Ocean Sailing

Ever thought of ditching your conventional life to buy a sailboat and go traveling the world as a modern-day sea nomad? Half Fast is the true story of a married couple in their thirties who do just that—a move some of their family and friends consider to be a 'half-assed scheme' at best. With little money and even even less nautical experience they leave their small-town home in Arkansas to embark on an adventure they hope will last for a year or two but which evolves into a quarter-century voyage of discovery spanning half the world. Come along with Randy and Cheryl as they cruise their ...

After sailing 300,000 miles and weathering dozens of storms in all the world's oceans, John Kretschmer has plenty of stories and advice to share. John's offshore training passages sell out a year in advance, and his entertaining presentations are popular at boat shows and yacht clubs all over the English-speaking world. John's talent for storytelling enchants his audience as it soaks up the lessons he learned during his often challenging voyages. Now you can take a seat next to John - at a lesser cost - and get the knowledge you need to fulfill your own dream of blue-water adventure.

Orphaned at five, nothing held Whidden back from embarking on sea life seven years later. Serving as an apprentice, he quickly proved his worth and earned himself a mate's position by his early 20s. Graduating to third, second, and first office, he ended his career in command of, and having part-ownership of, his own vessel. Ocean Life in the Old Sailing Ship Days records a series of real events from his childhood impressions of rough and ready seamen to his thrilling and brutal experiences of war.

A retired, Canadian firefighter with a dream of adventure sails his new boat from The Virgin Islands to Grenada, and then across the Caribbean Sea to the USA. Picking up his 2 dogs he continues up and down the east coast and across the Bahamas, gaining experience as a dream of circumnavigating the planet begins to form. A true story beginning in 2012, this first half concludes with the Bénéteau 423 being outfitted in North Carolina in 2015, ready to depart for Panama. Dramatic, often moving, or incredibly funny, it is a tale of confronting the unknown, told with heart.

John Kretschmer is sailing’s practical philosopher - as much a doer as a thinker. And that is the overarching theme of this chronicle of a sailing life. Often amusing, sometimes poignant, occasionally terrifying but always inspiring, his deeply personal account is a welcome reminder of the good life waiting at sea. With hundreds of thousands of nautical miles under his keel, John’s adventures have taken him several times around the world.

Islands, Oceans and Dreams is a true story of a man who, at the age of 33, began dreaming of voyaging with his wife to the South Pacific. He wasn't an adventurer or daring by nature, but he bought a boat and began learning the ways of the sea. Twenty years later, racked with the pain of divorce and still aching to live out his dream, he set off alone for Tahiti. After reaching French Polynesia, he continued cruising for seven years and wound up solo sailing around the world.

There are many sensible ways to travel around the world. This is not one of them. This is a book about sailing around the world in the most inefficient, illogical, and thoroughly British way imaginable—by making one catastrophic mistake after another, and then calling it “a plan.” Around the World in 20 Mistakes is a painfully honest and extremely funny step-by-step account of what happens when one stubborn human tries to circumnavigate the planet in spite of bad weather, broken gear, seasickness, suspicious customs officers, and a boat that seemed determined to self-destruct at every...

Captain John Whidden was an American merchant sailor who sailed all over the world. He wrote this work in 1908, partly as a memoir, but also to offer a snippet of the “old sailing ship days” before major changes occurred. It is a story of a boy from New England and his various roles on ships from the age of 12 to 37. He documents the changes in the shipping industry over the 19th and into the 20th century.

The Unfiltered Truth Behind Sailing’s Greatest Madness The Vendée Globe is not just a race—it is a solitary pilgrimage across the planet’s most hostile oceans, a test of endurance, ingenuity, and raw will. In The Epic Story of the Vendée Globe 2020–21, the drama of the world’s toughest sailing challenge unfolds in all its brutal beauty. The 2020-21 Vendée Globe was supposed to be just another edition of the world’s toughest solo yacht race. Instead, it became a white-knuckle psychodrama of shattered boats, broken minds, and the kind of raw human moments that get scrubbed from...

Across Islands and Oceans is the memoir of 25 year-old James Baldwin and his epic two-year, solo circumnavigation in Atom, his trusty but aging 28-foot sailboat.

