Sailing Book Reviews - April 2021
Books buoy us. They lift us up, give us direction, teach us where to go and how to get there.
The Women Who Sail newsletter tackles timely, thought-provoking topics. As book curator, I gather readings to explore each theme further. If you have book recs or feedback, or just want to chat about reading and writing, drop me a line!
Affiliate links: each sale made through our Bookshop.org links supports independent bookstores! Women Who Sail also receives a small affiliate portion of the sale. You can see all our Bookshop book recs at: bookshop.org/shop/womenwhosail
BY JANNA CAWRSE ESAREY
“Despite the forecast, live like it’s spring.” – Lilly Pulitzer
Budding. Blooming. A breath of fresh air. I don’t know about you, but last spring was a fog, which makes this spring all the sweeter. And now that spring has sprung, it’s time to move from dreaming about sailing to actually doing it. Can I get a woohoo!? Whether you’re a liveaboard appreciating longer hours of daylight, a racer strategizing for the race season, a world cruiser prepping for the big leap, or a local boater gearing up for weekends (or weeks!) on the water, these books will help you release the spring-line and leap.
NONFICTION
by Clyde Ford
As you get back out sailing, how can you make sure you’re minimizing the impact on the waters you love? In Women Who Sail’s climate change newsletter last fall, we offered resources and book recs, to which I’d like to add Clyde Ford’s Boat Green. It’s a compact handbook that reminds sailors how to be part of the solution, not the problem. A longtime Pacific Northwest mariner, Ford lays out numerous ways we can make sure our vessels are operating safely, efficiently, and with minimal pollution. From holding tanks to power systems, from oil changes to fueling up, Ford goes through all a boat’s systems and explores, with even-handed, non-preachy, practical advice, how to do it greener. This is a great book to keep onboard for reference (how far should I stay away from whales again?) or pass around the marina so others can imbibe these pithy, easy-to-read chapters. (And when you’re done learning how to treat our waterways better, check out Ford’s memoir, Think Black, about how he took a different tack through life than his father, who was the first African-American software engineer at IBM.)
by Behan Gifford, Sarah Dawn Johnson, and Michael Robertson
After sailing across the Pacific on our honeymoon, my husband and I were committed to cruising with kids someday, only it took a long time for “someday” to come. But as soon as it did, the book I reached for was this full-color, superbly organized, well-considered handbook by three parents in collaboration, including Women Who Sail’s own Behan Gifford. What’s great about the broad authorship—and the dozens of interviews they do with other crews—is that, no matter what age or stage, these sailors have your kids covered. From boatschooling to boundary-setting with naysayers, from safety strategies to adjusting to life afloat (and back), from standing watch to provisioning to sustaining relationships near and far, the tone is measured and respectful, encouraging and creative. I especially loved the section at the end where kids share their personal stories of cruising and its effect on their lives.
by Wendy Hinman
A skillfully told story of perseverance, ingenuity, and grit, Sea Trials tells the true tale of an American family shipwrecked in Fiji in the 1970s. But it also describes a heroic five-year circumnavigation—for even after the shipwreck, the Wilcox family rebuilds and carries on. Hinman’s pacing keeps the story humming along and her eye for detail helps us savor the voyage. She relies on old letters, log books, newspaper clippings, and family interviews to recreate the journey. How did she access such personal materials? Well, she happens to be married to Garth Wilcox, the son who was just a teenager in the story! Together, Hinman and Wilcox also circumnavigate the Pacific as adults, which is a real hoot, but that story—Tightwads on the Loose—is a review for another day.
MEMOIR
by Kaci Cronkhite
If you told me a memoir about a woman’s search for the history of her wooden boat had kept you up late reading, I would assume you were a zealous marine historian, an insomniac, or a wooden boat nut. (Cronkhite herself admits that with all the upkeep required, wooden-boaters are pretty much nuts.) I am none of the above (except maybe the nuts part) yet found myself wholly engrossed in the mystery-memoir that is Finding Pax. The curvy, eye-catching Pax comes to Cronkhite when, as she says, “I didn't expect or, frankly, need her.” And isn’t that how the best love stories begin? It turns out this little Danish spidsgatter (double-ender) has a long, shrouded, and, at times, tragic history. As Cronkhite unearths clues to each stage in Pax’s life—from her charming beginnings in Denmark to a fire in California to being rebuilt by a “mystery woman” on Vancouver Island—we ride along like sidekicks to a detective, encountering red herrings and fascinating folks along the way. Cronkhite is a fabulous writer who works magic in this book; Pax’s sweet mystery will enthrall even non-wooden boat nuts like me, and non-sailors, too. It’s that good.
by Liesbet Collaert
Liesbet Collaert is an intrepid soul and a relentless traveler, but the first time she plunges into ocean cruising is a disaster. Not only is she dreadfully seasick, but her beloved dogs are too. So, she and her partner sell the monohull and, after a foray into van-life, end up on a catamaran instead. Plunge follows Collaert’s adventures in love, travel, and dogs—gotta love her dogs!—overland and at sea. Collaert is a strong writer whose sentences hit their mark; the fact that she’s not writing in her first language (she’s Belgian and grew up speaking French) is a stunner. Throughout the book, Collaert and her husband navigate various storms—marital, meteorological, financial, health—and even several dust-ups with U.S. immigration. Plunge is one woman’s story of the dogged persistence it takes to reach some of the world’s most beautiful places and to live a life that’s far from ordinary.
by Linda Kenyon
“The only thing more foolish than a middle-aged woman taking up horseback riding is a fifty-year-old running away with a sailor.” After a painful divorce, Linda Kenyon decides she will never risk loving again, but when she meets a kind, handsome sailor who’s prepping for a big cruise, she jumps aboard with him. If this sounds like a romance, it is! And I must say, Sea Over Bow delighted me! The narrative takes place in a single Atlantic crossing where Kenyon reflects back on her life, her family members, their heartbreaking health issues, and what she’s learned—and continues to learn—from them all. Like: “Sometimes the weight of being the one who got away is almost unbearable.” But get away Kenyon does, and we get to watch her grow in ocean knowledge, skill, and confidence. While the family flashbacks were a bit jarring at first, I quickly got used to the style and appreciated how these reflections deepened Kenyon’s voyage. She brings her whole self to this crossing and, with crisp writing, beautiful description, gripping action, and a wry sense of humor, she brings us along with her. I fell head over heels for this book!
