Posted on: Sunday, November 30, 2003
If 'Commander' tickles your fancy, try nonfiction armchair sailing
By John Balzar
Los Angeles Times
We're embarked on a rollicking voyage, many of us. Last week, 20th Century Fox released the tall-ship action film "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," starring Russell Crowe as Capt. Jack Aubrey of the British navy, 1805.
The dauntless Aubrey, of course, is the creation of writer Patrick O'Brian, whose 20-volume serial novel contains what may be the most engaging and full-bodied fictional accounts of seagoing adventure written in modern times.
The film surely will draw newcomers to O'Brian's work. So, for those perusing the nautical shelves at the bookstore, it's an opportune moment to contemplate some nonfiction offerings too.
Here are some favorite nonfiction sailing adventure books. To avoid argument, the description "favorite" is employed rather than "best."
The choices begin with publication in 1939, avoiding the need to revisit the classics of Melville, Conrad, London, Slocum and the like. Another thing: The list is weighted in favor of schooners, for which no apology is extended. Nothing on the water before or since has matched the schooner's grace.
"Give Me the World" is the wholly unexpected tale of a woman born with beauty, wealth, position and itchy feet. With her preschool son in tow, Leila Hadley casts loose. She quits her job in post-World-War-II New York and heads for the Far East aboard a freighter.
This woman, who later would marry Henry Luce III, talks her way onto the weather-beaten, three-masted schooner Californian, named after the home state of the four men who were sailing it around the world for the sheer fun of it.
For us travelers, Hadley's exuberant, hopscotch voyage from Singapore to Malta shows what miracles the eyes can behold, if only we have the clarity of vision to look. This is not a tale of battling nature but rather of daring to act on one's dreams.
If you want it wild and wet: "The Long Way" is Bernard Moitessier's enduring tale of single-handing it around the world, and then some. It is, to borrow from Hemingway, the true gen, the real thing — as captivating and close-to-the-gulp as sea stories can get.
In the long-ago year of 1968, before global positioning systems, before satellite communications, before round-the-world sailboat racing became big business, nine men left England in the first contest of solo circumnavigation. Only one crossed the finish line. It was not Moitessier.
At the crucial turn in the race, he commanded the lead. Fame and fortune awaited him after rounding both capes and circling the great Southern Ocean. But he asked himself, "Does it make sense to head for a place knowing you will have to leave your peace behind?" He answered by altering course. He bore east and sailed on — halfway again around the world, to Tahiti.
Moitessier's connection to the ocean, to solitude, to his hardy ketch Joshua is mystical, almost hallucinogenic. What happens during 10 months alone at sea in the toughest waters on the planet? For others, madness, failure, death, glory. For Moitessier, self-discovery and joy, too.
A far different and slower circumnavigation is undertaken by Tania Aebi. "Maiden Voyage" is the coming-of-age adventure of a troubled 18-year-old New Yorker. Her father risks her life to save it. He offers her a 26-foot sloop if she'll sail it alone around the planet.
"Sometimes," she recalls him saying, "you only learn things in this world the hard way."
With one family sailing vacation her only experience, Aebi and her cat embark on a 2 1/2-year, 27,000-mile journey awash in ebullience, terror, love, sadness, determination and triumph.
