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SNOW PETREL. A father-son voyage to the windiest place on earthBy Jon Tucker. Hardback, 0.38Kg 148mm x 210mm, 277 pages, published 2011.
In the summer of 2006, a thirty-one-year-old expat kiwi, Ben Tucker, set off from Tasmania in his small home-built yacht with the tentative goal of reaching maniland Antarctica. As crew he had recruited his youngest brother Matt. His destination was the remote Mawson's hut at Cape Denison - statistically the windiest sea-level location on the planet - with a possible diversion to the South Magnetic Pole. His budget could not even stretch to a second-hand radar.....
This fascinating voyage is recounted by his father Jon, who was allowed to join his sons as their cabin-boy at the last minute - on the promise of good behaviour. And after reading the book I can honestly say his behaviour was very good, as it can't have been easy to sit back and let your son take all the responsibility. But he did and it is truly a great book. What a wonderful family they are as Jon frequently mentions his wife Barbara and their other 3 sons as parallel to the story of this trip he tells the story of a family with 5 home-schooled boys aboard their traditional ocean going yacht "New Zealand Maid".
NZ$52.00 + delivery.
INTO THE MIDNIGHT SUN.By Barbara Thomas. Paperback, 0.55Kg, 160mm x 237mm, 168 pages, full colour photographs, published 2011.
We all have our dreams and most of us never turn them into reality - but this adventurous Kiwi couple did. Neil and Barbara Thomas's vision was to put to sea for an extended voyage across the Pacific Ocean, heading north, from New Zealand to Japan and Alaska.
But Barbara describes the extraordinary places and wildlife they encountered - from undisturbed remains of WWII Japanese submarines and zeroes to grizzly bears gorging themselves on salmon. It is a story of friendships formed and extraordinarily genereous locals who helped them along the way.
NZ$45.00 + delivery.
NARROW DOG TO INDIAN RIVER.By Terry Darlington. Paperback, 127mm x 198mm, 431 pages.
No one has ever sailed an English narrowboat in the USA before...for reasons that become clear as Terry and Monica Darlington and their whippet Jim sail down the little-known Eastern Seaboard of the USA - including thirty-mile sea crossings, blasting heat, tornadoes, alligators, and the walking dead...
But the real danger comes from the Good Ole Boys and Girls of the Deep South waiting along the shore. Captains and planters, heroes and drunks, dancing dicks and beautiful spies all want to meet the Brits on their painted boat and their thin dog and take them home and party them to death.
Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida - lost arcadias, shining sounds, and incomparable cities - a thousand miles unfold at six miles an hour on a hilarious, dangerous and always surprising journey through a wonderland.
NZ$28.50 + delivery.
TRUE SPIRIT.By Jessica Watson. Paperback, 154mm x 233mm, 367 pages, full colour photos.
On 15 May 2010, after 210 days at sea and 24,285 nautical miles, 16-year-old Jessica Watson sailed her yacht, Ella's Pink Lady, triumphantly back into Sydney Harbour. She had become the youngest person to sail solo, unassisted and non-stop around the world. It seemed the whole country stopped to welcome her home.
Inspired by the sailors who had gone before her, people of Joshua Slocum, Don McIntyre, Kay Cottee, Ellen MacArthur and, especially, Jesse Martin, she had spent years preparing for this moment, focused on achieving her dream.
When she collided with a 63,000-tonne bulk carrier during her final sea trials, it seemed to many she'd failed before she'd even begun. But Jessica brushed herself off, held her head high and kept going.
Never once did she lose sight of her goal.
In her own words, True Spirit tells how a young girl from Queensland, once afraid of everything, decided to test herself. This extraordinary adventure would see her develop the mental strength to deal with knockdowns, loneliness, wild seas and endless days going nowhere. It is an inspiring story that ultimately proves that we all have the power to live our dreams - no matter how small or how big they are.
NZ$41.00 + delivery
BLUE RIVER, BLACK SEA.By Andrew Eames. Hardback, 145mm x 223mm, 432 pages, full colour photos.
