Crossing

By R.Z. Sheppard

AIRBORNE

by WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.

252 pages. Macmillan. $12.95.

On the evidence of William F. Buckley Jr.'s account of his life afloat, it can be categorically stated that the author neither now nor ever has believed that the earth is flat.

In the summer of 1975, Buckley, his son, sister-in-law, assorted friends and paid hands sailed to Spain aboard Buckley's 60-ft. cutter Cyrano. Ashore, ships of state were foundering and inflation was making even rubber ducks a luxury item. Buckley's landlubbing wife Pat was waiting apprehensively ("If he comes through this alive, I'll kill him"). But with Europe finally visible to port and Africa looming to starboard, Buckley brought his crew content past changeless Gibraltar.

So ended what had come to be known as "the Big One," the cruise that Buckley had dreamed of for years. He has spent much of his life in or around boats. His first, in 1939, was a 17-ft. Barracuda-class named Sweet Isolation, in honor of his father's political views. Much later there were ocean-going yachts bearing such names as The Panic (in honor of the Great Depression?) and Suzy Wong (in honor of the world's oldest laissez-faire enterprise?). Cyrano, in fact, might have been named Loophole. Buckley charters the boat for much of the year, making him eligible for depreciation allowances on it, deductible expenses, etc. He alludes to such arrangements but spares the details. The reader is envious enough.

Airborne is both an immensely pleasurable, digressionary account of an Atlantic crossing and an unashamed celebration of the good life in anything but the best of times. (One of the crew aboard Cyrano even had to leave the idyl to attend the dissolution of his failed business.) About himself and his class of sailing friends, Buckley writes: "We never fancied ourselves as 'everlasting children of the mysterious sea. Rather as a different generation of 'successors,' anticipated by Joseph Conrad as 'the grown-up children of a discontented earth.' "

Beards at Sea. Which means that Buckley can be counted on to temper the traditions of the sea with modern irony. The book is full of the renowned Buckley wit. On beards at sea: "Arriving in Bermuda unshaved at the end of the ocean race always struck me a little like the athlete on campus who wears his sweatshirt inverted, ostensibly to disguise the varsity letter--which, of course, accentuates that which it purports to cover: like men's bikinis." On beards in general: "Men tend to look the same. I have always shuddered at the possibility that, by mistake, St. Peter admitted Karl Marx and barred Johannes Brahms." At times the ironies seem to have been guided by an unseen hand. In his off-watch time, Buckley read Moby Dick. But no whales were sighted, just an unidentified submarine. Buckley also tells of anchoring in an isolated cove in the British Virgin Islands, only to be unexpectedly joined minutes later by another boat bearing Dr. Benjamin Spock. In warm neutral waters, ideological differences fade to reveal indelible tax brackets.

On Cyrano's Atlantic crossing, the whims of wind and water were taken in experienced strides; the works of man, however, caused considerable difficulty. Sophisticated electronic equipment mysteriously refused to operate. Partly in consequence, Buckley fills his pages with freshets of information about ocean cruising. He makes a useful distinction between "expertise" and "expertness." In the spirit of 19th century British intellectual noblesse oblige, he simply and clearly explains marine navigation. As skipper he is heavy on object lessons, especially in matters of boat safety. Two people lost their lives while sailing Cyrano under charter: a scuba diver died in the Caribbean, and an ad executive fell overboard and drowned in the Hudson River while the boat was being used for a corporate cocktail party. The most serious mishap during Cyrano's trip to Spain was a gash suffered by one of the crew when a spinning winch handle hit him in the head.

The Big One was by all accounts a dream come true. Airborne not only allows the less fortunate to share that dream but indirectly provides an excellent working definition of a conservative: someone who has something of spiritual or material value worth conserving. Buckley--may his saints and accountants preserve him--has plenty of both. R.Z. Sheppard

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