What do we do while off-watch, or during the heat of midday anchored in a tropical cove? We stretch out in the cockpit, under the awning, and read.

The ship’s library is as important as the pantry to the crew’s well-being. Stocking both requires some serious thought.

It would be a shame to go sailing through the Caribbean without historical and cultural context. Before Street and Doyle began writing guides, dozens of books told of adventures and life sailing in the West Indies. Growing up on a lake as a teen in the 1950s,  I was messing about in small boats and reading about adventures in Yachting and Rudder magazines. Jules Vern’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was the first novel I read all the way through. I was 14. I still have that book, with my handwritten notes inside.

That same year, my mother found an evening course for me to take, hosted by the US Power Squadrons. Piloting, Seamanship & Small Boat Handling by Charles Chapman was the textbook. I still have that book, too, and still use the knowledge and skills I learned. 

In high school, I began reading about my maritime heroes: Horatio Hornblower, Sir Francis Drake. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island introduced me to young Jim Hawkins. I learned about scattering carpet tacks on the deck at night to repel unwanted boarders while reading Jack London’s South Sea Tales. In 1966, The National Geographic Society published Isles of the Caribbees by sailor Carleton Mitchell. It’s about a winter’s voyage aboard the yacht Finisterre, sailing from island to island. The book is lavishly illustrated by National Geographic photographers. The images got me dreaming of sailing through the tropics, and of becoming a photographer myself.

I bought my first boat, Quinta, a 34-foot wooden Alden sloop, when I got back from Vietnam and landed a paying job as a newspaper editor. Three more sailboats followed as my adventures grew more ambitious and my skills increased.  My library grew, too.

Heavy Weather Sailing by Peter Bruce and K. Adlard Coles is there; so are Don Street’s many books, including The Ocean Sailing Yacht, and Street’s Cruising Guide to the Eastern Caribbean. It was John Ridgway’s book Round the World with Ridgway that convinced me a Bowman 57 ketch was the boat I’d been dreaming of since I was a teen. I was in my mid-50s when Searcher came into my life, taking me to the Caribbean three times over the course of 14 years.

James Michener’s 1989 novel Caribbean will provide enough reading to fill an entire season in the islands. More contemporary authors, such as Peter Nichols, John Kretschmer, Beth Leonard, Lin and Larry Pardey, Charles Doane and Herb McCormick continue to write about a life sailing. I’ve not even gotten around to the technical and DIY books that need space in any ship’s library.

During my years of messing about in boats, my marine library has grown to fill a bookcase. Boxes are stuffed with past issues of Cruising World, SAIL, Sailing World, Sailing, Yachting—even a collection of Nautical Quarterly.

A few years ago, I was rummaging around the library at Libby Nicholson’s Pineapple House in English Harbour on Antigua. I stumbled onto Richard Dey’s book Adventures in the Trade Wind. It’s a true story about Morris Nicholson, an English chap who fled the UK after the war and sailed to the Caribbean. He worked his way up and down the island chain and eventually became a charter captain on one of the Nicholson schooners out of English Harbour. This is a story about island life before bareboats, GPS and tourism. I swapped it for one of my books I’d just finished.

I have Dey’s book with me here as I write this column. Curious about the writer, I reached out to Sally Erdle, founder and long-serving editor of Caribbean Compass, a magazine to which I frequently contribute.

“Richard Dey has written for the Compass,” she replied. “In fact, Richard compiled two very well-researched bibliographies on the literature of the Caribbean. We published them in 1999 and 2000.”

You’ll find Dey’s two bibliographies in the Compass archive, here and here.

I also just finished Carleton Mitchell’s The Winds Call, published in 1971. I can’t wait to read whatever comes next. 

David H. Lyman is an author and award-winning marine journalist who contributes regularly to Cruising World, Caribbean Compass and other magazines. Find him at DHLyman.com.

The post The Ship’s Library: Add These Essential Reads for Caribbean Cruising appeared first on Cruising World.

The arrival of spring has us thinking about new adventures and distant horizons—and, along with that, the long to-do list we need to tackle to enable those ambitions. Why not take some time for yourself during this spring commissioning season to refuel your cruising passion with a great book?

Whether your literary taste leans toward adventure, mystery, romance or food, we’ve got you covered. Need a veterinarian’s advice for sailing with your furry friends, or inspiration for a circumnavigation that won’t break the bank? We’ve got that too.

Here are our top-seven picks for stories we guarantee will lift your spirits, fill your sails, and help you set an inspired course to summer cruising.

Addicted To More Adventure: Risk Is Good, Enjoy It
By Bob Shepton

Warning: Don’t pick up a copy of the Reverend Bob Shepton’s latest book, Addicted To More Adventure, if you’re susceptible to temptation and thrill-seeking. By the time you’ve finished the final chapter on his travels through Antarctica, you’ll be typing “expedition-ready sailboat” into your browser. Shepton, born in Scotland and a former officer in the Royal Marines, was one of the first people to organize and lead sailing expeditions for school-aged kids. He sailed round the world in his Westerly 33-foot via Antarctica and Cape Horn with “school leavers,” a journey that he dubbed the “first school group to sail round the world.” Shepton, 89, is well-known for leading several Bill Tilman-type sail-climbing expeditions to Greenland and Arctic Canada, where Shepton and his crew completed numerous first-ascent climbs. In his approximately 150,000 miles of sailing, he’s crossed the Atlantic 15 times and made 13 visits to the Arctic. His expeditions have made close to 60 first ascents of mountains and rock faces in Greenland and Arctic Canada. Aboard the 33-foot sloop Dodo’s Delight, he transited the Northwest Passage east to west (2012) and then west to east (2013). This adventure is recalled in the opening chapter of the book. He’s been awarded the Blue Water Medal, the Tilman Medal (twice), the Goldsmith Medal for Exploration, the Ocean Cruising Club’s Barton Cup (twice), the OCC’s Vasey Vase (three times), and the Vice Commodore’s Medal (three times). He was voted Yachtsman of the Year (UK) in 2013 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. He has barely missed a beat since CW published his profile in 2020, although the book’s postscript mentions the passing of his beloved wife and the sale of Dodo’s Delight. Shepton has two previous books, Addicted to Adventure and High Latitude Sailing.

