The editor of
Yachting
magazine has put together a big, fill-canvas collection of narratives, mostly from his own fifty years of sailing experiences. A superb writer and teller of sea tales, Mr. Robinson muses wonderfully on events as varied as the early humiliations of a young boy with more passion for the sea than experience at handling it to the peculiar problems of helping to operate Operation Sail.
Along the way are hurricanes in the Atlantic, typhoons and earthquakes in the Pacific and the Orient, wild times on Navy ships and on Navy liberty ashore, as well as rescues at sea—including the famous sinking of the
Mary E
in the 1976 Miami-Nassau race. There are also evocative stories of idyllic cruises and places, like Nantucket, Scandinavia, Greece, and the coasts of the United States.
Robinson's stories are peopled with a warm, amusing, and frequently dramatic cast of characters, including yachts themselves—ranging from sailing skiffs to large ocean-racing machines, and most things in between—old and new, large and small, in storm and calm. His has been a rich sailing life and his stories tell of it with fascination and inescapable entertainment.