Father and son sailing among the Icebergs. When sailing is good for you and resolves conflict

The difficult relationship between fathers and sons has haunted humankind since its origins. Just recall the biblical conflict between Abraham and Isaac. By sea the complex father/son relationship was told, perhaps first, by Homer in Ulysses with Telemachus and his father Ulysses.

BLOOD OF MY BLOOD
Millennia later Pietro Grossi recounts the troubled relationship between blood of one’s own blood by sea, in a sailboat. He describes it accurately in his book “The Passage,” recently released in bookstores by Feltrinelli (15 euros). A word of advice first, buy it and read it if you are the least bit passionate about the sea, sailing, human relationships, sailing, adventure. We recommend it because it is a thrilling tale with a 12-meter steel sailboat taking center stage as it has to cross the Northwest Passage from Greenland to Canada.
A journey to the edge of the world among whales, storms, accidents, icebergs, where your compass goes crazy and you rely only on GPS, if it works. On board are father and son, once linked by a passion for sailing, who are reunited after years of estrangement and quarrels.

NOT THE USUAL NAVIGATOR’S BOOK
Pietro Grossi is a writer/velist. And it shows. His descriptions of sailing in the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean are exciting and true. Full of annotations and situations in which those who go sailing will find themselves. The author knows what he is talking about, he has sailed a lot in warm seas in his life – the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Atlantic – and then he went the same route as Carlo – the son in the book – in those cold seas, so Carlo’s look at that kind of sea is his own: fascinated and a little stunned.

A WRITER BEFORE A SAILOR
But here we are not faced with the usual book of the navigator recounting his experiences. In reverse, the narrator is a first-time novelist who sets his story in the element of his passion, the sea and sailing. Here’s what the author says:“After a lifetime at sea, I finally had the courage to tackle what for me was ‘the big mountain’: telling the story of the sea. The sea was a great love for me, and like all great loves you struggle to find the right key to talk about it and especially to understand what to eliminate. After my previous novel (Enchantment, ed.), I told myself I wanted to give it a try, and immediately the voice of this father asking his son for help began to whisper in my ear. However, I could not find a place and time, I did not understand where this story that I had been inside for a while, too, was happening. Having sailed the warm seas, I imagined it being set there, yet something didn’t quite fit. As soon as I set foot in Greenland in 2012, I realized that those were the places for this adventure. Not so much as if that was where I had to build it, but just as if I had arrived at the places where that event took place.”

ADVENTURE IS GETTING A SUBZERO SHAMPOO
One of the most exciting moments in the book is the encounter with the whales, which then sets the stage for the book’s mother scene (which we will not recount). This is how Grossi explains that passage in his book:
“To me that whale is nature, in the broadest sense of the word, coming to bring together those two animals that are on the hull. When the whale comes, it is as if the sea thickens from below: that’s how I seem to see it, as if this nature that they love and know so much has called them there to settle their unfinished business and now, while they are still wavering a bit-Charles getting nervous about his father’s excesses and Fabio not finding the courage to explain himself-the sea thickens into this black animal and slaps them both in the face to wake them up from their torpor.”

The “passage” for a sailor is also savoring, by reading the book, unforgettable moments of life on board, Grossi tells them well and describes them this way: “… it’s true that when you’re on a boat, whether it’s a beer with two pistachios, or an Italian salami while abroad, the moments when you quiet down and take your well-deserved rest are always extraordinary moments. The shampoo part is then an autobiographical part: of course, I kicked it up a notch, but that shampoo I really did in that little village while the others were down. I remember it as a good time, with all that cold around and the water slipping over my head, so much so that I felt like having Carlo do it too.”

We won’t tell you the plot, but we can tell you that “The Passage” is also a useful guide to what to do when you are in trouble on a boat. A perfect read for the winter months, as fascinating as a modern-day Conrad book.

LISTEN TO PIETRO GROSSI’S INTERVIEW ABOUT HIS BOOK