CALL OF THE SEA

I fell in love without being aware of it. I was bewildered, in the hands of fate. . . . But he was like a drug I couldn't live without."" So France recalls her first months in Tahiti with Christian, a playboy-photographer whom she eventually marries. He has just bought his first yacht--a dud, and they spend six months photographing Tahitian tourists to save enough to have their own yacht built. France has a baby (three daughters all told) and off they go again, now to the Canaries. Christian has the ship rigged so that it requires only one sailor; France therefore spends most of her time as a kitchen-and-diaper drudge, endlessly breast-feeding. No refrigerator. Nonetheless. . . ""The music of the sea fills me; I drown in it. I feel that my body can no longer contain it, that I will explode. . . . This beauty that catches at my throat, at my guts, that makes me want to shout at the top of my voice. . . . What immense happiness."" This is not a book about navigation techniques. It's about a family that chooses to live at sea and to educate its children by correspondence courses. The self-sufficiency of the children educates the parents ""about happiness."" And before we leave the Guillains on their third yacht, France can write, ""Marvelous. I'm wallowing in luxury: I have rubber gloves for dishwashing, and hot running water.