HARD AGROUND is more than the story of a racing yacht running aground in the vast, merciless expanse of the Indian Ocean. It is a deep dive into the collision between human ambition and the untamable sea — where cutting-edge technology meets the raw, unpredictable power of nature. In the 2014–15 Volvo Ocean Race, the Vestas Wind was a sleek, cutting-edge machine, helmed by some of the world’s most skilled sailors. Yet, despite every precaution, the boat ran hard aground on a hidden reef — a navigational nightmare that exposed the brittle underbelly of modern offshore racing. With ...

A historical fiction book set in the Atlantic Ocean during the late 19th century. Embark on a heart-pounding voyage across the turbulent Atlantic in "The Chancellor's Plight," a gripping tale of survival, desperation, and human resilience. This novel transports you to September 1869, aboard the merchant ship "Chancellor," as it sets sail from Charleston, South Carolina, to Liverpool, England, carrying a precious cargo of cotton and an unforgettable cast of passengers. What begins as a routine journey quickly spirals into chaos and terror as fate intervenes in unimaginable ways. As you delve...

Fifteen tropical islands, fifteen chapters filled with adventure. This book lets you hop aboard a little sailboat and join the author on a three-year-long voyage across French Polynesia, where you will discover some of the most interesting places, people and wildlife of the South Pacific. From the world-famous island of Bora Bora to the remotest atolls of the Tuamotus, experience the challenges and rewards of the seafaring life as you dive with dolphins and sharks, sail under the stars, drink from fresh coconuts in the company of heavily-tattooed men, brave heavy storms and violent currents...

A true story of poor judgment and questionable parenting, but also of friendship and adventure. A cubicle-dwelling nine-to-fiver hatches a secret plan to buy an old Dutch sailboat, fix her up, and return to the Pacific via the Northwest Passage. His wife hopes for a family. Somehow, both dreams are set in motion–simultaneously. Undeterred, they pack a single suitcase, their six pound newborn, and board a flight to the Netherlands. The boat is a slowly-sinking national treasure, her engine a museum piece. If all goes according to plan, they’ll be ready to cross the Atlantic by autumn.

Have you ever parachuted in the moonlight and juggled work with play? In 1995, Steve set himself the goal to sail across the North Atlantic. Saint Lucia and the Caribbean island chain were the prize. He had to master sailing in spring Scottish waters, keep up with his military training and undergraduate life. It was hard keeping a romance alive with so many distractions, like landing a gig as a swordsman in a Hollywood movie. There were other commitments—a jaunt to Pamplona in Spain, and a camp in the United States before he could join his crew. How will he get to the tropics and have ...

True accounts of disaster and near disaster by sailing ship men and Masters in the age of sail. Many are a moving account of the hardship and the risks inherent in moving large and unwieldy sailing ships around all the key ports of the world. Told in the main with straightforward no nonsense prose, and highlighting the dangers and uncertainties that were accepted by those engaged in trading under sail, and the families of the Masters in many cases. Shipwreck or worse was common, but the best of the Masters remained afloat for a long and fascinating career, aided by a generous dose of luck, ...

*Now a Netflix film* The inspiring true story of Jessica Watson—an Australian teenager who set out to sail solo around the world! On May 15, 2010, after 210 days at sea and more than 22,000 nautical miles, sixteen-year-old Jessica Watson sailed her thirty-three-foot boat triumphantly back to...

A classic summer vacation thriller from the most popular storyteller of our time. A mother and her three children struggle to survive on the most shocking sailing trip of their lives. Since the death of her husband, Anne Dunne and her three children have struggled in every way. In a last-ditch...

Frank Johnson no longer fits in the army. The world he'd built up over twenty years of service to the USA doesn't work anymore, as much because of what the Merge did to him as what it did to the world. Francisco wasn't one for following inconvenient rules, and following the rules following orders, is central to what a modern soldier is. Meanwhile, Francisco, his other self, the other side of his Merge, is trying to do something important. Something that Frank fully approves of, But to do it, Francisco desperately needs supplies and a link back to Earth. So Frank takes his twenty, hocks his ...

Motion is life. Stillness is a death sentence. Oakley Brandt is an engineer who can calculate the load-bearing capacity of a bridge in his head, but he can’t handle the weight of his own failure. After freezing during his final exams, he takes a berth on the tall ship Spirit of Cadiz, hoping manual labor will silence the doubts in his mind. But the silence that finds him is not the kind that heals. It starts with a fog bank that swallows the horizon. When it lifts, the crew is gone. The Atlantic Ocean has vanished, replaced by a vast, grey sheet of viscous sludge. The stars are distorted....