The Mercy and Swallows & Amazons Now on Amazon Prime

Jan 2, 2017
765
O'Day & Islander 322 & 37 Scottsdale, AZ & Owls Head, ME
After waiting impatiently for over a year for Netflix to make these two films available, I discovered that they are streamable on Amazon Prime. The Mercy, staring Colin Firth, is the story of Donald Crowhurst's fateful attempt to win the Golden Globe, and S&A is a recent BBC enactment of the first of Arthur Ransome's series of children's novels about children and sailboats (which engendered my interest in sailing when read as a small boy). The latter stays reasonably close to the book (for a modern film) and has some nice shots of wooden sailboats and Windermere where the stories are set.
 
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Mar 31, 2013
234
O'day 23 Pa
So...
Back as a child my first sailing, well boating in general introduction was on Lake Windermere, camping with the sea cadets.
Sailing Lasers, canoeing and learning to be coxswain of an eight boy team rowing heavy (to us) boats.
Had read S&A as a child.
fast forward a moon or several and I'm sitting in rural PA with my two kids bouncing off the walls and the movie comes on TV.
I make them sit for 10 minutes to watch it and they were enthralled!
Great, well told story is all it takes to grab the imagination of children. Now when we sail at the lake (Nockamixon), they pretend to be exploring the island (it's not an island but just a part of the lake shore that juts out.
Watching a 9 year old and his 13 year old sister just having utterly harmless fun makes me so happy.