Sailing Memoir

Ben and Helen Harrison set aside their comfortable life in San Francisco and headed to Costa Rica to build a 38-foot sailboat. They had never built a boat before...Then they had to get it down a mountainside to the water, and from there sail to Key West, where they now live. It was a dauntless task and a challenge that put their marriage, their sanity, and their very lives on the line. A real-life adventure that will make you feel like you’ve got a berth on La Dulce Mujer Pintada, the Sweet Painted Lady.

On an overcast April day in 2003, David and James Livingston raced against each other in the 149th Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race. Watched by over seven million people, it was the first time for over 100 years that brothers had battled against each other in this gladiatorial contest. Only one could be victorious. In Blood Over Water, David and James tell their stories for the first time, giving an intimate insight into one of our best-loved national sporting occasions, whilst also describing a brotherly relationship tested to breaking point.

Few athletes hold a record comparable to that of Oscar Chalupsky. He made history at the age of fifteen as the first person to win both the Junior and Senior Ironman titles on the same day at the South African National Lifesaving Championships, he was the country’s spokesman at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and he is a multiple-times global surfski champion. No Retreat, No Surrender is an uplifting account of grit, perseverance, talent and attitude, vividly capturing the determined mindset of an inspirational sporting legend.

The world is never done catching up with Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), the author of Walden, “Civil Disobedience,” and other classics. A prophet of environmentalism and vegetarianism, an abolitionist, and a critic of materialism and technology, Thoreau even seems to have anticipated a world of social distancing in his famous experiment at Walden Pond. In Now Comes Good Sailing, 27 of today’s leading writers offer wide-ranging original pieces exploring how Thoreau has influenced and inspired them.

Leaving her garden to the mercy of the slugs, award-winning writer Alys Fowler set out in an inflatable kayak to explore Birmingham's canal network, full of little-used waterways where huge pike skulk and kingfishers dart. Her book is about noticing the wild everywhere and what it means to see beauty where you least expect it. What happens when someone who has learned to observe her external world in such detail decides to examine her internal world with the same care?

Christian Beamish, a former editor at The Surfer's Journal, envisioned a low-tech, self-reliant exploration for surf along the coast of North America, using primarily clothes and instruments available to his ancestors, and the 18-foot boat he would build by hand in his garage. How the vision met reality - and how the two came to shape each other - places The Voyage of the Cormorant in the great American tradition of tales of life at sea, and what it has to teach us.

"The great vessel gently pulled away from the port of Seven Islands in Quebec, Canada into the mighty ocean. I heard a voice say to me loud and clear: This is the defining moment of the dream, so prepare to launch out into the deep. This was only a fraction of the mega dream that had been envisioned years ago. The water was raging and boisterous, but we sailed slowly and majestically to our next port of call where the test of desire and will would be applied."

It’s the sixties. Everything’s groovy. Teenagers bask in the freedom of a country transformed. Counterculture is on the rise, and the times, they-are-a-changing. Everything, that is, except the author’s young life. She doesn’t swoon for the Beatles or scream for the Stones. She doesn’t protest the Vietnam War or fight for women’s rights. Instead, from age seven to sixteen, she accompanies her father to a dilapidated barn on the edge of a dusty little town located on the outskirts of San Francisco, where she works after school building a ship that is supposed to set her free.

In 2012, combat engineer Curtis McGrath was serving in the Australian army in Afghanistan when, in the line of duty, he stepped on a mine. Seriously injured but still conscious and aware he'd bleed out and die within minutes, McGrath, as the unit's chief first-aid officer, directed his comrades to apply tourniquets and administer an IV and morphine. Then, as he was stretchered to a helicopter, fearing he would never see his family again, he joked that he planned to become a Paralympian.

Santiago Lange, uno de los más grandes regatistas mundiales, recorre en detalle su vida; desde su infancia en San Isidro, donde dio sus primeros pasos como navegante, hasta los Juegos Olímpicos de Río de Janeiro, en los que ganó su primera medalla de oro luego de haberse sometido a una operación de cáncer de pulmón.

Mick is the novice deckhand on a yacht, skippered by an Irishman who's off with his mistress to find a new life. A vivid, spellbinding account of a true-life adventure, packed with insights into the human condition—this witty, well-paced rite of passage set in the 1970s is full of freshness, sexual impulse, and a clash of values. It is a rollicking tale written with verve, full of keen observations, and sparkling with wry humor. Long Lost Log is a period piece for the nostalgic traveler and the armchair adventurer of any age.

