Alain Bombard wrote a book. But this is secondary - much more important is the act that he describes in the book. He did something fantastic - he sailed the Atlantic Ocean alone in a lifeboat.
This fact is difficult to fit into your head, because such events usually lie in the plane of wide-screen cinema: you can easily imagine that the ocean is swimming across the ocean on an inflatable boat by a movie hero, whose role is played by some popular actor with a dreamy and sad look (Tom Hanks , for example), but to believe that a real person from our universe, who also has a residence permit and an unpaid loan for a refrigerator, can believe that swimming across the ocean in this way - no, thank you!
And Alain Bombard is just such an ordinary guy who was once struck down by the depressing statistics of shipwrecks: 90% of people die in the first three days after the disaster. The bottom line is that they die much earlier than the human body is able to hold out - these people die not from hunger and thirst, but from despair. The young French physician decided that something needed to be done with this and undertook to demonstrate to the whole world that a person can survive in the ocean and sail on its endless waters as long as he wants, having only two things left: a boat and courage.
The publishing group "Alpina Publisher" this year published the book by A. Bombar "Overboard at will", so that those wishing to read the story of a desperate navigator will not have difficulty finding it.
It so happened that I read Bombar's book during my trip to Crimea and always in close proximity to the sea. The sound of the waves served as an accompaniment to my reading, which helped to feel in the place of the author and mentally swim across the ocean with him.
Yes, Alain Bombard, alas, is not a writer, and his text cannot be savored in the same way as the texts of Marcel Proust, Vladimir Nabokov or Umberto Eco (I remember how I went crazy with delight reading his sea novel "The Island of the Day Before"). But if Bombar were also a brilliant writer, I would definitely doubt his existence - there are too many talents for one person. It is enough that he is a great brave man and a real dreamer, whose purposefulness is striking. In addition, he is also a true connoisseur of survival - a kind of Bear Grylls, but without showmanship and special effects. In general, whatever one may say, the book is interesting - firstly, it is an excellent manual, how to survive in the ocean on a miniature boat, and secondly, this is a real example of the strength of the human spirit and the ability to go to the end without stopping, even when the whole world wants to interfere with you.
Bombard's book may be of interest to many, but first of all it will appeal to those who want to learn all sorts of super techniques for survival among the endless waters of the seas and oceans, because what this French navigator does not invent: he drinks in liters of salt water, like a grandmother's kvass , catches and eats birds glowing in the dark, eats plankton with spoons and squeezes out juice from freshly caught fish. Brave guy!
Still, Bombar's book is primarily a story about how to stay brave. An example of how Bombar copes with crises is perhaps the best thing in the book: he is honest with himself and the reader and is well versed in the nature of the human soul, especially in its weak points. This person’s stories about how he over and over again learns to overcome his fear will help you become stronger and stronger.
