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SCHOOL OF THE SEA.By Stephen Richardson, Paperback, 176 pages.
Based on his daily diary entries that provide a vivid and accurate picture of events, the author candidly recounts his development as a merchant mariner from his early years when he served his apprenticeship from 1937-41 on Elysia, built in 1908, a passenger ship on the India run. For the remainder of the Second World War, he served as an officer on cargo ships, leaving the sea with the qualification of Master Mariner soon after a return to peacetime.
NZ$55.00 + delivery.
CHRONOMETER JACK.Edited By Robin Craig, Ann & Michael Nix, Hardback, 224 pages.
From a chance acquisition of a battered leather-bound notebook, an extensive and extremely well-written narrative was revealed which recounted the life of a midshipman in the East India Company, through to the time when he owned his own vessels and settled in Tasmania.
NZ$80.00 + delivery.
SEA LIKE A MIRROE.By Alan Jones, Paperback, 192 pages.
Living with the sea evokes a need to write about it, whether in poems, songs or prose. This book records a life spent upon the sea, from junior cadet to captain, and some of the reflections which at lonely times in the ocean's vastness seemed to have sprung from its depth. This seafaring story encompassing the mundane and the exotic and relates how this mariner achieved his ultimate goal - being master of his own ship.
NZ$55.00 + delivery.
BLAKE: LEADER.Leadership lessons from a great New Zealander.By Mark Orams, Paperback, 154mm x 234mm, 191 pages, section of full colour photographs, Plus exclusive DVD interview with Sir Peter Blake.
Sir Peter Blake was one of New Zealand's great leaders, a winner at sport and an inspiration to the community. But what was it about Blake's leadership style that was so special? What made him inspire such respect and admiration, and how did he become so successful at assembling, managing and leading winning teams?
In Blake: Leader, sailor and scientist Mark Orams examines Blake's inspirational leadership style, combining his own experiences of Blake's leadership in action with wider observations of how Blake chose and led winning teams. From that platform Orams looks at building a great team, being a great leader, encouraging a great work ethic and having a winning attitude, highlighting key points and techniques that can be used by both leaders and team members in sports and business situations.
Blake: Leader also frames a unique New Zealand style of leadership as demonstrated by Blake and other great Kiwi leaders. A bonus is an exclusive DVD interview with Sir Peter Blake in which he shares his thoughts on leadership.
NZ$40.00 + delivery.
RAISING THE DEAD.By Phillip Finch, Hardback, 145mm x 224mm, 310 pages, section of full colour photographs.
On New year's Day 2005, Australian Dave Shaw travelled halfway around the world to a steep water-filled crater in the Kalahari Desert. His destination: nearly 900 feet below the surface.
What happened a week later at Bushman's Hole is the stuff of nightmarish drama.
Wearing some of the most advanced diving equipment ever developed, Shaw descended. Just below the surface was a narrow fissure in the dolomite bottom of the basin. he slipped through the opening and disappeared from sight, leaving behind the world of light and life.
A second diver descended through the same crack in the stone. Briton Don Shirley was Shaw's friend and frequent dive partner, one of the few people in the world qualified to follow where Shaw was about to go. In the community of cave diving, Shirley was a master among masters.
Twenty-five minutes later, one of the men was dead. the orher was in mortal peril, and would spend the next ten hours struggling to survive, existing literally from breath to breath.
Written with the full cooperation of the surving families, Raising the Dead is a true story about the perilous sport of cave diving - its culture, its cult following, and the remarkable individuals who pursue it. It's about two devoted marriages and coming to terms with the dangers undertaken by a loved one. And it is about friendship and trust, put to their ultimate test.
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
ZANE GREY - His Life His Adventures His WomenBy Thomas H. Pauly, Paperback, 156mm x 231mm, 385 pages, black and white photographs.
Zane Grey was a disappointed aspirant to major league baseball and an unhappy dentist when he belatedly decided to take up writing at the age of thirty. He went on to become the most successful American author of the 1920's, a significant figure in the early development of the film industry, and a central player in the early popularity of the Western.