FICTION
by Rebecca Roanhorse
Speculative fiction is not my regular fare, but when I saw that Black Indigenous author Rebecca Roanhorse of Star Wars: Resistance Reborn fame had written a book that involved celestial navigation, I was intrigued. Black Sun (published fall 2020) explores a politically treacherous, geographically beautiful world full of magic inspired by the Pre-Columbian Americas; anyone who’s sailed the Caribbean will find Roanhorse’s land/seascapes easy to imagine. My favorite character, Xiala, is the female captain of an ocean-going canoe that must cross the sea in the off-season (gulp) and reach port by a specific date (double gulp) to deliver precious human cargo—not enslaved people, but another main character who (spoiler alert) turns out to be her love interest. This is a rich, character-driven epic fantasy in which racial/gender identities, sexual orientation, and cultural histories add depth to the action and layers to the political intrigue. My only complaint is that it ends on a total cliffhanger just when you’re coming to love the characters and hate their fates. Aggh, the agony of waiting for book two!
by Amity Gaige
When I saw an excerpt of this novel in the New York Times last spring, I was intrigued but skeptical. As a sailor, I love books about the sea, and as a parent and partner, I’m drawn to tales of domestic life, but I worried about a novelist who, in her words, “had to learn to sail in order to write Sea Wife.” No need to fret. Gaige, whose prose is as layered as poetry, nails every detail of family life afloat; she must have cruised herself or gotten inside the skin of someone who did. I also loved how the sea here is not a cookie-cutter nemesis but a rich crucible for these fascinating characters: Juliet is a lover of literature who’s struggling to juggle motherhood, depression, and the realization that she and her husband are much further apart ideologically than either of them realized (a thread I found particularly fascinating in the age of Trump). Michael shares his perspective through the logbook he keeps, which becomes, not just a map of their physical voyage, but a portrait of his interior landscape—and a clue to a mystery. My only raised eyebrow came when Juliet’s voyage wrapped up a little too handily; IRL that’s when the real drama would have begun. ;) Still, Sea Wife was gorgeously written, extremely thought-provoking, and a total joy to read.
ONLINE
by Carol McCreary
Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska is a lovely cruising area, but “location, location, location” isn’t why I’m recommending reading about POW (as Carol McCreary calls the remote island) specifically, or McCreary’s take on the Inside Passage generally. Rather, McCreary’s amazing blog Baggywrinkles is all about access, access, access and acknowledgment, acknowledgment, acknowledgment. McCreary herself is what she calls TAB (Temporarily Able-Bodied)—a moniker I appreciate for its humility and accuracy—while her husband and skipper, Jack, is what McCreary calls a “wheeler” (he uses a scooter). Up and down the Inside Passage, Carol and Jack have been documenting the accessibility and safety of cruising ports. How wide and stable are the docks? How is restroom access? What resources does a town offer? S/V Aurora shares all this alongside the standard cruisers’ fare of stunning photos, detailed descriptions, fascinating histories, and quirky locals. So, as we all get out on the water again and start writing up our own adventures, please take some tips from Carol and Jack’s blog: 1) Write inclusively for a broad audience, 2) Acknowledge a place’s history, culture, language, and heritage, 3) Ask permission for photos first, 4) Cite sources and provide links to local content, and above all, 5) Get curious.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST
by Lin and Larry Pardey
The knowledge of the seas comes to us from so many mariners who have sailed these waters before, and Lin and Larry Pardey are household names in the sailing world for good reason. In Cost Conscious Cruiser they teach us how world cruising can be accessible to more than just the rich and richer—a not-flashy but fulfilling lifestyle on a small budget with modest amenities and a committed crew. After being inspired by Cruising in Seraffyn and Taleisin's Tales, my husband and I dove into Capable Cruiser and The Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew to prep for our first cruise. While cruising, I remember regularly dipping in and out of Storm Tactics, a reference we kept in the head for easy access. I also remember madly re-reading how to heave to in the middle of actually trying to heave to. Thank you, Lin and Larry, for your many decades of service; you’ve sparked and facilitated so many people’s sailing dreams.
janna cawrse esarey
Janna is a sailor, author, and speaker focusing on helping people pursue B-HAGs: big, hairy, audacious goals. She is an Integrated Life Advocate with ThirdPath, an organization that helps folks redesign work and home to make time for life. Janna’s first book, The Motion of the Ocean, is about how she sailed across the Pacific on her honeymoon and is still married. She’s working on a new memoir about how navigating modern parenthood is more perilous than sailing the Arctic with kids (she’s tried, and sort of failed at, both). Janna lives with her husband and two daughters on an island near Seattle where she is also a school bus driver. More at saildogbark.com.
FROM WOMEN WHO SAIL NEWSLETTER | ISSUE 7. | APRIL 2021.