At the Mercy of the Sea: The True Story Of Three Sailors In A Caribbean Hurricane (INTERNATIONAL MARINE-RMP) Paperback – 2 Aug. 2007

John Kretschmer's "At the Mercy of the Sea: The True Story of Three Sailors in a Caribbean Hurricane" is about three sailors on a collision course with a borderline category 4 and 5 hurricane named "Lenny" in mid November 1999. With sustained winds of up to 125 knots and huge breaking waves in excess of 60 feet high Kretschmer says the chances of surviving such a storm are remote especially for a small sailboat. "It will be broken apart as if made of kindling."Kretschmer, a seasoned sailor and writer, explains, "The pace of a storm, even a hurricane, isn't the frenzy depicted in a Hollywood film. It is agonizingly slow, there is a rhythm. After a while a sailor can feel what's coming. A tracer slap on the hull means the next breaking wave is about the crash over the boat." Despite the tightly dogged hatches and port, torrents of water slosh into the cabin after each wave. Without experience of winds and seas of that magnitude and not knowing what to expect or how much abuse the boat can take nurtures fear.Kretschmer's exciting and tragic narrative about Carl Wake (age 53) in 41-foot "La Vie en Rose," Steve Rigby (age 42) in 21-foot boat "English Braids" and Guillaume Llobregat (age 36) and his deck Jacques Santos (age 26) in 65-foot "Fredrick-Anne" will break your heart. It's also a moving tribute to the courage, fortitude and foibles of four remarkable men.

Well written from a man who has a deep familiarity with the sea giving color to moments that will forever be committed to the depths.

All was terrific, engaging & heart breaking. I learn more about so much I am curious about when a writer has the real world experience and superb wordsmithing we can ponder here. Only part i struggled with was the "imagined" descriptions over which there is no real record to say what happened. More of a personal fault than the author's. I am so pleased to have given the time to read this incredible story.

I don't like reading books, clearly, when the author is trying to make money with a story by filling up pages of description after description of anything else but the story itself. We don't have to know in boring details about everyone's life. I was interested only in about 10 pages, the actual storm itself .... and even then, the author can only "speculate". I don't recommend this book. It seems that the good true stories are from the early 1900's. Anything in recent years is really all about writing books to make money, not really about people enjoying the story.

This book is special. The story and characters are so compelling and so beautifully caught in such a terrible mess of a storm that it almost seems like Kretschmer had to make it up, but it's true. You will recognize, in Carl the amateur cruiser, a kindred spirit if you've ever dreamed of sailing or messed about in boats, but he rises (under horrific circumstances) to a noble, albeit ill-fated act of courage that will bring a tear to your eye.Kretschmer's style is top-notch; right up there with some of the finest literary authors I've ever read--and I'm saying that as a literature professor who has read a LOT of books. The narrative takes a sophisticated reader for the first half, which separately traces the paths of four individuals (including the author), whose fates and lives cross in the midst of a storm that builds to a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. At that point, the book becomes poetry. You will hear the rigging moan and shriek in the wind, feel the spray biting into your skin in 100-knot winds, watch the waves surge up in dark mountains and blast across the deck in white foam. You will learn a little bit about weather forecasting and hurricane patterns, a little about heavy weather sailing, a lot about nerves and anxiety on a sailboat in a storm, and much more about the human spirit--its restless dreams, its iron-willed persistence, its ill-fated confidence, and the cruel twists of fate it is sometimes dealt.Buy this book. It is truly phenomenal. The finest sea story I've ever read, or am likely to read.

Like the other reviewers, I really enjoyed this book and had a hard time putting it down. I wanted to mention that I believe this book will be a good read for both sailors and non-sailors. Kretschmer doesn't assume knowledge of sailing procedures and lingo. He does a good job of explaining sailing concepts so as not to lose readers with less exposure to the jargon of the sailing world. For experienced sailors, though, the description of what the various captains went through during their ordeals is gripping and informative.Kretschmer does an especially good job of putting together the pieces of what likely transpired during the various stages of each of the captains' journeys. Based on limited facts, Kretschmer relies on his vast knowledge of sailing vessels, weather, Caribbean locations, and the human psyche to extrapolate not only what the captains did during their last fateful days, but also what they must have been thinking. Kretschmer shows where each of the captains made their mistake, and explains the probable reasons for their decisions. He neither glorifies, nor condemns, his subjects. He shows that they are human. In the case of his friend Carl, he recreates Carl's final great achievement and, by doing this, celebrates that greatness that lies in every person, but that so often remains dormant and unseen.The fact that Kretschmer could bring all the individual pieces of these men's lives together into a cohesive, compelling story is, I think, the real achievement of this book.