Catamaran Crossing: A Sailing Adventure from La Coruña to Antigua
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
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 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. Far offshore, he eventually 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.
Customer Reviews
You don’t need to be a sailor to enjoy this book...
...although you’ll undoubtedly learn some things about the sport along the way. Sailing (real sailing as is described in this book) as it turns out however, is far more than just sport: it’s an art, a discipline, a lifestyle, and a striking metaphor for a number of things, freedom among them.
The short memoir gives the reader a glimpse into a three week slice of author’s life when he helped crew a 42-foot catamaran named Toucan across the Atlantic Ocean. An accomplished, very knowledgeable sailor himself, Fricke’s writing style is crisp, and the narrative is interesting and easy to follow. Fricke has mastered the “show don’t tell” art of storytelling. Through his detailed stories he paints a realistic picture of the kind of adventure most of us will never have.
His descriptions of sailing for days through a storm, the disorienting doldrums, and mechanical problems are told without unnecessary over-dramatization and the result is a credible, very engrossing book that I highly recommend.