Showing titles in Water Sports

At the tender age of 14, Amanda Beard walked onto the pool deck at the Atlanta Olympics carrying her teddy bear, Harold, and left with two silvers and a gold medal. She competed in three more Olympic games, winning a total of seven medals, and enjoyed a lucrative modeling career on the side. At one point, she was the most downloaded female athlete on the Internet. Yet despite her astonishing career and sex-symbol status, Amanda felt unworthy of all her success. Unaware that she was suffering from clinical depression, she hid the pain beneath a megawatt smile.

Rick's recent appearance on Ben Fogle's New Lives in the Wild chronicled his budget lifestyle and adventures aboard Calypso, and introduced the idea of budget sailing to a whole new audience - an audience who may have never considered the possibility that such a dream could be made a reality, on such a small amount of money. This book is for them and for any experienced sailors who want to cast off the yoke of consumerist yachting and get back to what really matters at sea.

In 1968, the Sunday Times organised the Golden Globe race - an incredible test of endurance never before attempted – a round the world yacht race that must be completed single-handed and non-stop, going into port for repairs or supplies would mean disqualification.This remarkable challenge inspired the daring to enter – with or without sailing experience. A Race Too Far is the story of how the race unfolded, and how it became a tragedy for many involved.

Here, for the first time, is a complete and chronological account: everything from levitating the dog and navigating by smell to meeting his wife Tamsin through the Lonely Hearts column of Time Out and attempting to run away to sea and raise a family on a 27 foot boat.

Tourists visit popular islands of the Caribbean by the planeload. What they don't see from their resort hotels are the hundreds of out-of-the-way, uninhabited islands sprinkled along the West Indies, from Florida to South America. This alluring archipelago, strung with beaches accessible only by boat but spaced temptingly close together, led Mississippi adventurer Scott B. Williams to embark upon an open-ended quest to see how far south he could go in a 17-foot sea kayak.

In July 1973, Bob Tininenko, his wife Linda, and his brother in-law Jim Fisher set sail from Tacoma, Washington, on a 31-foot trimaran, down the West Coast to Costa Rica. The journey was expected to take a matter of weeks, but 10 days into the cruise, the party encountered a freak storm off the coast of Northern California. When gale-force winds and 50-foot waves capsized their boat, the voyage became a nightmare. For 72 days, the trio was lost at sea. Challenged by nature and compromised by a bitter rivalry, their courage and will to live was put to the ultimate test.

Legendary account of the author's voyage around Cape Horn in a 32-foot sailboat, sailing east to west (thus the Horn is to starboard, or on the right). This is a notoriously difficult and dangerous passage, especially in a boat this size.

In 1968, nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. It was a feat that had never been accomplished and one that would forever change the face of sailing. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death. In this extraordinary book, Peter Nichols chronicles a contest of the individual against the sea, waged at a time before cell phones and electronic positioning systems.

In 1895, when Captain Joshua Slocum completed the first solo circumnavigation on his 37-foot sloop, the Spray, no one believed it could be done. This firsthand account of Captain Slocum's remarkable voyage - 3 years and 46,000 miles - is full of adventures, dangers, and triumphs. Stormy seas, hostile natives, Moorish pirates, and even a bizarre meeting with President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal, who insisted that Slocum could never have sailed "around the world," since everyone with the meanest intelligence knew the world was flat, make up the fabric of the most wonderful travelogue of all.

Yet familiar though the sea areas are by name, few people give much thought to where they are or what they contain. In Attention All Shipping, Charlie Connelly wittily explores the places behind the voice, those mysterious regions whose names seem often to bear no relation to conventional geography. Armchair travel will never be the same again.

The 5,000+ mile route of the Loop Cruise follows historic seaport towns, natural wilderness and coastal fishing communities on a navigable protected waterway that make it an adventure of a lifetime for boaters who dream of seeing the United States and Canada from the helm of their own boat. We were lucky enough to make this journey on our 36-foot trawler, High Life, and chronicled our voyage.

Have you ever wanted to connect with the ocean? Are you curious about holding your breath? Are you seeking a way to calm your mind? Freediving may be for you! This is when people explore the underwater world while holding their breath. Imagine you’re swimming over a colorful coral reef, with no scuba gear, just complete freedom. The fish are calm, the water is clear, and your lungs are full. Freediving may seem like an extreme sport, but in reality it is incredibly peaceful. It is relaxing, spiritual, and Zen.

Matt Warshaw knows more about surfing than any other person on the planet. After five years of research and writing, Warshaw, a former professional surfer and editor of Surfing magazine, has crafted an unprecedented, definitive history of the sport and the culture it has spawned. The History of Surfing reveals and defines this sport with a voice that is authoritative, funny, and wholly original.

Fed up with teenage life in the suburbs, Jaimal Yogis ran off to Hawaii with little more than a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and enough cash for a surfboard. His journey is a coming-of-age saga that takes him from communes to monasteries, from the warm Pacific to the icy New York shore. Equal parts spiritual memoir and surfer's tale, this is a chronicle of finding meditative focus in the barrel of a wave and eternal truth in the great, salty blue.

How many times have you had that overpowering urge to leave it all behind and sail off to a tropical island? The desire of the ordinary landlubber to go to sea is as old as mankind itself. Here is the true story of how my wife and I became captured by the powerful allure of the sea. This is book one of a four book series. 'Quest and Crew' begins hours before a hurricane of unimaginable destructive force obliterates the south shore of Grenada. Luckily, Quest survives without a scratch. It’s a story about how life's many twists and turns, fortune and disaster, can change your path but make ...

A tale of adventures, as Lin and Larry Pardey continue their voyaging on board their self-built 24'4" cutter. They cross the exotic sea that spawned Homer's tales of Ulysses' Odyssey, then sail through the strife torn Red Sea and across the typhoon tossed waters of the Bay of Bengal.

Narrated in his own voice, in this third book about his travels aboard the 28-foot sailboat Atom, James Baldwin creates an ode to the sea and to those who venture upon her in small voyaging sailboats. The Next Distant Sea continues the memoir of his second adventurous circumnavigation as begun in his earlier book Bound for Distant Seas.

A soulful collection of nearly four decades of surf writing. In Deep transports listeners into the heart of the surfing world’s culture through the eyes and imagination of a master storyteller. George’s personality profiles, perspective essays, and travel accounts achieve a level of frank articulation that, much like the works of Theroux, Krakauer, and Finnegan, reveal as much about the man as it does his subjects. Peak transcendence and quiet reflection, famous beaches and lost islands, competitive triumphs and personal tragedies.

Introduction to Sailing is veteran sailor Christian Williams’ candid and highly entertaining invitation to boats and the sea. Writing for new sailors of every kind, he evokes the joy of wind and water in an intimate style that begins with dinghies, which he advocates as most fun of all, and continues through cruising boats small and large and for every budget.

Unique and compelling, Splash! sweeps across the whole of humankind's swimming history - and just like jumping into a pool on a hot summer's day, it has fun along the way.