Thomas H Pauly's work is the first full-length biography of Grey to appear in over thirty years. Using a hitherto unknown trove of letters and journals, including never-before-seen photographs of his adventures - both natural and amorous - Zane Grey has greatly enlarged and radically altered our understanding of the superstar author, whose fifty-seven novels and one hundred and thirty movies heavily influenced the world's perception of the old West.
Thomas H Pauly is a professor of English at the University of Delaware. He is the author of books on Elia Kazan and the historical background of the musical Chicago.
NZ$60.00 + delivery.
RACE AGAINST TIMEBy Ellen MacArthur, Paperback, 130mm x 198mm, 287 pages, full colour photographs.
On the night of 7th February 2005, Ellen MacArthur became the fastest person ever to sail solo round the world. The record had been held by a Frenchman who had slashed over twenty days off the previous time - a feat that many experts claimed would be almost impossible to emulate, let alone beat. But in a superhuman effort that saw her dig deeper into her reserves of courage and strength than ever before, Ellen triumphed and some claimed she was now the finest sailor Britain had ever produced.
Drawing on personal logs, emails, audio and video diaries, this book is Ellen's own fully illustrated story, capturing the drama, excitement, danger, joy and tears of a truly extraordinary achievement.
NZ$35.00 + delivery.
PIRATES ABOARD! - Over 40 cases of piracy today and what bluewater cruisers can do about it.By Klaus Hympendahl. Pbk, 150mm x 229mm, 323 pages, black & white photographs.
In 1895, Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail alone around the world, scattered thumbtacks on the sole of his yawl Spray to repel an attack by intruders on Tierra del Fuego. In december 2001, an attack on Sir Peter Blake's yacht in Brazil resulted, as we are all too aware of in this country, in his death.
Pirates Aboard! deals with recent cases of piracy studied by author Klaus Hympendahl, who interviewed the victims of over 40 cases. He asks them what lessons they learned from their hostile encounter and what they would suggest others do differently to avoid (or just survive) similar incidents. He then gives an appraisal of which areas in the world are the most dangerous, including Somalia, the Gulf of Aden, Venezuela, Guatamala, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua and parts of Brazil.
This invaluable document suggest what preventive measures sailors can take and advises how they shold deal with stress, aggression, and fear when faced with a confrontation.
NZ$55.00 + delivery.
THE UNLIKELY VOYAGE OF JACK DE CROW, A Mirror Odyssey from North Wales to the Black Sea.By A J Mackinnon. Pbk, 135mm x 210mm, 350 pages, monochrome drawings.
This delightful true story about a dinghy adventure will gladden the spirit of any cruising and dinghy sailor.
Jack de Crow is the Mirror dinghy, named by the author after a departed pet bird. A couple of quiet week's sailing on the river Severn river in Britain was the author's original intention - however "somehow things got out of hand", as he puts it, and a year later he had reached Romania in the Black Sea and was still going!
Equipped with cheerful optimism and a pith helmet - possibly in lieu of a passport! - this "Odysseus-in-a-dinghy" takes the reader with him from the borders of north Wales to the Black Sea: 4,900 kilometres over salt and fresh water, under sail, oars or at the end of a tow rope. His travels passed through twelve countries, 282 locks and encountered numerous trials and adventures, including and encounter with Balkan pirates.
This is a first hand account of an epic voyage, undertaken with courage, and recounted with flair and humour. The writing is excellent - perhaps to be expected from a teacher of English!
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
A SPECK ON THE SEABy William H. Longyard. Pbk, 150mm x 230mm, 375 pages, monochrome photographs.
This book is the definitive compilation of the greatest small-boat voyages in history.
From the 16th century to present day, William Longyard takes the reader on a historic journey of the greatest small-boat voyages ever attempted. Some were successful, some ended in disaster. From the first documented long voyage of Diego Mendez's (Columbus' lieutenant) rescue; the 16th century Algerian slave, William Okeley, who escaped in a folding rowboat; and the bored office worker who, in the 1960's, captured the world's imagination with his 13-foot sailboat, Tinkerbelle, to the tragic loss of Peter Bird who, in the 1990's, died on his attempt to row across the Pacific, A Speck on the Sea recreates these awe-inspiring adventures in fascinating detail.
