sentences type

Simple
I was there six days and nights.p.6
This sentence only has one subject and verb combination, makes completely sense by itself , consequently it is a simple sentence

Compound
The salt in the wood makes it slow to burn and it was difficult to light. P.6
This clause has two subject and verb combinations separated by the conjunction “and” and which makes sense individually: two simple sentences

Complex
When I was about fourteen, I made one wild attempt at sailing. P.8
The first sentence starts with subordination conjunction “when” making the first sentence a subordinated clause while the second sentence is a complete simple sentence.

Compound complex
Then I began to read about the sea and found that the Pacific Ocean was so enormous it dominated the entire planet; all the land mass in the world could fit inside the Pacific and there would still be sea around it. P. 10
This clause is collection of two independent clauses and two dependent clauses that make it a compound complex sentence.

Type unsure
Maybe I longed for it now because of all the time spent eating sand in the winds of the desert.

caught by the sea

I went away from there a new person, and I also began to understand things about mself, that I must see and know the oceans. I ust go to the sea, as the writers Herman Melville and Richard Henry Dana, Jr. , and Ernest K. Gannand Sterling Hayden had done. Like them, I must seek myself there, as the novelist James Jones did as he was writing Go to the Window-Marker.
To do that, I would need a boat.

This passage is very important because this where he realizes that he need to get away to the sea and see and do those amazing things other writers like him did. This passage is where the whole story starts. He is self consious that he had to go seek hiself and understand what he will find.