I guess I'm as into reading maritime books as any man alive. I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first dove into certain salty works like Melville's Moby Dick, Raphael Sabatini's Captain Blood, London's The Sea Wolf, and Conrad's Lord Jim. Lots of times I was onboard a vessel of some description at the time, either one I owned or one I was working on, stealing a few hours away from life's routines for some yondering, as Louis L'Amour (who wrote more than a few yarns of the sea himself) once described the practice of simply drifting off someplace, for no particular reason other than to see what you might find there. Heck, I remember reading Clive Cussler’s Raise The Titanic! by candle light on an old Seabird yawl I once owned or was owned by. I was tied up at a rough-and-tumble marina in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida. Right on the edge of the ICW. I can almost smell the damp, fragrant pages today, as well as the sweet perfumes of outboard-motor oil (I had a clunky old, semi-operational Evinrude for docking purposes), mildew, brackish water, and wax melting in a tin can candle holder.
   

So hey! Considering how smitten I've always been with the pure, tactile romance of books and reading, can you imagine little ol’ me  buying a freakin ' electronic reader? Well, let's just say the part of me that digs technology momentarily beat out the part that loves low-tech stuff, and presto--here I am with an Amazon Kindle in my hands.

And I gotta say, folks--what a cool little device. Recently, I decided to re-read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and, while laying in the V-berth of the Betty Jane, on the spur of the moment, I downloaded (it took about a minute) not only Treasure Island but all of Stevenson's works for about $5 and began reading right away. Books for sale on Kindle are both fast and CHEAP!!!!!!!!!

Moreover, when I used to travel to do boat tests in the pre-Kindle days, I typically carried along a few inspirational tomes that I regularly enjoy reading each morning. Only trouble was the darn things had a tendency to weigh me down whilst I pulled my roller through airports en route to the next destination.

Now things are way different! Just about all of the books I used to lug around are in the Kindle library so I've downloaded what I could and substituted a couple of others. Wow! Instead of packing a passel of physical books around with me these days, I just drop the Kindle into the  frowzy old Filson bag I've been carrying to tests for 18 years now and I'm good to go. Figure I save myself about five pounds of extra ballast and a heck of a lot of trouble.

By the way. If you buy a Kindle of your own, remember to also buy a groovy, slip-on sock to protect it from wear. I got a frowzy one that perfectly matches my Filson. It’s padded for extra protection as well and, as I recall, I bought it off the Kindle website.