Capsize
By David Kushner

A naked corpse with a cracked skull is discovered by the Swedish police at sunrise in a cemetery next to a stolen schooner, aground along the seawall. The medical examiner determines that the dead man had been exposed to enough plutonium to build a nuclear bomb. Blue-eyed Bengt Linder, a marine insurance fraud expert, and police inspector Anya Wallin, a tall, blond Swede, are assigned to the case. The body count builds, followed by a shootout with a corrupt superyacht owner and a wild chase through Corsica, Cyprus, Lebanon and the south of France. The action in Capsize catches you like a strong breeze on a tight reach and propels you toward a high-stakes finish—a perfect read for a long, rainy weekend while waiting for weather.

Holding Fast: A Memoir of Sailing, Love and Loss
By Susan Cole

Susan Cole spent 30 years on and around boats, and her poignant memoir, Holding Fast, captures her complicated, decades-long relationship with the sea. The adventure begins when her partner, John, talks her into buying a leaky, 1903 48-foot Fire Island Ferryboat. After 10 years on board, a fire destroys their home and all of their possessions. Several sailboats follow, as does a three-year sail through the Caribbean with their young daughter, Kate. Through a layered narrative, Cole exposes her growth from hesitant sailor to empowered cruiser, culminating in her experience of riding out Hurricane Mitch alone, upriver in the Rio Dulce. Seasoned sailors will appreciate Cole’s origin story; new sailors will enjoy her honesty. In the end, her book is an adventure story wrapped in a love letter to her husband John, who loses his battle to cancer. Cole earned a Bachelor of Arts at Barnard College and a Masters in Psychology from Columbia University.

Where There Is No Pet Doctor: A Manual for Cruisers, RVers and Backcountry Travelers, Fourth Edition
By David W. LaVigne DVM

Dr. David LaVigne has practiced veterinary medicine for more than 40 years and was a longtime liveaboard cruiser and a rear commodore in the Seven Seas Cruising Association. He has presented numerous lectures on pets and written dozens of articles about our furry friends’ lives on board. His website includes links to a list of webinars and classes on cruising with pets. This is the fourth edition of LaVigne’s resourceful guide on traveling with pets. The updated edition includes global pet quarantine and entry requirements, common health issues, medications, skin care, eye care and ear care. A rating system is included to rate procedures according to degree of difficulty and possible risk to the pet. While suturing a pet’s injury might be four stars (****Not Recommended), removing sutures or treating a soft-tissue injury rates one star (*Little Risk). He includes information on general first aid, fractures, medications, systemic problems, and diet. Sadly, the geriatric care section is followed by information on euthanasia and body care.

Hooked On the Horizon: Sailing Blue Eye Around the World
By Tom Dymond

In this entertaining and addictively honest memoir, two school friends cast off from England on a Nicholson 32, with dreams of sailing around the world. Though neither the boat nor the crew are ready, “sooner or later you have to jump,” Dymond writes. Their first jump out of Portsmouth takes them across the English Channel south to Morocco, on to the Canary Islands, and across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. The big jump follows: Panama, the Galapagos Islands, the South Pacific and New Zealand. Through Indonesia, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean, battle scars harden the crew and boat, and they push on to a final path through the French canals and back to England, their circumnavigation complete and the “entire journey astern.”

Dymond dispels early in the story any idea that the cruising life is sunshine and rainbows, writing with a dry humor of the challenges that cruisers face while pursuing their dreams—the relentless beat to windward, the bureaucracy in Panama, the unending boat projects, and days spent waiting for weather. He looks back at three years of cruising and examines why, even at anchor among the simplicity and beauty, we are constantly caught up in wondering what lies over the next horizon.

The Hunter and The Gatherer: Cooking and Provisioning for Sailing Adventurers
By Catherine Lawson and David Bristow

Aussies Dave Bristow, the hunter, and Catherine Lawson, the gatherer, have spent the past two decades afloat. The couple, joined by their young daughter, Maya, have made conscious choices to live simple, sustainable lives on their 40-foot catamaran, Wild One. The Hunter and The Gatherer is a culmination of their two decades of travel, filled with 60 pages of provisioning advice (cracking coconuts, foraging ashore, growing sprouts) and 160 recipes.

“This is a book for ocean-loving foodies,” Lawson says. “Our food is for tiny galleys, long passages and perfect sunsets.”

The recipes are divided into three sections: Food for Hunters (Spicy Thai Fish Burgers, Baked Prawn and Noodle Rolls, Mussels Bianco), Food for Gatherers (Easy Persian Pilau, Red Lentil Bolognese, Power-Charged Tabbouleh); and Sweet Treats (Papaya Scones, Coconut Cake, Grilled Pistachio Plums).

