Book Review

Charting the Course for Your Life and Work

Long Island Sound, Fishers Island Sound, Block Island Sound and Narragansett Bay have some of the very best waters in the country for kayak touring, stand up paddling and kayak fishing, and our friend David Fasulo has written the definitive guide to exploring the many islands and coastal preserves of this scenic area.

Captain Joshua Slocum (1844-1909) was the first person to singlehandedly sail around the globe. Setting sail from Boston, MA in 1895 on a rebuilt 37-foot oyster sloop Spray, he returned to Newport, RI a little more than three years later, having logged 46,000 miles.

The 85-year-old Forsyth and Fiona have circumnavigated the globe twice, sailed around North America via the Northwest Passage and the Panama Canal, and completed voyages to the Baltic, the Arctic and Antarctic and many other places. An Inexplicable Attraction is a very entertaining compilation of these adventures.

The culprits in this paradox are untold millions of zebra and quagga mussels. Native to the Caspian Sea in Asia, these shellfish are but two of legions of invasive species that were introduced to the Great Lakes by overseas freighters that entered these immense bodies of water through the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence Seaway.

With over 150 photos, 18 maps, 49 aerial diagrams, the QuickStart Circumnavigation Guide is packed with essential and practical information for making the voyage of a lifetime.

Those books do not cover emergency provisions, however, while The Survival Food Handbook is the essential guide to eating well when the refrigerator has broken down or you’ve run out of propane.

Donald Crowhurst, The London Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, and the Tragedy of Teignmouth Electron

Half of the world’s population lives along ocean coastlines where the tides ebb and flow every day, yet most of us do not fully understand the natural mechanisms that keep an incomprehensible volume of water in constant motion.

Written nearly a century ago, the story polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated expedition – the first trek across Antarctica from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the South Pole – is a classic tale of survival in brutal conditions.