The Danube, Europe's Amazon, flows through more countries than any other river on earth. It runs like an artery from the Black Forest in Germany to Europe's furthest flung fringe, where it joins the Black Sea in Romania. A voyage along its length bring you face to face with the continent's biggest names and bloodiest history, and means getting up close and personal with the New Europe.
Starting at the river's source, Andrew Eames takes a fascinating and revelatory journey by bicycle, horse, boat and on foot. He knocks on Schloss doors in the hope of finding accomodation for the night with Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns. He travels through grim areas of intensive heavy industry as well as idyllic rural countryside where bears still roam. He meets would-be kings, walks with gypsies and hitches a ride on a Serbian barge. His journey takes him through Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania - and includes a brief stopover chez Dracula in Transylvania.
Blue River, Black Sea is an absorbing and highly entertaining book which explores the limits of our knowledge about the New Europe. Andrew Eames does not shrink from analysing the difficult issues of migration and cultural identity he encounters along the way, and his book seeks to find an answer to some of the most complex problems facing Europe today.
NZ$31.00 + delivery
THE CAT'S TABLEBy Michael Ondaatje. Hardback, 0.48kg, 140mm x 223mm, 286 pages. Published in 2011.
In the early 1950s, an 11-year-old boy boards a huge liner bound for England - a 'castle that was to cross the sea'. At mealtimes, he is placed at the lowly 'Cat's Table' with an eccentric group of grown-ups and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys become involved in the worlds and stories of the adults around them, tumbling from one adventure and delicious discovery to another, 'bursting all over the place like freed mercury'. And at night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner - his crime and fate a galvanising mystery that will haunt them forever.
As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy's adult years, it tells a spellbinding story about the difference between the magical openness of childhood and the burdens of earned understanding - about a lifelong journey that began unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage, when all on board were 'free of the realities of the earth'.
With the ocean liner a brilliant microcosm for the floating dream of childhood, The Cat's Table is a vivid, poignant and thrilling book, full of Ondaatje's trademark set-pieces and breathtaking images: a story told with a child's sense of wonder by a novelist at the very height of his powers.
NZ$45.00 + delivery.
TAKING ON THE WORLD.By Ellen MacArthur. Pbk, 130mm x 200mm, 396 pages, full colour photographs.
On 11th February 2001, Ellen MacAurthur sailed into port in France completing the Vendee Globe, the world's toughest race. Alone and unsupported, she had spent more than three months at sea and had beaten everything that the race could throw at her - storms, icy seas, exhaustion, rigging failures and, when she was fighting for first place, a catastrophic collision with a submerged object that could have cost her not just the lead, but her life.
Throughout, Ellen never forgot that she was chasing a dream. To give it any less than her all would be to let down herself and everyone who believed in her. She knew that she could not give up.
This is the story of the youngest person ever to complete the race and the fastest woman to circumnavigate the globe. It is her story, from childhood in landlocked Derbyshire, to the finishing line of the Vendee Globe.
NZ$46.00 + delivery.
SHARK!By Robert Reid. Paperback, 0.41kg, 139mm x 208mm, 350 pages, full colour and monochrome photographs.
Shark! It's a cry that strikes fear into the hearts of beach lovers around the world.
It carries a chill of terror, that death is nearby and waiting. Or injuries so shocking that the mind recoils from the thought. This book chronicles shark attacks both on Australia's fatal shores and overseas. It also records miraculous escapes - some so bizarre they defy belief, and some that display extraordinary courage in the face of extreme peril.
Robert Reid interviews famous shark hunters and other adventurers who speak for the first time about their dangerous encounters with these fearsome predators. Reid also investigates the phenomenon of the so-called 'rogue' sharks, those that stalk and kill humans in numbers, in the same place, at the same time.
These are gripping stories that will both fascinate and frighten, stories that will take the reader into the realm of these strange but terrible creatures. They have ruled the oceans with ruthless efficiency for more than 400 million years. They are the silent killers of the deep.
