J G O'Connor

The World Was Round in 1973 J G O'Connor

1973 was a simpler time. There were no satellites or computers for navigation, just charts, sextants, a compass, a chronometer, log tables and shipmates. At Sea it was all that was needed. This book is about one such voyage. It's just a routine voyage at a moment in time. While one world continues with its routine madness, this ship's crew complete a circumnavigation of the real world.
Johnny the Chief Officer while on watch embraces the solitariness. Standing on the bridge he delves into his thoughts as they occur. Accepting that there is a unique aloneness at sea, but recognizing that being alone is not the same as loneliness. Even Charles Lindbergh experienced it. In a letter to astronaut Michael Collins commander of Columbia he pointed out that while he was interested in the antics of the other Astronauts on the moon "it seems to me you had an experience of in some ways greater profundity. The hours you spent orbiting the moon alone, and with more time for contemplation. What a fantastic experience it must have been"
The Mate while locked into the routine solidarity of his watch examines this aloneness in himself and observes everything around him. He views the real world and the other world with all that's happening, from the Yom Kippur war, the fuel crisis, the Vietnam War, life, death, the past, the future, the sea, reality and destiny. He embraces an indulgent patchwork of dreams and half dreams mixed with fragments of the truth. This is the Mate's log.
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