“We call [all of] these recipes ‘faraway food,’ and create them for people who love to eat well but love to escape even more.”

Boat Girl: A Misadventure
By Elizabeth Foscue

Author Elizabeth Foscue, a boat kid who spent a slice of her formative years living aboard in the Caribbean, brings us this laugh-out-loud coming-of-age story about 15-year-old Caitlin Davies, a misfit teenager living on a sailboat with her parents in the British Virgin Islands. Short, scrawny and awkward, Caitlin has somehow managed to beguile Tristan, the cutest guy on the island, and to make a few stray friends. But when former owners of her family’s sailboat show up looking for the left-behind contraband that Caitlin has discovered under the yacht’s floorboards, the tropics really heat up. Funny and charming, Boat Girl reminds us of the angst of being a teenager, and the unexpected adventures of living aboard.

The post 7 Great Reads for Summer Sailing appeared first on Cruising World.

One of the most enjoyable things about sailing and cruising—to me, at least—is the extensive collection of books and literature associated with the sea. From Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick to Bernard Moitessier’s The Long Way to Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm (all of which reside on my bookshelf, among many others), the collective works of this salty genre are long and storied. During the past couple of pandemic years, I’ve enjoyed having the time to catch up on some of the most recent arrivals to this canon. As many folks prepare for upcoming charter vacations, it seems like a good time to pass along some recommendations. 

The best place to read a ­seagoing book, after all, is when going to sea. All the following are worth tossing into your duffel and are available from online booksellers. 

A Peril to Myself and Others: My Quest to Become a Captain
by David Kilmer
Before he was a professional skipper, seasoned cruiser, accomplished writer and frequent contributor to Cruising World, David Kilmer was a mountain man with zero sailing experience who’d come to a fork in his personal road. He had two options: Settle down or set out. He chose the latter, hopping a plane to the Caribbean with dreams of making a living on the deep blue sea. What transpired next—terror, ­comedy, self-awareness—unfolds like a voyage unto itself in this witty, insightful, most ­pleasurable seagoing ­coming-of-age account. 

A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes
by Eric Jay Dolin
In this lavishly illustrated, surprisingly engrossing and meticulously researched book (the footnotes alone account for more than 50 pages), author and historian Eric Jay Dolin pulls off a rare feat. By delving deeply into the lives and personalities of the forecasters, ship’s captains, journalists, and everyday folks who found themselves in the crosshairs of some of recorded history’s most terrifying tempests, he takes a subject that might otherwise be weighed down in science and numbers, and imbues it with the kinds of context, subtlety, and drama one might expect to find in a great work of fiction. 

Bargain Boats and Budget Cruising
by Todd Duff
Hey, we’re sailors. When it comes to our boats, we all want a bargain, right? Marine surveyor (and longtime CW writer) Todd Duff, who’s owned a small fleet of cruising boats himself, totally gets it. In the first half of this fun, informative tome, he discusses what to look for and where; the pitfalls, practicalities and pleasures in finding and fixing up an older vessel; and tips on safe cruising and raising kids aboard. The second half addresses the nitty-gritty: 42 capsule reviews of what he considers the best cruising-­boat bargains of all time.

Green Ghost, Blue Ocean: No Fixed Address
by Jennifer M. Smith
A first-person memoir and narrative written in the spirit and style of the great Lin Pardey, Jennifer Smith’s honest and entertaining recounting of 17 years and 40,000 nautical miles rambling all over the watery world serves as both a guide to such adventures and the reason to seek out your own.

Bound for Cape Horn: Skills for Expedition Cruising
by R.J. Rubadeau
The goal? Cape Horn. The problem? It was a 16,000-nautical-mile round trip from the author’s island home in Maine. As someone who has lived and loved high-latitude sailing, I was absorbed by every facet of this book: the planning, execution, seamanship, log entries, and especially Rubadeau’s terrific prose.

Three Years in a 12-Foot Boat
by Stephen Ladd
And now for something completely different. Stephen Ladd has written a couple of cool books about small-boat wanderings, but this is my favorite: a personal, poetic, almost unbelievable tale of rivers, coasts and the high seas experienced aboard a tiny sailing/rowing boat called Squeak.

Sailing Commitment Around the World
by Capt. Bill Pinkney
Got young kids on board? Bring them this treat: a beautifully illustrated children’s book with valuable lessons therein. The story is about a recently honored member of the National Sailing Hall of Fame’s record-setting solo round-the-world voyage via the Southern Ocean, the first ever by a Black sailor. Those lessons, by the way, apply equally to young and old. 

Herb McCormick is the author of five nautical books and is a CW editor-at-large.

The post Salty Tales from the Sea appeared first on Cruising World.

Ted Turner was lit, again, in more ways than one, and he was letting people have it. Oh, boy. There was a time and place for everything, and for heaven’s sakes, not to mention simple common decency, this was neither one. Cocktail in hand, Turner was holding court in a noisy hotel pub in Plymouth, England, on the fateful 15th day of August in 1979, and he certainly had cause for celebration. But he was also, certainly, pushing all the boundaries.

Off to the side, nursing her own drink and with plenty to occupy her already worried mind, Doris Colgate—to whom Turner, the well-known media mogul who was also a champion, world-class sailor, was clearly addressing his comments—could only shake her head. She’d seen this movie before.

