Book Review: "Poop, Booze and Bikinis"

You may remember some time back, my fishing friend Capt. Ed Robinson quit his job, bought a live-aboard boat, and started writing, first "Leap of Faith", the story of how he and his wife Kim cashed in their lives in Maryland, and became self described "Trawler Trash", and then, "Poop, Booze and Bikinis".

When it came out in February, I bought it for the Kindle, and had all the good intentions of reading it immediately, and reviewing it.  However, it got below the event horizon of life, and I only picked it up (if one can say that of a digital book) in the course of our recent journey across the country and back by air.   The book is can largely be described as a dryly humorous, and yet insightful book on what it's really like to live on your own boat.  Some examples...


From the Chapter "Poop":

You landlubbers don’t know how good you’ve got it. You hit the flusher and your poop magically disappears. It goes off through pipe land into some magical septic world never to be thought of again.

Not us boaters. We hold onto our poop. We keep it in a tank and carry it with us on our travels. We haul it all over paradise until we find someone willing to take it off our hands, so to speak.

I've never seen a "nice" ship's head, but the ones on cruise liners are at least clean if not terribly spacious.

"Booze":

For the most part, boaters drink. Liveaboard boaters drink a lot. Any tiny excuse for a celebration is cause for a drink.

“I cleaned the waterline”, I need a drink. The dinghy motor started on the first pull, “I’ll drink to that.” It didn’t rain today. “Let’s make a toast to no rain.” The preferred liquor for landlubbers seems to be tequila these days.

The preferred liquor of liveaboard boaters is rum, by far. Must be a pirate thing.

and "Bikinis":

The bikini is the greatest invention in the history of mankind, (or womankind). Some women shouldn't wear bikinis.

Some women on boats like to sunbathe topless or even nude. This is what binoculars were made for.

Bikini watching tip: Wear mirrored or very dark sunglasses. It makes your ogling less obvious. Holding a book in front of you helps too.

Is your wife wearing a bikini? Remember that as you leer at some other dude’s wife.
. . .
Ladies; men assume that if you are wearing a tiny bikini, you want to be ogled.

Bikini watching tip: Your wife knows what you’re looking at.

But it's not all just Poop, Booze and Bikinis. I enjoyed the book immensely.  As a sometimes editor, I noticed a few defects in the conversion to the Kindle, a few distracting spacing issues, but only one obvious misspelling on Ed's part (p. 86. of the Kindle Edition):

I once watched a sail boat leave a protected anchorage and head straight for an obvious sandbar. Sure enough, he plowed his keel onto the bar and came to an abrupt stop. This now grounded sailor simply lowered his anchor into his dinghy, drove back the way he had came and deployed the anchor. Then he used one of his wenches to crank himself free. I watched him retrieve the anchor and motor into deeper water. The whole un-grounding operation was very smooth and obviously well practiced, leading me to believe he had done it several times before. . .

Come to think of it, it could have been a wench. . . And it's duck tape, not "duct" tape, although some people differ (and are wrong) about that.

You might be interested to know that Capt. Ed just had a new book published "Trawler Trash", his first book of fiction, and already #1 in boating at Amazon. I just bought it, and you should too.

Note that all the Amazon links here link to my Amazon Associates account, and if you buy it there, it will throw a few cents my way, and not cost you or Capt. Ed a red (can we still call them that?) cent.

Wombat-socho has the grand "Rule 5 Sunday: Labor Day Weekend Lovelies", up at The Other McCain.