3 from me

DinghyMan

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Captain Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World
Set out in April 1895 to prove that the world was round, 45,000 miles and 3 years later the proof was complete. Well written and interesting book - and he managed it without a liferaft, gps, or radar ISBN 0486203263

Frank and Margaret Dye, Ocean Crossing Wayfarer
Got this as I'm an Enterprise dinghy sailer working my way up to bigger stuff and wanted to read what was possible in a 16ft dinghy - Iceland and Norway! ISBN 07813675683

Another dinghy one;
A J Mackinnon, The Unlikely Voyage or Jack de Crow
From North Wales to the Black Sea in a Mirror dinghy
Another well written and funny book ISBN 0953818055
 

DinghyMan

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I've just been rereading it - there are a lot of coincidences (sp) in it - its amazing that every single time he has a problem he just happens to stop at a friendly boatyard that fixes things virtualy for free or meets someone with a free lunch and booze - wish I was that lucky.

Also noticed that he repainted the boat from yellow to blue but later on left yellow paint when hitting a can in Germany....

I spent a good few years wondering around and working in Europe, including some of the spots on his trip and met a good few friendly people but off the normal tourist beat you also meet a lot of anti-Brit (or at least just anti-non-local) people as well - and at least I speak a couple of the languages. Would be interesting to read something by someone whose done the same trip in a small yacht / large dinghy in the last couple of years.

After reading Frank Dye's Wayfarer book there are a lot of differences between the problems Frank has with a bigger more stable boat, admittedly more out to sea, than Mackinnon has with a very small Mirror.

I want to do a trip to North Cape and back but won't be doing it in my 14ft Enterprise dinghy I'll just have to wait 'till I've got some money and a boat twice the size.
 

wavelet

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I never questioned Andrew Mackinnon's story as it is a wholesome tale and as much an act of literary wandering as physical travel. Just because he goes on about Jenny Green Teeth and fairy rings doesn't mean the story is invalid - that is what makes it a tale. There is a similar buzz of disbelief about Tristan Jones - I mean who really believes "Ice" is a fully documented account? But if you had spent a day let alone a winter above the Arctic Circle, who knows what you'd be writing in your log book by the end of it. I can't even decide how big the waves were in Biscay however hard I try to remember and rationalise, five metres... but that's only the hieght of a first floor window and they were as big as houses, no, hotels, seven metres ... nah, not likely... The point is they were huge and the story must illustrate the impact the scene or event had on the writer's inner senses, as well as the outer senses. It is probably just a feature of remarkable voyagers - to be questioned by mere mortals, I know because I sailed across Biscay singlehanded and wrote about it :). All I need now is a publisher who has the wisdom to forgive the hyperbole of a solo voyager's phenomenological rantings. :)
 
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