C_B_2015_05_

SUNDOWNERS

WITH GUY VENABLES

CLASSIC BOOKSHELF

CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2015 69

ONBOARDONBOARD

Books

Bullets

of silver

We all do it. Find some booze from abroad and bring it back for

others to try. It’s a way of reiterating that we have more exciting

and exotic lives. Few of us however have the resources to set an

entire industry to recreate it for our own production. As we all

know (I’ve only just found out) Peter the Great left Russia on “The

Grand Embassy” in 1697 and went incognito to The Netherlands

and England to learn how to build ships in order to muscle up the

Russian fl eet and to secure allied support against the Ottoman

Empire. He failed in the latter, not least because he and his

entourage wrecked the abode of diarist John Evelyn in Deptford

by getting drunk and racing round the house and manicured

garden in wheelbarrows, using the paintings for target practice

and burning all the chairs in the fi re. Damage was estimated at a

massive £350. In the Netherlands however whilst he was working

as a labourer in a Dutch East India Company shipbuilders yard in

Zaandam he developed a profound taste for kummel, namely

Bols kummel. So much so that he snaŸ ed some back to Russia

and got his booze scientists to recreate it. (I do wonder just how

much work he got done whilst getting drunk on kummel but he

kept the job for four months. There are, suspiciously, no

records of the quality of his work.)

In Danzig (now Gdansk) they came up with the sticky, and

frankly needlessly gold-fl ecked, Goldwasser but in Riga they

developed the excellent Wolfshmidt (now made back in Holland)

and what I consider the best there is, the

lesser known and icily metallic Metzendor¤.

Carraway seeds are the main

ingredient with aniseed and mint

in some of the others and the

base is vodka. It’s

eminently classy over ice

in one of those tiny

glasses that Hercule

Poirot drinks from

(kummel was a

favourite tipple of

his) but there’s more.

Mix two parts gin to

one of kummel and one

of lemon juice and you

have a Silver Bullet, one of

the best cocktails there is.

Swap the gin for vodka and

it’s a Tovarich which is also

very good. There is a

rumour that you can mix it

with Scotch. But that

would be a waste of all the

above ingredients.

The image I had in my mind of Jacques-Yves

le Toumelin was that of an elderly man and

one of the pioneers of French singlehanded

voyaging. It therefore came as something

of a surprise when I began to read Kurun

Around the World to discover a determined,

fi ery, young man, who ends up leaving

with a crew because his parents worry about him sailing alone.

Le Toumelin creates his fi rst yacht Tonnerre in the time of the German

occupation of France, initially using her as a fi shing boat while he saves

the money to set out on a long voyage. He is on the brink of departure

when the Allied forces land in France, so, fearing for the safety of his

parents, he leaves Le Croisic in Brittany and sets o¤ by bicycle for Paris.

While he is away, the attic, where he stayed, is searched by the Germans,

who fi nd a secret store of arms and ammunition. This leads to the

confi scation of all his belongings, including his boat.

Undaunted le Toumelin sets to work again at the end of the war, until

after many setbacks he is again ready to set sail, this time in a 33ft (10m)

double-ended ga¤ cutter, which he names Kurun. Leaving France in

September 1948, Jacques-Yves le Toumelin sets out on a two-year voyage

around the world, fi rst heading for Morocco, then crossing the Atlantic and

entering the Pacifi c via the Panama Canal. He returns to France having sailed

the Pacifi c and Indian oceans before rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

Although I enjoyed the whole book I found the fi rst part of his

circumnavigation, when he is accompanied at his parents’ insistence, to be

less inspiring than the second, solo phase. The style is slightly reserved

leaving you sometimes wondering what he enjoys about the voyage. Once

he leaves Tahiti however, solo at last, his enthusiasm surfaces, giving the

reader the sense of sharing the story of a man who has lived his dream. RT

Most of the books we review here are

genre-based: sea books, often good ones,

but books that no one else in their right

minds would read. This is an all-too-rare

treat – a ‘literary sea book’ if you will.

Philip Hoare fi rst came on to our radars as

a fellow judge of the National Historic Ships

Photo Competition (see p20) and author of Leviathan, a story of whales that

won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. The Sea Inside is his open-

ended, wandering way of making sense of the waters of the world that have so

gripped him. Arranged in nine chapters it is part travelogue, part memoir, part

oceanography and part bestiary. And what a turn of phrase Hoare has: he

describes London as a city “skewered on its own waterway”, for instance. It’s a

miscellany of fact, but a thoughtful, personal work too. Very classy stu¤ , and

this edition, with its lovely cover, is a joy as well; one to keep. SHMH

Pub Harper Collins, 2013, hardback, 374pp, £18.99

Kurun Around the

World

by Jacques Yves le Toumelin

The Sea Inside

by Philip Hoare

CB323 Books Sundowners.indd 69 24/03/2015 18:54