The author spent six years researching this book, traveled to numerous maritime museums around Europe and the United States and interviewing a number of the sailors or their descendents. More than 100 photos (many given by the subjects profiled) and illustrations will accompany jaw-dropping accounts of the most amazing small boat voyages in history.
NZ$33.00 + delivery.
PASS SAFELY SAILORBy Bill Kemp. Pbk, 148mm x 210mm, 160 pages, black & white photo's.
Lighthouses conjure images of isolation and romance. Bill Kemp's account of lighthouse keeping in some of New Zealand's most far-flung corners fills in the gaps we can only imagine. Bill and his growing family spent many years keeping a vigil over the sea, and in the process met engaging characters and developed a keen appreciation of nature's power and beauty. Bill relates tales of day-to-day bravery of common folk who live at the mercy of the weather, of comradeship, hijinks and disaster. Find out how it feels to be in the centre of a hundred-year storm, how adaptable you need to be when everyday life is dictated by the vagaries of the weather, and how solitude breeds creativity. Pass safely Sailor is a warm and often funny remembrance of days when lighthouses were operated by dedicated men and women, and sailors knew that someone was keeping a watchful eye over them.
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
LIVING THE DREAM.By Vern & Connie Madison. Pbk, 152mm x 229mm, 368 pages, monochrome photos.
This book is the true-life adventure story of a seven-year cruise from Newport, Oregon, to Phuket, Thailand in the 35-foot steel-hulled sailboat, Tainui. This book gives a true picture of what it's really like for a retired couple to live their dream of full time cruising to far away places: the highs of beautiful sailing days, snorkeling off pristine coral, anchoring in tropical lagoons, exotic cultural experiences, and the fellowship of the cruising community, but also fear in storms, the exhaustion of sleepless night watches, discouragement of endless boat maintenance, and a rusting through of Tainui's hull.
Although Living the Dream is written for a general audience, serious sailors will find a wealth of helpful cruising information and steel boat owners will profit from significant learning experiences in the maintenance of a steel hull.
NZ$60.00 + delivery.
THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDSBy Erskine Childers. Pbk, 128mm x 198mm, 327 pages.
I make absolutely no apologies for enthusing about this little story since it is without doubt one of the all-time yachting and nautical classics. Written in 1903 (the year of the Wright brothers first powered flight), at the time when sea-power measured supremacy, it had profound political results. Via the narrative it was a major factor in alerting Great Britain to the dangers of German invasion - until this time it was France that had always been regarded as Britain's natural military threat. Also the concept of what became the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve was conceived and recommended in the story.
The action takes place during late summer and autumn off the sands to the east of the North Sea along that short stretch of German coastline. It concerns two young men - one a rather eccentric English yachtsman and the other a smart and (in modern terms) upwardly mobile Foreign Office civil servant. Together they discover and investigate a German plan to invade England from the protected inlets along a stretch of the German coastline, landing at the deserted marshes and low country of East Anglia.
Erskine Childers himself loved sailing about the Friesian coast where most of the action takes place, and the story is an absolute delight in it's descriptions of the two yachtsmen managing their small craft amongst the tides and October storms in these very difficult waters.
The Irish author himself became the victim of politics and was shot dead during the Irish problems in the 1920's.
NZ$25.00 + delivery.
FASTNET FORCE 10By John Rousmaniere. Pbk, 153mm x 227mm, 288 pages.