Late the previous evening, Turner had crossed the finish line off Plymouth aboard his 61-foot yacht, Tenacious, the provisional winner on handicap time of what would come to be known as the deadliest, most destructive yacht race of all time, the ‘79 Fastnet; the race was so named for the prominent rock off the coast of Ireland that was the primary feature of the racecourse, which all the boats had to round before returning to the English Channel and the finish line. Four days earlier, a massive fleet of 303 yachts had set forth from Cowes to begin the biennial 605-nautical-mile contest, which descended into utter and complete chaos on the third day when a powerful gale—with 70-knot gusts and 40-foot seas, well beyond the sporty but manageable conditions that had been forecast—ripped across the Irish Sea.

Among the yachts getting creamed in the maelstrom was a 54-foot US-flagged vessel named Sleuth, skippered by a vastly experienced New York sailor and sailing instructor—one who’d raced across the Atlantic on multiple occasions, not to mention competing in the Olympics and for the America’s Cup, among countless other races and regattas—named Stephen Colgate.

He was also Doris’ husband, Steve, with whom, a little over a decade earlier, she’d fallen head over heels in love at her very first sight.

The 1979 Fastnet would become legendary…for all the wrong reasons. It would spawn several documentaries; numerous postmortem investigations delving into the seaworthiness and structural integrity of the competing vessels; and a small library of sailing books, including John Rousmaniere’s definitive report, Fastnet Force 10 (the name refers to the prodigious number on the Beaufort scale, an empirical measurement that relates windspeed to observed conditions at sea; one never wants to be boating—or for that matter, anywhere but solid terra firma—in Force 10 conditions).

Turner had set foot on sweet, dry land the night before, where he was met by a waiting press corps thirsty for a first-person, firsthand update from a scene that was quickly becoming tragic. Rumors were swirling—unsubstantiated ones. It was clear that many boats had been dismasted or toppled, and that a huge, unprecedented rescue effort was underway (it would ultimately become the largest peace-time rescue operation ever, spanning 8,000 square miles and 4,000 people, in navy vessels, lifeboats, commercial craft and helicopters). But how many boats had come to grief? Furthermore, it was also being reported that there were fatalities, perhaps plenty of them. Had five sailors perished? Ten? Twenty? Nobody had a clue. The only sure thing known at the time was that the storm was still raging. And sailors were still dying.

Into all this uncertainty stepped Turner, with the opportunity to provide both insight and empathy. He chose not to. Instead, when asked by a British reporter about the brutal conditions, he wisecracked, “If it weren’t for these waves and weather (off the south coast of England), you’d all be speaking Spanish right now.” (The implication was that the powerful Spanish Armada in the 1500s would’ve crossed the English Channel and conquered the British Isles centuries earlier had it not been deterred by a savage storm. Turner never graduated from his alma mater, Brown University—though he did captain the sailing team—but he apparently attended some history classes.) And the only “bitter disappointment” he expressed in those first moments ashore was the remote possibility that some other, smaller boat might squeak ahead of Tenacious on corrected time and deny him victory. Winning. Turner made it abundantly clear it was his only concern.

As for the dead and missing? Crickets. As in, silence.

He doubled down when he saw Doris, who happened to be accompanied by Steve’s mother, Nina, on a road trip along the southern shores of England that had taken a decided turn for the worse. (Even in the best of circumstances, which these obviously weren’t, it would’ve been a strange journey; Steve’s relationship with his mom was, well, “complicated.”) Apart from his own, Turner wasn’t interested in anybody’s feelings.

This became clear when he spied Doris sitting alongside Pat Nye, the wife of another Fastnet skipper sailing under the Stars & Stripes, Dick Nye aboard Carina (Steve had also logged plenty of miles aboard Carina back on his home waters of Long Island Sound and also in the prestigious, international Admiral’s Cup series, and knew the extremely well-sailed and seaworthy boat well). Turner acknowledged the two anxious wives and basically said, loudly, that it was extremely unlikely anybody would see Sleuth or Carina—or their husbands—ever again.

Yikes.

This whole Fastnet race was an anomaly in the Colgate’s marriage; it had become very rare indeed for the couple to be separated, even briefly. Actually, Doris had sailed plenty of hard miles and races on Sleuth, and the sole reason she wasn’t alongside Steve at this very moment was because she’d made the decision to have her mother-in-law join her in England for the festivities, and to drive her from Cowes to Plymouth for the start and finish, respectively.

However, it wasn’t just Doris and Steve’s shared love of sailing that fused them, or even their rock-solid matrimonial bonds. No, their partnership extended well beyond shared recreational pursuits and their deeply committed relationship. For they were in business together, a business called Offshore Sailing School.

Quite simply, before everything else happened, it’s how they met.

Steve had started it in New York City in the mid-1960s, after college and a stint in the service, almost as a whim; he was already one hell of a sailor, and it wasn’t like he had something else he wanted to do. Doris had discovered Offshore—and sailing and Steve, all at once—as a diversion from a stifling job and a shaky marriage. Once Steve and Doris were together, they found in their work a nearly perfect complementary balance, a yin and yang to their own best talents and aspirations. Steve turned out to be a natural teacher, with deep knowledge of his subject and an almost intuitive understanding of how to share it. Doris soon learned she had the soul of a burgeoning entrepreneur, and the workaday world at Offshore was also a portal to empowering women and spreading her wings into other fulfilling ventures.

