by Robin Lee Graham
Fine adventure story from the sixties about a young man who determined to circumnavigate the world in his 24-foot sailboat. He was only sixteen when he set out on his solo journey. Well, not exactly solo. He had the company of a variety of ship\’s cats throughout the trip, met and fell in love with a girl, later married her and she accompanied him on the sailboat for different legs of the journey. She also spent a lot of time jumping from place to place around the world to meet him at different ports. In fact, a large part of the book is their love story. There are lots of mishaps, storms, explorations in foreign places and other adventures. And loneliness. He talks a lot about feeling alone on the high seas in that boat with perhaps just a cat or two for company. The journey ended up taking Robin five years, and he didn\’t exactly make it all the way- if I remember correctly, he set out from Hawaii and finished up in California… But still it\’s an incredible (true) story one that I enjoyed much. Especially the survivalist bits and about how he did things \”the hard way\” because there was no other way back then! He didn\’t have GPS or even a two-way radio but navigated using the stars and various time-honored instruments. It\’s a book I\’d like to revisit someday and I\’m rather surprised my library system doesn\’t have a single copy!
The book came out after the National Geographic serialized his adventures. I\’d like to see those articles, I can\’t recall now if I\’ve read them or not (my parents had a large collection of National Geographics I used to go through as a kid… but more looking for pictures of animals than reading stuff!) Robin\’s story has also been made into a film- has anyone seen that? what did you think?
Rating: 3/5 …….. 199 pages, 1972
a few more opinions:
Musings
Craftsman Character
Hans is Great