Spirit of the Wind

A Woman's View of Sailing Across the Ocean

By: Bunny Throckmorton

Narrated by: Natasha Harper

Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

This audiobook is the story of sailing across the ocean from Guam to San Francisco on our wonderful sailboat, the "Spirit of the Wind", a 41 foot Taiwan-built Ketch designed by William Garden. A group of 20-something kids went to Guam looking for the meaning of life, bought a boat, fixed it up, and learned to sail across the ocean. It was a beautiful and spiritual journey, while at times was totally and completely terrifying. It introduced me to the South Pacific Islands and the wonderful and gracious people there - it was truly a paradise.

The warm trade winds that I can feel sometimes in my dreams, the feel and sounds of the wind in the sails and moving through fear. I learned to improvise in the moment, how to deal with life then there was no land for weeks on end, with just the horizon all around - as if we were sailing on a mirror. It introduced me to the wonders of the ocean and its inhabitants. This trip changed my life and what I thought the world was. It enabled me to see, feel, and do things that I didn't know I was capable of. It was a serious lesson in being with three other people, all men, in a 40 foot sailboat with very little privacy. It taught me that the weather goes on - it doesn't help to pray for it to change and is bigger than us. It was transformational in so many ways, facing death almost daily.

©2017 Waldorf Publishing (P)2017 Waldorf Publishing

A good story but the performance needs editing

A great story of adventure, endurance and human relationships. The reading was pleasant to listen to, but poorly edited with many lines read twice over, mispronunciation of words and poor fiction that should have been fixed in the final edit. It's a shame because the overall content is excellent and entertaining. Great writing but the Audible quality control person must have been on holiday when they released this one.

A great story

A really nice story and insight to life in the late 70’s. Narrator has a nice voice with really poor phrasing. Makes the story hard to follow with sentence ending vocal inflections mid sentence.. Not one or two but so many throughout that you get used to it and start accepting as the norm. She does have a pretty voice and it’s a good story.

Amazing read

I truly feel like I have just sailed the Pacific Ocean. I was right there with Bunny and her struggles. if you're up for an adventure then this is the book for you!

interesting story; poorly edited

this was an interesting story and i enjoyed hearing it. however, both the text itself, and the performance especially, were not sufficiently edited. the story often rambles , including irrelevant details out of chronological order, only to reiterate later when the timeline catches up. the audio stops mid sentence and there are several occurrences of repeated phrases. i began to wonder if no one had actually listened to the audio in its entirety before delivering it. now that I've heard the whole thing, i believe that's probably true. this isn't a slight on the author's side ; i understand it's her first book. the publisher of the text and the audio should have set a higher bar.