In the final days of the 1970s, having run Offshore together for a decade, they’d built the business into something strong and lasting. Even so, there was no possible way they could’ve had any notion of what obstacles and adventures lay ahead, personally and professionally, in the ensuing decades to come.

Back on the racecourse, in just about every important metric, Steve Colgate was the antithesis of Ted Turner (though Steve had plenty of experience racing against him, and had deep respect for Turner’s gifts as a sailor). Some people find their creative passion in painting or writing or music. Steve found his in racing sailboats, a craft that he honed with the same care, devotion and determination as any accomplished Broadway actor. Steve sailed for neither fame nor money nor notoriety, but for the pure challenges the sport presented him, in all its nuances and competitiveness.

He prided himself on being an amateur competitor, a Corinthian yachtsman, not a professional. When he started racing, there were no such things as pro sailors; the closest ­applicable comparison was a hired boat captain. These days, there’s a clear professional class of sailors who compete for big paychecks. But when, for example, Steve sailed in the Olympics in 1968, anyone paid to play their sport was automatically disqualified. Steve was every bit as good as any “pro,” but it was a point of pride that he always played for free.

Furthermore, unlike with Turner, there was no spit or bombast in Steve. In fact, one of his attributes of which he was most proud was remaining calm and cool under pressure: There was no screaming or hollering or histrionics on the boats Steve sailed. Which was another way that he was separated from Turner. Over the years of his own prodigious sailing career, Steve had come to the conclusion that skippers who yell in the heat of competition rarely did well. Turner was a rare exception.

Beyond the competitive sailing arena, there was one other big difference between the pair: Turner was a very wealthy man. And while Steve had been born into a noted and successful American family, and enjoyed a rather privileged upbringing, he was now very much a member of the working class. When he started his business, he did have a trust fund, but it was actually kind of an inside joke: a whopping $62 a month. In fact, when he’d launched Offshore in Manhattan back in the mid-1960s, he slept in a tiny spare room in the school’s offices of its East Side walk-up. He couldn’t afford two separate rents.

Two years prior to the Fastnet fiasco, the Colgates had ­endured their first unpleasant Turner encounter, this time together, shortly after the nicknamed “Mouth of the South” had won the 1977 running of the America’s Cup aboard Courageous, in which he was ably assisted by a prodigal young tactician named Gary Jobson (Turner had stumbled into the winner’s press conference completely wrecked on the bottle of Aquavit that he was still swigging).

A few weeks later, Steve and Doris ran smack dab into Turner and his young protégé, Jobson, at a reception for the Cup defenders at the regal Manhattan headquarters of the New York Yacht Club on West 44th Street. Turner had taken it upon himself to mentor the 20-something Jobson and provide some career advice, and when he saw the couple, he just couldn’t help himself. “The Colgates!” he blared. “Jobson here is going to start a sailing school and run you guys out of business!” (Many years after, Jobson said that Turner was just being his usual “wiseass” and the last thing he ever intended to do was launch a sailing school: “Oh my god, you’d have to buy all these boats, and the insurance, and you’re stuck in one place…I wanted to keep moving and sailing.” Plus, he concluded, “that’s hard work!”)

But Steve and Doris had a difficult time letting it slide. When it came to what they were building at Offshore, it was personal, because they took their business very, very seriously. And now, yet again, here in England, Turner was back at it.

But there in the pub, unfortunately, for all his unnerving bluster and nonsense, even Doris realized Turner had actually raised a couple of very pertinent questions. For instance: How were Sleuth and her crew faring in the tempest?

And then, of course, there was the far more pointed one, for which Doris was pining for the answer: Where the hell was Steve?

Order a hardcover edition of Offshore High, autographed by Steve and Doris Colgate, at an exclusive rate available only to CW ­readers. The 288-page book has 177 full-color photographs and makes a fine gift, personalized, just in time for the holidays. Normally $39.95, CW readers receive 15 percent off. Visit offshoresailing.com/offshore-high (and use code CW15OH) to order. Published by Seapoint Books, Offshore High is also available in bookstores and the usual online booksellers.

CW executive editor Herb McCormick is the author of five ­nautical books, including As Long as It’s Fun, the critically acclaimed ­biography of cruising legends Lin and Larry Pardey. (Editor’s note: This book excerpt was edited for style and clarity.)

The post How a Legendary Sailing Couple founded Offshore Sailing School appeared first on Cruising World.

When Steven Callahan left Maine in January 1981 on Napoleon Solo, a 6.5-meter sloop, for a solo sail to the Canary Islands and back to America, he was planning to fulfill a childhood dream and thought he had prepared for all contingencies. Callahan was 29 when he started what he later described as an “exhilarating crossing” of the Atlantic and made it safely across the sea. On January 29, 1982, Callahan left the Canaries for the sail back to America. The first week of the return journey, Callahan said, “was smooth trade-wind sailing, and when a gale started, I wasn’t too concerned. I knew the boat, and I’d been through much worse.” Later, on the night of February 4, 1982, something—”­probably a whale or a large shark,” Callahan ­recalled—smashed into Napoleon Solo with a deafening bang and opened a hole in the hull.” Callahan was forced to evacuate to a life raft and spent the next 76 days lost at sea, an ordeal he described in greater detail in his book Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea.

Callahan’s life since being adrift at sea has been a mix of highs and even more life-threatening challenges. “While I was stranded at sea, I had a lot of time to think,” Callahan recalled recently from his home in Maine. “I regretted every mistake I’d ever made. I was divorced and felt I had failed at human relations in general, at business, and even at sailing. I vowed that if I was found at sea, I would do a better job with my life.”

