3 Review(s)

The 1st Place Winner in the 2020 PenCraft Awards for Non-fiction, in the Travel Adventure category. It all starts with a simple plan. Take a three-week vacation in the summer. Fly to the Canary Islands to meet up with friends and help sail their new catamaran across the Atlantic. As it turns out, the vacation needs to be extended. Meeting up with friends is not so simple and the last part of the plan… The story follows the tried-and-true monomyth plot structure. In the departure part of the narrative, the protagonist lives in his ordinary world and receives an invitation to go on a long distance sailing trip. At first he is reluctant, but a friend and mentor persuade him to go for it. The initiation section begins when he arrives in the Canary Islands, where he faces tasks and trials. Later when far offshore, he reaches the central crisis of his adventure—the storm—where he and his friends are pushed to their limits. For days, they sail through the storm and later are rewarded with perfect weather conditions as they make their passage across the mid-Atlantic. The protagonist then returns home with a greater appreciation of his ordinary world. Written by an author with undoubted credentials, the intriguing tale offers interesting tidbits along the way. The book's foreword is a fitting endorsement written by renowned boat designer John Shuttleworth, an expert in the field.