin America and Cuba (while they're getting coffee and rum), which would be great to drop off in The Canaries and Spain. And if the pilot cargo does OK, then conceivably it might become regular, and they could take European stuff back across. The anarchists of Guadeloupe, St Maartin and Puerto Rico could get French, Dutch and Spanish stuff too!! So cool.
This is classic Cath behaviour - it reminds me of the old lady who swallowed a fly and then swallowed increasingly large creatures in order to catch it. I'm not thinking about the last line.