My Absolutely Chaotic Adventures at Sea During the Summer of 1984
April 23, 2026 at 02:03AM
Trying to escape his alcoholic mother, Andrew Printer joins his carefree friend Dominic on a backpacking adventure, only to end up as a deckhand for another alcoholic authority figure: Tom, the unreliable captain of a small yacht. As Tom’s reckless drinking turns adventure into calamity, Printer wrestles with the person his chaotic childhood has trained him to be—and what pieces of himself he can salvage from the wreckage.
This was the summer of 1984. Dominic and I were 20. Tom was in his late 40s, ex-Royal Navy, tight and wiry like a featherweight fighter, with a bashed-in boxer’s nose. We’d met him in Athens while we were sleeping rough by the port. One night, he burst out of the Plum Pudding Pub, a way station for captains and crew, belting a sea shanty, tripped over our belongings and fell face-first into a bush. We helped him up. He launched into a far-fetched saga involving buoys, knots and his need for extra hands to get his yacht to the Atlantic.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2026/04/22/adventures-at-sea-shipwreck/
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