If you are thinking about a healthy, life-changing, totally immersive, climate-friendly, adventurous voyage, listen to our story: Tales of the oceans, sharing life with indigenous people in remote locations, alternating solitude with deep and joyous relationships, confronting danger, storms, and shipwreck. We survive to tell the story, in a gentle, easy-to-listen to, style.

In this classic tale of true-life adventure, David and Daniel Hays, a father and son, sail 17,000 miles from Connecticut to Cape Horn and back. Together they complete this odyssey and join a select group to successfully sail the Drake Passage in a small vessel. It is also the story of conquering inner struggles as well as great distances.

Die Welt des Bretonen Guirec Soudée ist das Meer. Aufgewachsen auf einer winzigen Insel, schmeißt er mit sechzehn die Schule, um seinen Traum von einer Weltumsegelung zu verwirklichen. Auf einem Fischkutter verdient er sich das Geld für Yvinec, ein dreißig Jahre altes Segelboot. Er restauriert es liebevoll, dann sticht er in See. Seine Begleitung an Bord: die fidele Monique - ein rotbraunes Huhn. Gemeinsam segeln sie über den Atlantik, erkunden Grönland, kämpfen sich 130 Tage durch Packeis und queren die Nordwestpassage, bevor sie gen Süden fahren.

Imagine spending 24 hours a day with your spouse in 31 not-so-square feet for years, crossing the Pacific Ocean on two gallons of fuel, and tossing spaghetti marinara around your living room then cleaning it up while bouncing like ice in a martini shaker. Tightwads on the Loose tells the story of Wendy and Garth, lured to sea by the promise of adventure. They buy a 31-foot boat that fits their budget better than it fits Garth's large frame and set sail on an open-ended voyage, never imagining they'd be gone seven years or cover 34,000 miles at the pace of a fast walk.

In Unsinkable, you will follow Abby into the depths through a gripping and evocative firsthand account that starts prior to her departure, travels through her daring (and sometimes near-death) encounters on the open sea, to her dramatic rescue in the remotest part of the Indian Ocean. Today, when the most productive thing a teenager may do is play videogames, Abby's courage and tenacity shows us all what can happen when we choose to challenge our own limits, embrace faith, and aim for what our critics say is impossible.

Von der Landratte zum Segeljunkie: Das ist die Kurzfassung der vergangenen 8 Jahre im Leben des 45-jährigen Guido Dwersteg. Es beginnt ganz harmlos mit dem Mitsegeln bei Freunden und endet mit einer Einhand-Atlantikrunde. Über diese Reise um den Atlantik hat Dwersteg nun ein Buch geschrieben. Gerade einmal seit 5 Jahren hatte der Koblenzer Guido Dwersteg seinen ersten Segelschein in der Tasche, als er im Februar 2012 mit seinem Segelboot "Carpe Diem" von der Ostsee-Insel Fehmarn zu einer Atlantikrunde startete.

Tired of California's glitzy lifestyle, greed, and urban sprawl, Captain Skip Rowland sells everything to drift and blend in the drop dead beauty of the South Pacific. But before casting-off, his yacht is stolen and set ablaze on a desolate Mexican shore. Skip, recently in the USMC, captures the thieves, sailing later in a new yacht with his son and nurse girlfriend. They accidentally sail into an active military coup d'état, are chased by a vagabond freighter, make love on picture-perfect uninhabited islands, and cross the Tasman Sea to Australia in the worst weather in 100 years.

On Christmas Eve 2013, off the coast of East Antarctica, an abrupt weather change trapped the Shokalskiy - the ship carrying earth scientist Chris Turney and 71 others involved in the Australasian Antarctic Expedition - in a densely packed armada of sea ice, 1400 miles from civilization. With the ship's hull breached and steerage lost, the wind threatened to drive the vessel into the frozen continent, smashing it to pieces.

You will be challenged and inspired as you join Neville on board for this real-life, white-knuckle adventure on the high seas....A magnificent account of courage and perseverance as a young doctor takes time off from his busy practice to sail a 31' yacht (single-handed much of the way) from England to New Zealand.