NZ$35.00 + delivery.
THE LONG WAYBy Bernard Moitessier. Pbk, 135mm x 210mm, 252 pages, monochrome drawings and maps.
This saga began as the Round the World Race for single handed yachts. The route was from Plymouth, rounding the three great capes (quoted from the race instructions - "leave Cape Horn to port"), the voyage was expected to be nearly a year's sailing.
For the author the race finished in mid-Pacific after he had passed the three Capes and crossed his outward track, thereby circumnavigating the globe. He forfeited the race and finally anchored amongst old friends in Tahiti.
The incident caused a media uproar and the usual conspiracy hoo-har that people who no understanding of single-handed sailing do in such circumstances.
NZ$39.00 + delivery.
THE PEKING BATTLES CAPE HORNBy Irving Johnson. Pbk, 132mm x 188mm, 192 pages, monochrome photographs.
"I had a hankering to make a long voyage in one of the old-time square rigger." And that is just what Irving Johnson did, in 1929-30, shipping out from Germany round Cape Horn to Chile in the big four-masted bark Peking. Seen through the eyes of an adventurous young sailor, this spirited account ranks as one of the classics of man against the sea and is a living testament to life aboard one of the world's most famous tall ships, now preserved at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City.
NZ$39.00 + Delivery.
THE HAL ROTH SEAFARING TRILOGYBy Hal Roth, Hbk, 158mm x 235mm, 254 pages.
Hal Roth's vivid, authentic tales of the sea have riveted readers around the world for forty years. Here, in one volume, are three of his classic sea stories, each one a white-knuckled, rail-down voyage into the unknown.
A hard-working San Fransisco husband and wife abandon their jobs, their security, and, some would say, their sanity to sail their 35-foot sloop to Japan and back - the long way! Over the next nineteen months, they discover exotic islands, fascinating people, and a whole new way of life.
A few years later these intrepid voyagers decide to try their luck against Cape Horn, but they will need a lot more than luck to survive the vicious storms, violent seas, and perilous shores of the world's most dangerous stretch of water.
Then nine courageous sailors accept a challenge to do what has never been done before: to race alone, in a small sailboat, around the world - nonstop. Only one will complete the race; seven will be forced to withdraw, and one will simply disappear.
NZ$51.00 + delivery.
INTREPID VOYAGERS.Edited By Tom Lochhaas, Paperback, 152mm x 228mm, 378 pages.
Eighteen chronicles from men and women who sailed to the ends of the earth and returned to tell about it.
They risked everything to break a record, win a race, prove a point, test themselves, or for reasons they can't explain. They include the first sailor to survive a Cape Horn rounding alone, the doctor who crossed the Atlantic in a tiny rubber raft without food or water, they twenty-four-year-old who became the fastest woman to sail around the world alone, and fifteen other singular adventurers whose stories have an enduring capacity to inspire and amaze.
NZ$34.00 + delivery.
SWEET WATER AND BITTER.By Sian Rees, Paperback, 129mm x 199mm, black & white drawings, 340 pages.
This book is the extraordinary sequel to Britain's abolition of the slave trade in 1807. The last legal British slave-ship left Africa that year, but other countries and illegal slavers continued to trade. When the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, British diplomats negotiated anti-slave-trade treaties and a 'Preventive Squadron' was formed to cruise the West African coast. In six decades, this small fleet liberated 150,000 Africans and lost 17,000 its own men in doing so. This is the tale of their exciting and arduous campaign.
It is a story of unforeseen consequences, and a swashbuckling naval adventure, full of sensational, first-hand accounts of life at sea; of the grim 'barracoons', the slave-brokers' luxurious compounds and the lonely garrisons dotting the coast. Combining flawless research with an intimated and dramatic narrative, this is a voyage that no one will forget.
NZ$34.00 + delivery.
SWIRLY WORLD SAILS SOUTH.By Andrew Fagan, Paperback, 0.42kg, 153mm x 233mm, 288 pages. To be released in Jun 2012.