It took about eight months for Callahan to fully get back on his feet after being found by three fishermen in the Caribbean. Back in Maine, Callahan reconnected in 1982 with Kathy Massimini, an old friend. “Neither of us had anything,” Callahan said. “We had two rusted cars and didn’t have a lot of the bare necessities, but we loved each other.” Callahan and Massimini began living together in 1982 in a Maine farmhouse they rented for $125 a month, and got ­married in 1994.

In addition to writing Adrift and articles about safety at sea, Callahan served as a technical consultant to director Ang Lee on the movie Life of Pi, about a survivor’s story at sea. Callahan still designs boats—he originally built Napoleon Solo for the Mini Transat 6.50, a solo yacht race across the Atlantic. Callahan faced more life-threatening challenges in 2010 when portions of both of his kidneys had to be removed, and in 2012, when he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. “I had my 30th birthday in a life raft and spent my 60th birthday in a hospital bed getting chemotherapy,” said Callahan, who underwent a stem-cell transplant later in 2012. “Through it all, the same as while adrift, Kathy and I have always found reasons for finding gifts within the experience: the preciousness of life that we seem to capture in the most desperate of times.

“Being adrift alone and being totally dependent on others while going through leukemia were very different in so many obvious ways, but survival experiences of all types also share a lot in common, from stages we go through to general strategies. Most valuable to me were that both delivered a deep spiritual sense of connection to all things. Both were incredibly difficult to get through, but both also rewarded me with true awe, enlightenment, inspiration and humility that I could not have experienced in any other way,” Callahan said.

Today Callahan serves as a national celebrity ambassador for the Leukemia Cup Regatta campaign, and together with Kathy supports the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Forty years later, Callahan has no regrets about making the journey. “Anything worth doing is not going to be easy. While we all want to have fun in our lives, fulfillment is what we all are really after. I still don’t regret my 76 days alone in the raft. To this day, I feel enlightened by what I went through because it changed me for the better.”

The post Adrift: 40 Years Later appeared first on Cruising World.

In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides

On July 8, 1879, with the backing of millionaire newspaper titan James Bennett, the fearless Polar adventurer Captain George Washington De Long and his crew of 32 men set sail from San Francisco on the USS Jeannette. De Long was bound for the Arctic, in search of the Open Polar Sea, which at the time was widely believed to be an expanse of warm, unfrozen water leading directly to the North Pole. De Long was interested in the quest, Bennett for the headlines. As the publisher of the New York Herald, a few years earlier he’d dispatched Henry Stanley to find missionary-explorer David Livingston in Africa, with spectacular success. But perhaps needless to say, the Jeannette expedition went terribly wrong, and Sides’s account of the ill-fated journey is a riveting addition to the long list of literature devoted to the race to the North Pole.

Outerbridge Reach by Robert Stone

The late, great Robert Stone was a celebrated novelist whose works won numerous prizes and accolades, none more than Dog Soldiers, the tale of a strange, disaffected soldier in Vietnam that won the National Book Award. It turns out, however, that Stone knew more than a little about sailing and the sea, which is abundantly clear in Outerbridge Reach, the tale of a Naval Academy graduate (and Vietnam vet) named Owen Browne who, through an interesting sequence of events, finds himself competing in a solo around-the-world race (which seems based on the early BOC Challenges). The novel is basically broken into two parts, the first involving shaky marriages and shady characters, sailing magazines (!) and yacht brokers, and the rather fancy lives of New Yorkers and their Connecticut neighbors. But the second half, when the race is on, is when things really start happening, and also when Stone’s great gift as a writer also sets sail.

Coasting: A Private Voyage by Jonathan Raban

In 1982, while the British Navy was sailing off to war in the Falkland Islands, native son Jonathan Raban also set forth on a voyage, but of more modest means: a lap around Great Britain aboard his 40-foot ketch, Gosfield Maid. Raban is a novelist but is perhaps better known for his travel writing (his book about a journey down the Mississippi River, Old Glory: An American Voyage, is marvelous) and Coasting is most assuredly a fine travel book, particularly for those with a passing familiarity with England. But it’s also a fine sea yarn, and a lovely treatise on families, fathers and cultures, as well. Raban penned a series of stories for Cruising World in the early 2000s, and they were all excellent; he’s a fabulous writer. But to be honest, magazines aren’t really his medium, he requires a broad canvas and room to create. In Coasting, he has all that and more: an open horizon, with plenty of stops to experience and contemplate along the way.

Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen

In 1519, as the commander of a fleet of five ships and some 200 sailors, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan set sail from Spain, ostensibly to find an oceanic route to the Spice Islands. Three years later, after an odyssey involving starvation, disease, torture, death and sex—oh yes, some of Ferdinand’s lads were plenty randy along the way—a lone ship returned to Spain after recording the first circumnavigation of the globe. Magellan, alas, was nowhere to be seen, having succumbed in the Philippines to the point of a spear from islanders who had no interest in his attempts to convert them to Christianity. Bergreen’s incredibly detailed account of it all is nothing short of masterful, and ultimately is a testament to both the wondrous age of discovery, and the blinding obsessions of the discoverers that drove it.

