Bibliophilia: Sea Yarns for Land Lubbers

The other day I was looking through my book shelves, both actual and virtual, when I realized that I haven't written a book review in quite a while. Since most posts in my Bibliophilia collection are about more than one book anyway, I thought I'd make this post about several books too. The combining theme will be boats and seafaring.

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An Ancient Dream of the Sea

Ever since I can remember, the sea has had a huge fascination on me. However, because I never lived anywhere close to it, this fascination was solely based on what I heard, saw, and read about it, from the stability of sitting on firm ground in the middle of the continent, which is why the entire subject became overly romanticized and inflated in my mind. Ancient tales of pirates and castaways, such as Treasure Island by Robert Lous Stevenson or Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe provided a good basis for this early attraction. A bit later, more "serious" works, such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway seemed to provide a more realistic approach. Though it didn't matter how realistic my reading was, if I didn't even see the sea until I was a teenager - and even then I didn't get more than a couple of dips in the salt water.

Real Life Accounts of Incredible Ocean Crossings

Although it took me a long time to approach the ocean myself, I kept revisiting this sea-going fantasy by reading about it. The next book that awakened my interest in sailing again was a story that falls more in the realm of archeology, that is the experimental kind. It was Thor Heyerdahl's famous Kon-Tiki, a first-hand account of his crossing the Pacific on a raft, constructed according to the design of the ancient balsas that Polynesian seafarers might have used to travel from South America to the islands all over the Pacific Ocean. I know, there are lots of maybes in here, which many of his contemporaries pointed out too, but all this makes the story even more interesting. Needless to say, they succeeded in their mission, which may not actually prove anything, but it did provide an exciting story at least.

Another real-life account of ocean faring record breakers is A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols. This book describes the "last remaining sailing challenge" of circumnavigating the globe single handedly, offered by the Sunday Times newspaper in 1968, and accepted by a handful of sailors. Interestingly, only one actually completed the race. All others dropped out for various reasons: one of them went crazy, another one suffered shipwreck, a third abandoned it completely for not wanting to be famous. What made this exciting book even better, was another sailing record up for grabs at the time I was reading it (2010 I think it was): Being the youngest female circumnavigator, which eventually went to the girl I personally was rooting for: Laura Dekker, who apart from winds and currents had to face the patronizing authorities of her home country, who tried to interfere with her plans simply for being underage.

Missing the Boat, or Abandoning the Dream?

Eventually I got to the point of wanting to stretch my own sea legs. I participated in a couple of lazy day races, got introduced to friends' friends who were actually into sailing, and eventually I found myself in Panama, where I did some line-handling through the Canal and was even offered a few passage-making gigs towards New Zealand. I ended up turning them all down, each for a different reason, until I abandoned the idea all together, as my expiring passport and a stupid injury of my foot all pointed the other way. The sea yarn books I got to read, on the other hand, turned out to be even more amazing: The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss (love the title!) written by J.C. Voss himself tells the story of how he traveled in a modified canoe from Vancouver Island to England, via Australia and South Africa, all in the beginning of the 20th century, without any of the high-tech equipment of our days.

Even better yet, Sailing the Farm by Ken Neumeyer not only tells anecdotes of how he learned sailing on the Hudson river, gradually going further down the Atlantic coast, until becoming a permanent island hopper, it also explains the details of how he managed to do it truly sustainably: It includes detailed plans of a solar distiller to always have drinking water, a solar dehydrator for fish and algae, as well as endless tips on how to provide for oneself on the boat, uninhabited islands, but also how to trade goods and skills on islands that are inhabited. I was fascinated, though by this time I felt little personal desire to follow these footsteps.

In the end, the sailing book I could relate to quite well was Missing the Boat by Wayne Chinsang. Though he also grew up sailing smaller and bigger vessels, the great dream of ocean navigation eluded him too. It wasn't even for lack of trying! So as I was getting a kick out of his story, I had to admit to myself that things were probably okay they way they turned out. Though it's never late for anything, as they say, my taste of the ocean may be reduced to listening to sea-shanties and reading sailing books. And I am perfectly fine with that.

To see the rest of my book reviews, take a look at my Bibliophilia collection!