夢幻游艇：千萬寶貝的誕生

????熱愛海洋和沙灘，但是整個冬天不得不留在岸上的讀者們，一定會喜歡G?布魯斯?奈赫特的新書《宏圖大志》（Grand Ambition）。而當他們拿起這本關于航海的新書，一定會因為這本書的副標題而疑惑不解，直撓頭皮。這條誠懇而又動人的副標題這樣寫道：“本書獻給一條非凡出眾的游艇和建造它的人們，以及一名無法真正享用它的億萬富翁?！?/p>

????奈赫特是個航海老手。他寫過兩本關于航海的書，都大受歡迎。一本是關于1998年的悉尼-霍巴特帆船大賽（Sydney to Hobart yacht race）。當時，這個賽事斷送了6個參賽者的生命。另一本則是關于“水煮魚”（poached fish）——既是餐廳里的一種菜肴，又是海盜非法盜捕的意思。他還是瑪麗?查四世號縱帆船（Mari Cha IV）的船員之一。2005年，他們駕駛這艘船打破了塵封100多年的橫渡大西洋航海時間紀錄。

????這次，奈赫特寫了一本深入淺出、包羅萬象的手冊，告訴你一艘當代的超級游艇是怎樣制造的。這艘夢幻游艇的主人是一位私募基金投資大亨道格?馮?埃爾曼和他的妻子琳達。他們對現在擁有的游艇中的一艘不太滿意：這艘船長197英尺，設計高度有11.5英尺，大得沒法泊入他們在勞德代爾堡的別墅碼頭。他們打算重新訂做一艘略小的游艇，大約187英尺長，8英尺高，就起名叫“琳達女士號”（Lady Linda）。他們希望這艘船就在美國制造，從而證明美國制造的游艇也能和在荷蘭，或者德國那些頂級船塢建造的游艇一樣好。

????Sea-struck readers enduring the long winter ashore will want to pick up Grand Ambition, the latest maritime volume from G. Bruce Knecht. And the minute they do they'll likely start scratching their heads, bemused by the engagingly frank subtitle on the cover: "An Extraordinary Yacht, The People Who Built It, And the Millionaire Who Can't Really Afford It."

??? Knecht knows his boats. He is the author of two previous, well received sea stories, one about the deadly 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race, and one about poached fish -- the kind served in restaurants, and also the kind taken illegally by pirates. He was also, it happens, aboard the schooner Mari Cha IV in 2005 when it broke a transatlantic sailing record that had stood for 100 years.

??? This time Knecht has written a soup-to-nuts account of the construction of a modern superyacht. The vessel is the dream boat of a private equity investor, Doug Von Allmen, and his wife, Linda, who have a problem with one of their current yachts: at 197 feet, with a draft of eleven and a half feet, it is too big to keep at the dock behind their house in Fort Lauderdale. They decide to commission a slightly smaller one, to be called Lady Linda, 187 feet long with an eight-foot draft. They want it to be made in the U.S.A., so as to prove that an American-built yacht can be just as good as one built in the fancy shipyards in Holland and Germany.