In 2007, Kiwi musician and radio personality Andrew Fagan set sail in his tiny 5.4-metre plywood yacht to circumnavigate New Zealand. And just to make it more difficult, he included a leg to the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands in the notorious Southern Ocean.
All in all he sailed over 3000 miles (around 5000km) in two months. facing such potentially lethal conditions in such a tiny craft took careful planning mixed with extreme determination, serious fortitude and uncommon daring.
In this account of his voyage, Fagan tells of having to avoid icebergs, sail through a force ten storm and visit sites of shipwercks at Port Ross in the Auckland Island Group. 'With the genuine concern of a very fatigued person, I was sailing for my life and I knew it!'
Swirly World Sails South is a sharply accurate and humorous narrative that offers a unique and refreshing perspective on the world of solo sailing.
NZ$40.00 + delivery.
BEN AINSLIE - CLOSE TO THE WIND.By Ben Ainslie, Hardback, 160mm x 240mm, 246 pages, colour photos.
Step behind the scenes and experience the exhilarating whirlwind life of 'sailing's superman'.
Ben has won successive golds in the last three Olympics, making him a British hero and our greatest Olympic sailor ever. In 2012 he plans to bid for a forth.
In Close to the Wind Ben reveals the truth behind his awesome achievement. A charming spokesperson off the water, he reveals just how ruthless he is on it. He admits to fierce rivalries, above all with Brazilian Robert Scheidt, who robbed a nineteen-year old Ben of gold in his first Olympics. From that day Scheidt has beeb Ben's nemesis and they have explosively raced head-to-head many times since.
Ben's twenty-year sailing career, which began on a dinghy in a remote Cornish bay, has a scope unmatched by other sports. In Olympic races he is alone, in his tiny boat, channelling aggression and plotting tactics. But Ben's recent forays into the America's Cup are a complete contrast. As a helmsman for the Cup - sailing's glamorous, lucrative Formula One-equivalent - Ben can only succeed by precision team-work.
From his proudest moment representign Team GB, to one tough decision that almost risked destroying his career, this is a unique insight into the man who cannot let himself be second best. It shows what really takes place in the white heat of competition and lifts the lid on this toughest of sports.
NZ$61.50 + delivery.
ENDLESS SEA.By Amyr Klink, Paperback, 150mm x 225mm, 262 pages. Monochrome photos.
Amyr Klink, whose sailing exploits have made him a hero in Brazil, tells of his daring singlehanded circumnavigation below the Artarctic Convergence. Surfing the waves in his custom-built 50-foot "aluminium red truck", Paratii, Klink enjoys the quiet confidence that comes from proper planning, common-sense technology, and a lifelong fascination with the history of Southern Ocean sailing.
A modern Moitessier, sailing before an Aerorig mast, Klink proves his seamanship handling tricky boat repairs while underway, navigating icebergs, negotiating gales and williwaws, and surfing gigantic waves.
NZ$40.00 + delivery.
THE MOTION OF THE OCEAN.By Janna Cawrse Esarey, Paperback, 138mm x 213mm, 312 pages.
Meet Janna and Graeme. After a decade-long tango (together, apart, together, apart), they are back in love - but the stress of nine-to-five is seriously hampering their happiness. So they quit their jobs, tie the knot, and untie the lines on a beat-up old sailboat for a most unusual honeymoon: a two-year voyage across the Pacific. But passage from first date to first mate is anything but smooth sailing. From the rugged Pacific Northwest coast to the blue lagoons of Polynesia to bustling Asian ports, Janna and Graeme find themselves at the mercy of poachers, under the spell of cross-dressers, and under the gun of a less-than-sober tattooist. And they encounter do-or-die moments that threaten their safety, their sanity and their marriage.
Join Janna and Graeme's 17,000-mile journey and their quest to resolve the uncertainties so many couples face: How do you know if you've really found the One? How do you balance duty to others while preserving space for yourself? And, when the waters get rough, do you jump ship, or do you learn to navigate the world...together?
NZ$36.00 + delivery.
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