Recommended reading

Kellan Hatch (kellan_hatch@mindspring.com)
Thu, 7 Oct 1999 20:20:34 -0600


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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Hi All,

I'd like to recommend a couple of books that I believe have been briefly
mentioned on the mail list before, but which I've enjoyed enough that I feel
the need to stand on the soapbox about them. The one I'm reading currently
is 'N by E', written and illustrated by Rockwell Kent, about his adventure
sailing from Nova Scotia to Greenland in a smallish wooden boat.

But for sheer adventure and entertainment you can't do better than
'Desperate Voyage,' by John Caldwell (Sheridan House, copyright 1991, ISBN
0-924486-20-1) Here's a reprint of the teaser from the back cover:

"In May 1946 John Caldwell, stranded in Panama after the war, set out for
Sydney to rejoin his wife, Mary, whom he had not seen since their three-day
honeymoon over a year before. Unable to secure any other form of transport,
he had to resort to singlehanded seamanship.

After and ignominious scene in the harbor, where a tangled anchor let him to
take and early dip, he spent ten days learning from a book rudiments of
navigation and sailing, before embarking on the 9,000-mile journey abord the
20-foot Pagan (Note: this is a typo, it was actually a 29-footer). Ahead lay
a mission that was to reveal in him elements not only of astounding courage
and determination but also of increadible foolhardiness. Only 500 miles
from Panama, having been shipwrecked once, and with his boat's engine and
cockpit destroyed by an angry shark, John Caldwell decided to press on
towards his goal. He and his motely crew of two charming and long-suffering
kittens, Flotsam and Jetsam, a gannet, Gawky, and Stowaway, the rat, endured
the terrors and discomforts of life in the high seas and enjoyed the
triumphs of fighting and winning against the elements. Until one day when
the battered Pagan and her captain faced the sailor's nightmare- a
hurricane.

This is more than an exciting tale of sea-adventure. It is as pacy,
compelling and unpredictable as a thriller. It is both witty and moving:
the story of a romanticand naive man, motivated initially by love, and
ultimately by his own fierce determination to survive."

I can't recommend this book too highly. I hope someone out there reads it
and enjoys it as much as I did.

Thanks,

Kellan Hatch
P-19 #1059 Moondance
Murray, Utah