If you are following my Admiral’s Angle columns here on Women and Cruising and if you love books, you will want to catch #42 – My Bookshelf, A Mental Voyage.
This is Part One of three-part series on books aboard. Part Two will be about Cruising Sagas recommended by the Admirals, and Part Three will include our recommendations for your Reference Shelf.
What’s really great about the way these columns are/will be posted on Women and Cruising is that all the titles are linked directly to Amazon! Wow, I wish it had been that easy to find these books in the first place!
The Admirals, of course, recommended more books than I could fit into the three columns, so we will add those, too. If you have some titles you’d like to recommend, send them to us and we’ll add them to the list!
My big passion as I have cruised has been exploring language and culture. I have always loved getting to know other cultures: it is what drew me to the Peace Corps in the 1970s and part of what drew me to cruising almost 15 years later.
Cruising provides a perfect pace for getting to know cultures.
You shop in the markets and eat in your own kitchen – or on the streets. This is so much more satisfying than living in hostels and hotels and eating in restaurants – where everything you do is a commercial tourist transaction.
As cruisers, we can hang in a culture a while and get involved. To get to know a place and a culture, it always helps to have a mission, and though I usually have several “missions” (things that I am seeking out or interested in), so often my mission has been to get to know the language.
Really, if you can’t talk with local people then you miss out on so much
It’s like watching a movie with the sound turned off. …Read more
After 9 years of cruising the Caribbean I am no longer pleading with visiting family and friends to forsake extra shoes, hats and toiletries so that they can pack and carry the most recent best sellers in their one precious piece of luggage now allowed by many airlines.
I no longer search the book exchanges for a book by any author, in English, that I have yet to read. …Read more
Gwen Hamlin and I both read Motion and thoroughly enjoyed it. Janna has a great sense of humor, and she certainly captures the dynamics of cruising, especially that of a couple learning to live together on a small boat. I highly recommend it!
Janna will be giving seminars on Sunday and Monday. Monday is Women’s Day at the Boat Show!
When my husband, Evans Starzinger, suggested sailing around the world, I had almost no sailing experience and reacted much the same way I would have if he had suggested flying a rocket to the moon.
It took him two years to convince me to sail away with him, and he never would have done it if I hadn’t decided there was something in it for me – besides being with him! That something was writing. …Read more
While you’re at the 2009 Annapolis Sailboat Show, be sure to stop by the Author’s Corner (Booth M5) and talk cruising.
Another reason that I love the Annapolis Boat Show is that I get to hang out with two of my favorite cruising authors, Jimmy Cornell and John Otterbacher (author of Sailing Grace).
Jimmy Cornell is the author of the best-selling World Cruising Routes as well as founder of Noonsite, and the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers. I’ve carried Jimmy’s books aboard my boat for decades, but I’d never met him until two years ago at the Annapolis Boat Show.
… That’s the subtitle of Janna Cawrse Esarey’s new book The Motion of the Ocean, that we mentioned a while back on the blog. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (though I like her subtitle) and such lines as:
“Choosing a mate is like picking a house paint from one of those tiny color squares … You never know how it will look across a large expanse, or how it will change in a different light.”
Gwen Hamlin, however IS reading it now, and she is really enjoying the book and Janna’s perspective. She has promised to write a review for Women and Cruising when she finishes.
So for fun, here’s Janna’s You Tube video book trailer for the book. Enjoy!
In the early 1990’s, I was a single, healthy and athletic woman, making a living in the health care industry. I had planned to retire when I hit 55, buy a cruising boat and sail away to somewhere for fun during the “golden years”.
My plans were changed when I got very ill with gangrene of my small intestine and almost died.
While I spent 51 days in the hospital, 41 where I couldn’t eat, I decided that if I got out of this crazy health jam I was in I would sell everything and buy a bigger boat and just go sailing! Wasn’t sure if I would even live until 55 or be healthy enough to sail then. …Read more
Good news! Beth Leonard – circumnavigator, author, and Women and Cruising contributor - will be in the US this fall sharing her recent travels and cruising experience in a series of seminars. Here’s her schedule. – Kathy Parsons
September 25-27, 2009
Seven Seas Cruising Association Annapolis Gam
Camp Letts, Edgewater, MD http://ssca.org
Cruising the Chilean Channels and Cape Horn
Stretching northward from Cape Horn along Chile’s west coast lies a 1,000-mile long archipelago of islands and channels, narrow sounds and glacier-studded fjords with only a handful of settlements. Cruising this magnificent area means braving gale- to storm-force winds on a weekly basis, facing hurricane-force williwaws capable of knocking a 50-foot boat flat and being totally self-sufficient for months at a time. Beth Leonard and her husband, Evans Starzinger, have spent a total of …Read more
I have been reading Around The Next Bend, written by Australian cruiser Bernie Katchor. The book tells the story of Yvonne and Bernie’s seven-month journey along the rivers of Guyana and Venezuela aboard their sailboat Australia 31. It’s a fascinating read of travels in an area few cruisers have visited.
Meeting people as warm and adventurous as Yvonne and Bernie is one of the gifts of cruising. I have shared an anchorage with them a number of times, and joined them on several hikes in search of birds.
Yvonne is a great example of how pursuing your passion (in her case, birdwatching) can add depth to your cruising. It gives you a reason to seek out new places and people, and connects you to people who share your interests.
“Watching and identifying birds and animals is a passion, especially with Yvonne. She has documented the names of over 2500 bird species and continues to be just as excited when she positively identifies one she has never seen as she was twenty years ago when we started a hobby that requires binoculars only. …Read more
If you are following my Admiral’s Angle columns here on Women and Cruising and if you love books, you will want to catch #42 – My Bookshelf, A Mental Voyage.
My world has changed!
, that we mentioned a while back on the blog. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (though I like her subtitle) and such lines as:
, written by Australian cruiser Bernie Katchor. The book tells the story of Yvonne and Bernie’s seven-month journey along the rivers of Guyana and Venezuela aboard their sailboat Australia 31. It’s a fascinating read of travels in an area few cruisers have visited.