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Godforsaken Sea
Derek Lundy
“Great book. Lundy jumps right into the heart of sailing the world’s most isolated oceans. He explores the edge between seeking and avoiding, the boundary between adventure and nightmare, the difference excitement and fear…..He goes to the heart of the competitors, those who place themselves where no one else would dream of, could dream of.”
The Perfect Storm
A TRUE STORY OF MEN AGAINST THE SEA
A white knuckle adventure.
Sebastian Junger
October 1991. It was “the perfect storm”—a tempest the may happen only once in a century—a nor’easter created by so rare a combination of factors that it could not possibly have been worse. Creating waves ten stories high and winds of 120 miles an hour, the storm whipped the sea to inconceivable levels few people on Earth have ever witnessed. Few, except the six-man crew of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat tragically headed towards its hellish center.
Queequeg’s Odyssey:
The High Seas on a Low Budget
Quen Cultra
Quen Cultra built Queequeg in a barnyard, motored down the Mississippi—and sailed around the world. His previous experience was limited to rowboats. The total cost of his boat, a trimaran, was $6,000. His expenses at sea were less than three dollars a day. The pay-off? Three years of high adventure, fascinating sights, and a communion with nature that no amount of money could buy the conventional traveler.
Cultra sailed with friends and took his time, staying long enough at each port to realy sample the local cultures and the sights. These ranged from the Small Nambas of Malakula (naked tribesmen who had never before seen a white man) to the socialites at the Cape Town Yacht Club. But there was also danger. Their first storm at sea was a hurricane; they were rammed by a freighter off Madagasgar; becalmed and out of fresh water in the doldrums; attacked by sharks inside the great Great Barrier Reef ; washed up on a deserted coast. The book is must reading for anyone considering such an adventure, or for the adventurous armchair reader.
Sea Stories
From
Newfoundland
Michael Harrington
Author’s Preface: This collection of true tales of Newfoundland was first published in 1958. Most of the stories originally appeared in various newspapers and periodical down the years, each in turn being embroidered by the virtue of the particular talents of the narrator.
Great Adventures In Small Boats
David Klein & Mary Louise King
“Oh! Lord, Thy sea is so broad and my ship is so small.”
For pleasure, for profit, for pure adventure, sailing across the ocean in a small boat remains a never-ending challenge to man’s courage, skill, and resourcefulness. This book tells men who met this challenge. Their exploits range in time from 1895, when Joshua Slocum set out to sail around the world, to 1948, when Harry Pidgeon began his third voyage at the age of seventy eight.
Through the stirring first-hand stories brought together here, both landlocked sailors and landlubbers can share with Jack London in the building of the “inconceivable and monstrous” Snark; experience with Rockwell Kent the feeling of being a “hunted animal cornered by dogs” as the reefs and fog close in on the cutter Direction; and undergo with Richard Maury the capsizing of the schooner Cimba in a storm off the coast of Bermuda. In spirit, these accounts vary from dramatic to serene, from amusing to desperate, but all vividly convey the thrill of facing an open in the challenging contest of wood and canvas against wind and water.
Taking Terrapin Home:
A Love Affair With A Small Catamaran
Mathew Wilson
Mathew Wilson achieved a lifelong ambition in having a small sailboat built to his unique specifications in England, and then setting out on the voyage that would take him and his boat, Terrapin , home to Florida. His passage making took him through the French rivers and canals to the Mediterranean, Ibiza and Spain, then to the Canary Island and south to the Cape Verde Islands, where he turned across the Atlantic and, despite sailing during a year which was marked by unusual and unseasonably high winds and seas, made it to Barbados in seventeen-one-half days. From there the route took Terrapin and Mathew slowly northwards to the Caribbean, finding landfalls in the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas and, finally, home to Jupiter, Florida in the United States of America.
Taking Terrapin Home covers the story of two-and one-half years of the boating that most people only dream about. But it’s more than that. The book is a look at the great sailing routes of the world through fresh eyes; a cruising guide for anyone thinking of taking the same track; and a checklist for the novice ocean sailor.
It is a good story. It’s also the kind of book anyone interested in sailing would want on the bookshelf.
A Voyage for MADMEN
Nine men set out to race each other around the world. Only one made it back.
Peter Nichols
“An extraordinary story of bravery and insanity on the high seas….One of the most gripping sea stories I have ever read.” Sebastian Junger, author of Perfect Storm
In 1958 , nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. It was a feat that had never been accomplished and one that would forever change the face of sailing. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death.
In this extraordinary book, Peter Nichols chronicles a contest of the individuals against the sea, waged at a time before cell phones, satellite dishes, and electronic positioning systems. A Voyage for Madmen is a tale of sailors driven by their own dreams and demons, of horrific storms in the Southern Oceans, and of those riveting moments when a split-second decision mean between life and death.
Spellbinding……
In search of
Moby Dick
Tim Severin
‘With Melville-like dexterity, Severin stitches together this story of his global search for the “real” Moby Dick and his creator……Well worth reading.’
Superb travel writing combined with personal and historical anecdote make this an intriguing and enlightening exploration of one of the ocean’s enduring myths.
