English (Core) · Ch 3 — We're Not Afraid to Die... if We Can All Be Together
About the Authors and the Text
About the Authors and the Text
This lesson is a true, first-person adventure account written by Gordon Cook and Alan East. It is told in the voice of the narrator — a 37-year-old British businessman and keen amateur sailor — who, in July 1976, set out with his family to sail round the world.
The narrator, his wife Mary, their son Jonathan (Jon), aged 6, and daughter Suzanne (Sue), aged 7, leave Plymouth, England, aboard their specially built boat, the Wavewalker, hoping to repeat the round-the-world voyage of the famous explorer Captain James Cook. After a pleasant first leg down the west coast of Africa to Cape Town — where two crewmen, the American Larry Vigil and the Swiss Herb Seigler, join them — the family enters the treacherous southern Indian Ocean.
There, an enormous wave nearly destroys the boat and almost kills them. The heart of the story is the family's desperate, days-long fight to keep the wrecked Wavewalker afloat and to find a tiny island in a vast ocean. It is a narrative about courage, endurance, teamwork and hope — and about the astonishing bravery of two very young children who were 'not afraid to die if they could all be together'.
Notice these expressions in the text. Infer their meaning from the context.
- honing our seafaring skills — sharpening and improving their sailing abilities through years of steady practice
- pinpricks in the vast ocean — the two tiny islands that were mere specks, almost invisible, in the huge ocean
- ominous silence — a threatening, unnatural stillness that warned of the coming disaster
- a tousled head — a ruffled, untidy head of hair (young Jonathan's)
- Mayday calls — urgent international radio distress signals sent out by a ship or aircraft in grave danger