cover image Sailing the Pacific

Sailing the Pacific

Miles Hordern. St. Martin's Press, $24.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-312-31081-3

It isn't easy to be an adventurer these days, when most of the globe has been explored to death. But British-born sailor Hordern makes a fascinating go of it in this jaunty reminiscence. He traveled solo from New Zealand to Chile and back again in a 28-foot boat, over 18 months in the late 1990s. He narrates a gripping tale of coping with huge storms, coming face-to-face with monster U.S. warships and dealing with the loneliness of being out on the water for weeks at a time, with nothing but the BBC World Service to keep him company. Hordern's passion for sailing is obvious, and he intersperses his own stories with those of Columbus, Magellan and other professional adventurers of the past. In fact, the author keeps bumping into history along the way, such as the islands that inspired Robinson Crusoe and the South Pacific haunts where Paul Gauguin escaped to. Although it lacks the life-or-death ferocity of some recent adventure tales, Hordern's book charts a determined course of its own, describing in detail the strange daily business of a life at sea. Maps, photos.