The Ship and the Storm by Jim Carrier

Before purchasing his Allied Seabreeze yawl and sailing it across the Atlantic—he wrote several articles for CW on his refit and voyaging—Jim Carrier was a veteran newspaperman and columnist for the Denver Post, among many other journalistic endeavors. Carrier employed his considerable reportorial expertise in tracking down and telling the remarkable story of the windjammer Fantome, which was lost at sea in 1998 while trying to outrun Hurricane Mitch. Carrier’s tale veers on and off of several related avenues, addressing the head-boat charter business, how it affects the islands (and islanders) where it operates, and of course the ambitious sailors who are drawn into it for the sheer love of the sea. The Ship and the Storm has just been released as an audiobook, and can be downloaded for free with an Audible trial (audible.com) or purchased online for $24.47.

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Whether crossing an ocean, lying on a beach or curled up beside a fire on a cold winter night, for almost any sailor there’s nothing better than a good book, especially a great sea tale. Over the last few months a slew of new, interesting titles has found their way to our offices, ­several of which have been penned by authors with strong connections to Cruising World. Here are a few of our favorites, all of which are available on Amazon and other outlets. They’re perfect for wiling away some time on a lonely watch, or connecting us to the sea when high and dry.

Second Wind by Nathaniel Philbrick (Penguin Books): Before he was the best-selling author of books including In the Heart of the Sea, Nat Philbrick was an editor for our sister magazine, Sailing World, and a champion Sunfish racer. Second Wind tells the story of a long winter sailing on the bays, lakes and ponds of Nantucket on a quest to shake off the rust of full-time writing and parenting to perhaps recapture his youthful glory at the Sunfish North Americans. The tale Philbrick tells is well told, enlightening and entertaining.

Spirit of a Dream by Dave Rearick (Seaworthy Publications): CW contributor Rearick (“Hope Springs Eternal,” April 2018) was a longtime solo Great Lakes sailor with a powerful ambition – to sail alone around the world. He did so on an adventurous circumnavigation aboard his twitchy Open 40, Bodacious Dream. A fine writer with an easy, engaging style, Rearick’s account of the trip – the questioning, sometimes debilitating lows as well the soaring highs – is honest, revealing and educational.

Heart of the Story by Barbara Lloyd (Story Arts Media): Based in Newport, Rhode Island, sailing and skiing ­journalist Lloyd made her name as the longtime boating writer for the New York Times, where she covered numerous America’s Cup regattas as well as the international yachting scene (and penned several articles for CW). Her encounters with countless famous sailors are a candid glimpse behind the curtain. But where this memoir really shines is in the details of her adventurous life, especially her days plying the oceans on a freighter with her sea captain partner. Sometimes a reporter’s best stories are their very own.

Sea Trial by Brian Harvey (ECW Press): When Harvey set sail to circumnavigate Vancouver Island, he did so with a box full of records of the court proceedings in a ­malpractice suit brought against his late father, a neurosurgeon. The “trial” in the book’s title has a double meaning, as it refers to both the author’s own voyage after a long hiatus from the sea, and the actual court case he comes to realize was his dad’s undoing. In the hands of a lesser writer this balancing act might have been a formula for disaster, but Harvey has serious skills, and his riveting story is impossible to put down.

Kidnapped from the Caribbean by Todd Duff (Seaworthy Publications): A long-distance cruiser based in the British Virgin Islands, Duff has written several features for CW on his own rambles across the Pacific. Here, in his first novel, his heroes are undercover investigators Brice Cannon and Julie Sparks, a pair of experienced voyagers who find themselves in an escapade involving sex, drugs, kidnapping, the CIA, pirates and Colombian warlords, among other unsavory characters and situations. It all makes for a page-turning romp.

RELATED: Best Learn to Sail Books

Finding Pax by Kaci Cronkhite (Adlard Coles): Right from the get-go, Cronkhite admits that her book is a love story … not one involving two living, breathing souls, but between a woman and her boat. Finding Pax is many things – it’s a bit of a mystery, a rumination on family, a salty yarn about restoring a classic, a story of one sailor’s journey. And in the end, it turns out the love story really was about two kindred spirits after all.

Modern Marine Weather by David Burch (Starpath Publications): OK, this one isn’t really recreational reading. But it deserves a place on any sailor’s bookshelf. Burch isn’t only a master mariner, he’s a talented educator, and this broad treatise on all things weather-related is extremely well done, with difficult concepts simply explained and plenty of supporting graphics and charts to make every cruiser’s favorite topic crystal clear.

Herb McCormick is CW’s executive editor.

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When I first heard that a U.S.-flagged ship called El Faro had gone missing somewhere off the Bahamas’ Crooked Island amid Hurricane Joaquin on October 1, 2015, I felt an instant foreboding. Like many sailors, I’m a weather geek, and I’d been following the storm’s development through Chris Parker’s Marine ­Weather Center forecasts for days. And for days, he’d been sending up all the red flags about this one — erratic, unpredictable, potentially explosive once it hit the Bahamas’ warm, ­shallow waters.

What the hell was a ship doing there? El Faro took 33 mariners with it, shattering hundreds of lives and hearts. With all of the weather, routing and navigation technology available even to the average cruising sailor in 2015, how could El Faro‘s highly trained master and officers have miscalculated so horribly, pinning the ship between a Category 3 hurricane to windward and the Bahamas’ outer islands to leeward, with nowhere to run?

Rachel Slade, a Boston-based reporter, was also asking such questions, and she’s turned her extensive research on the U.S. Merchant Marine’s worst catastrophe in 30 years into a book, Into the Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro. It’s easy to read because the narrative rips you along; it’s difficult to read because it’s always hard to endure the dissection of totally preventable tragedies.

