The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst
by Nicholas Tomalin
from International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
The Sailor's Classics library introduces a new generation of readers to the best books ever written about small boats under sail
In the autumn of 1968, Donald Crowhurst set sail from England to participate in the first single-handed nonstop around-the-world sailboat race. Eight months later, his boat was found in the mid-Atlantic, intact but with no one on board. In this gripping reconstruction, journalists Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall tell the story of Crowhurst's ill-fated voyage.
The Last Man Across the Atlantic
by Paul Heiney
from Mainstream Publishing
The Long Way
by Bernard Moitessier
from Sheridan House
The Long Way recounts the incredible story of Bernard Moitessier's participation in the first Golden Globe Race a solo, non-stop circumnavigation rounding the three great Capes of Good Hope, Leeuwin, and the Horn. For seven months, the veteran seafarer battled storms, doldrums, gear failures, and knock-downs, as well as overwhelming fatigue and loneliness. Then, nearing the finish with victory in hand, Moitessier suddenly pulled out of the race and sailed on. His 37,455-mile journey continued for another three months, finally ending in Tahiti. Never once in all that time had he touched land.
Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative (Dover Maritime Books)
by Richard Henry Dana
from Dover Publications
Maiden Voyage
by Tania Aebi
from Ballantine Books
Tania Aebe was an eighteen-year-old dropout and barfly. She was going nowhere until her father offered her a challenge. He would offer her either a college education or a twenty-six-foot sloop in which she had to sail around the world alone. She chose the boat and for two years it was her home, as she negotiated weather, illness, fear, and ultimately, a spiritual quest that brought her home to herself....
From the Paperback edition.
First You Have to Row a Little Boat: Reflections on Life & Living
by Richard Bode
from Grand Central Publishing
Written from the point of view of a grown man looking back on his childhood, and reflecting on what the experience of learning to sail taught him about the lessons of life,First You Have to Row a Little Boat has the makings of an inspirational classic. With each brief chapter telling the story of a young man's initiation to adulthood, the bay on which he sails becomes a universe of sorts, teaching him new lessons about making choices, adapting to change, and becoming his own person with every journey he takes. Filled with the spiritual wisdom and thought-provoking discoveries that marked such books as Walden,The Prophet, and the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,First You Have to Row aLittle Boat is a wondrous and magical book that will enchant both sailors and non-sailors alike, but most of all, anyone who seeks large truths in small things.
Written from the point of view of a grown man looking back on his childhood, and reflecting on what the experience of learning to sail taught him about the lessons of life, First You Have to Row a Little Boat has the makings of an inspirational classic. With each brief chapter telling the story of a young man's initiation to adulthood, the bay on which he sails becomes a universe of sorts, teaching him new lessons about making choices, adapting to change, and becoming his own person with every journey he takes. Filled with the spiritual wisdom and thought-provoking discoveries that marked such books as Walden, The Prophet, and the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, First You Have to Row aLittle Boat is a wondrous and magical book that will enchant both sailors and non-sailors alike, but most of all, anyone who seeks large truths in small things.
A Voyage for Madmen
In 1968, 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 individual 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 Ocean, and of those riveting moments when a split-second decision means the difference between life and death.
Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors
by Edward E. Leslie
from Mariner Books
Here are the most remarkable stories imaginable of maroons, castaways, and other survivors from the 1500s to the present - their moral dilemmas, their personalities, and their influence on society, literature, and art.
Flirting With Mermaids: The Unpredictable Life of a Sailboat Delivery Skipper
by John Kretschmer
from Sheridan House
This wildly entertaining collection of autobiographical anecdotes is skillfully conveyed by a man who, having logged nearly 200,000 bluewater miles, says his greatest accomplishment is "never having had a real job."
The Cure for Anything Is Salt Water: How I Threw My Life Overboard and Found Happiness at Sea
by Mary South
from Harper Paperbacks
At forty, Mary South had a beautiful home, good friends, and a successful career in book publishing. But she couldn't help feeling that she was missing something intangible but essential. So she decided to go looking for it . . . at sea. Six months later she had quit her job, sold the house, and was living aboard a forty-foot, thirty-ton steel trawler she rechristened Bossanova. Despite her total lack of experience, South set out on her maiden voyage—a fifteen-hundred-mile odyssey from Florida to Maine—with her one-man, two-dog crew. But what began as the fulfillment of an idle wish became a crash course in navigating the complicated byways of the self.
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