On August 11, 1979, 303 yachts began the 600-mile Fastnet Race from the Isle of Wight off the southwest coast of England to Fastnet Rock off the Irish coast and back. It began in fine weather, then suddenly became a terrifying ordeal. A Force 10, sixty-knot storm swept across the North Atlantic with a speed that confounded forecasters, slamming into the fleet with epic fury. For twenty hours, 2,500 men and women were smashed by forty-foot breaking waves, while rescue helicopters and lifeboats struggled to save them. By the time the race was over, fifteen people had died, twenty-four crews had abandoned ship, five yachts had sunk, 136 sailors had been rescued, and only 85 boats had finished the race. John Rousmaniere was there, and het tells the story as only one who has sailed through the teeth of a killer storm can. In a new introduction for this edition, he discusses the effects of the tragedy and whether it could happen again today.
NZ$45.00 + delivery.
THE TOTORORE VOYAGEBy Gerry Clark. Pbk, 152mm x 229mm, 374 pages.
In june 1999 at the age of 72 and still working passionately on seabird research, Gerry Clark and crewman Roger Sale were wrecked and lost on the New Zealand sub-Antarctic Antipodes Island. This new edition of The Totorore Voyage pays tribute to Gerry, who in 1983 at the age of 56 set out from New Zealand in his 10 metre wooden yacht to circumnavigate Antarctica in a quest for new information about seabirds. In this graphic account of the ensuing 3 year 8 month voyage, he describes his adventures in some of the remotest, wildest and most spectacularly beautiful parts of the world.
Gary and his crewmembers visited little known islands in the Chilean Archipelago, camped on Cape Horn, and narrowly escaped being trapped by pack ice on a trip to the Antarctic Peninsula. Totorore was dismasted twice, and Gerry was forced to cut the mast and rigging adrift. Continuing alone under jury rig, the boat rolled five times in two terrifying storms. the voyage became a desperate struggle for survival, ending with Totorore limping into Fremantle two and a half months later.
This remarkable adventure story based on taped transcripts and Totorore's log makes enthralling reading for anyone interested in blue water sailing and the birdlife of the Southern Oceans. A short biography and new photographs have been added giving a brief glimpse into the life of this most inspiring man.
For his voyage in Totorore, Gerry was awarded the M.B.E., The Northland Harbour Boards Blue Water Trophy, the Tillman Medal for Cruising in High Latitudes (by the Royal Cruising Club of Great Britain), the Royal Akarana Yacht Clubs Tequila Propeller Award, the Blue Water Medal of the Cruising Club of America, the Fred Norris Medal of the Devonport Yacht Club, the Stolberger Memorial award of the New Zealand Yacht Club Navigators Society and was honoured to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
NZ$40.00 + delivery.
LIFE IS LIKE A SAILBOAT. By John Grogan. Hardback, 145mm x 217mm, 236 pages.
From John Grogan, author of the New York Times bestsellers Bad Dogs Have More Fun, Marley and Me and The Long Way Home, comes a new collection of more than eighty newspaper articles from the Philadelphia Inquirer written when he was a columnist there.
In Life is Like A Sailboat, John Grogan shows us all sides of the human condition - peices that reflect his unique understanding of the crazy-quilt world we inhabit. From the fragility of life almost gone in an instant at a crosswalk, to avoiding the shoals of adolescence, to cell phones driving us to distraction (as we drive!), to turning the tables on telemarketers, to the Irag War coming home to a small town in Pennsylvania, these pieces are filled with insight and sensitivity, laced with humor and understanding. In his own very unique way, John Grogan makes all of us feel more connected to each other and less like strangers living in a strange land.
NZ$40.00 + delivery
PERILOUS SEAS. By Roger Meecham. Paperback, 169mm x 240mm, 227 pages.
Although the 40 separate stories in this book are accounts of what actually happened, they are each as astounding and gripping as any fiction. There are tales of shipwrecks and pirates, mutiny and murder, sunken submarines, lost treasure, cannibals, mysterious disappearances and wartime disasters.
Taking us all around the globe, these accounts relate not just the terrible dangers of the salty depths but also the many and varied human reactions to overwhelming circumstances. While some of the characters demonstrate the fallibility and frailty of mankind, other display the indomitable spirit of the natural hero. Tragic and terrifying at times, uplifting and humorous at others, these stories by ex-Royal Navy diver Roger Meecham bring to life the drama of the perilous seas.
NZ$30.00 + delivery
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