The backbone of Slade’s narrative is the 26 hours of bridge conversation recorded on the ship’s VDR, its black box. The location and retrieval of this vital piece of gear in 15,000 feet of water is, in and of itself, an incredible story, which Slade illuminates well.

She also does a thorough job describing the mangled state of U.S. merchant shipping, and how it manifested in El Faro and the various entities of TOTE Inc., which operated and owned the ship. This is not news — Robert Frump’s excellent book Until the Sea Shall Free Them, documenting the 1983 wreck of Marine Electric off the mid-Atlantic that killed 31 men, laid out a distressingly similar picture of money over mariners. But Slade makes a compelling case that fundamentally little has changed in the maritime industry’s culture, and that inertia helped pave the way, in ways subtle and blatant, for El Faro‘s catastrophe. You cannot read this book and not feel despair and anger at how predictable and preventable it all is (and the obfuscating from TOTE officials will make you want to throw the book across the room).

Despite our history as a maritime nation, we are dismally oblivious to the difficulties and risks facing the men and women who deliver our precious stuff across the sea. Ultimately, Slade provides some justice to the 33 dead of El Faro by reminding us of the systemic and human consequences of this inattention, apathy and neglect.

The post Book Review: Into the Raging Sea appeared first on Cruising World.

Sailing Made Easy

This full-color, beautifully illustrated handbook takes new sailors and guides them through stepping aboard a sailboat for the first time to planning a daysail. In between, you’ll find easily digested chapters on the parts of a sailboat, the basics of sailing and sail shape, docking, seamanship and more. Sailing Made Easy is used as the textbook for the ASA 101 class, but will provide a solid foundation for anyone wanting to get their start sailing or brush up on the basics.

The Complete Sailor

It’s like the next best thing to having a friend who’s an old salt (and willing to explain everything to you). While The Complete Sailor goes over the basics for sure, it covers so much more than that — hull designs and ­construction, aids to navigation, the finer points of rigging, the list goes on. Throughout the book there are clear and instructive illustrations that bring it all together.

The Annapolis Book of Seamanship

The Annapolis Book of Seamanship is a classic in its own right, and has a place as a reference aboard any cruising sailboat. Written by one of the leading experts in safety at sea, this book contains all you’d want to know about sailing and sailboats, but where it really shines is in its coverage of weather, piloting and navigation.

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Remember Travis McGee, the hard-boiled liveaboard protagonist who prevailed through 21 John D. MacDonald crime/mystery/detective books? Sadly he’s frozen in time, but readers hungry for more now have a new protagonist: Sim Greene, a modern-day liveaboard sailor in Southern California. In this first installment of a series I’m eager to consume, Sim Greene finds a murder victim outside Ventura Harbor. Right away, the discovery shoves him down a twisting, unknowable path that pits his intelligence and intuition against those determined to take not just his life, but also the lives of those close to him.

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Learn to Sail Today: From Novice to Sailor in One Week

About a year ago, I was in American Samoa helping kids learn to sail. We’d meet at 8 a.m., and by 11 a.m., the eager sailors were seated in Optimists, hands on sheets and tillers, ready to be pushed off. This is the book I wish I’d had for each one of those young sailors. It ushers the reader onto the water that first day, but then continues the instruction — not limited to dinghy sailing — over six additional “days.” The author believes in a simplified, intuitive approach and, in addition to the excellent layout and illustrations, conveys everything a beginner needs to know in an understanding, reassuring tone. From novice to sailor in one week? Absolutely.

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Sea Trials: Around the World with Duct Tape and Bailing Wire

In 1973, a San Francisco family departed on a planned four-year round-the-world voyage. The Wilcox crew — Chuck; his wife, Dawn; and kids, Garth, 13, and Linda, 10 — set sail with varying degrees of enthusiasm (at a time when world cruising was uncommon and offshore navigation was celestial) to fulfill what was primarily Chuck’s lifelong dream. The book’s title hints at what’s to come. With significant textbook preparation and training, some inshore experience but no offshore or shakedown cruising aboard their 40-foot wood Maine Pinky, Vela, the voyage itself becomes a series of sea trials. There are pleasures and many pitfalls, including a near-disastrous shipwreck on a Pacific reef and the painstaking salvage and repair of Vela in a remote port.

The author, an experienced sailor who is married to the now-adult Garth, tells this riveting tale with objective skill and restraint in terms of both shifting family dynamics as the cruise progresses and what might (or should) have been done differently. Even as the family builds seamanship skills, readers will likely find themselves bracing for (or judging) what comes next, yet it’s impossible not to care about them and the outcome. This tale of a circumnavigation that ultimately took five years, completed against all odds, is full of real-life drama and “lessons learned” — a feat of perseverance fueled by determination. It is impossible to put down until the nail-biting end.

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The Complete Rigger’s Apprentice

Any expert can write a textbook filled with information. But any such book will pale in comparison to one written by an expert in love with what they do. Want to know more about any aspect of your standing and running rigging? Want to learn techniques for handling emergencies? Want to learn to splice line? Whip line? Do some fancy macramé around your ship’s wheel? All the information is here, and because Toss yearns to share his craft, it’s also a fun read, interspersed with wit, fascinating stories and clever illustrations. This is the second edition of the book Toss first began writing 30 years ago. His corrections and new ways of thinking are reflected on nearly every page.

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