Sailing to the Far Horizon: The Restless Journey and Tragic Sinking of a Tall Ship

Rating:
Summary: Glad someone told this true story.
Review: I started this book with quite high expectations due to a very positive review I had read in my local sailing newspaper. Unfortunately, after reading the first several pages I almost put the book down. The language at the beginning was laborious and over-written, as if a non-writer was trying too hard to be a real writer. The fact that she states herself to have been an anti-establishment, non-shaving, environmentalist vegetarian when she had her Sofian adventure also made me leery to continue. I am no social conservative but I am too old to enjoy the writings of generally judgmental idealists. The only reason I kept reading was because I really wanted to hear about the Sofia sailing experience and her tragic sinking. Fortunately, the author's writing got a lot better and she turned out not to be as irritating as I had begun to fear. She wrote that this book is based quite a lot on letters she wrote home over the 3-plus years she was a regular Sofian crewmember. I think these letters provided the base for the majority of the book and so the majority of the book was written well and in a natural way that was also entertaining. Her character came through as solid, life-loving and very accepting of others, contrary to what I had first feared. Her observations about her crewmates and her travels were very interesting and had the right amount of humor. She was also very informative about the technicalities of sailing a tallship without getting too bogged down for non-sailing readers. She was very honest about the people she crewed with, about herself and about the sinking. In other words, this is an enjoyable travelog and the only one available about this unique ship and its last trip so I am grateful she made the great effort of writing a book. Maybe I am being sexist to think some men may be particularly discouraged by the first several pages of the book. But I urge everyone interested in sailing, cruising the oceans and just plain adventuring to stick it out if they are because this is a great story. I also enjoyed noting how modern people on an old-fashioned tallship act just like sailors under stress in centuries past. You still have near mutinies in the doldrums, shipboard power alliances and surprising international incidents. It's all different yet all the same which is reassuring for some reason. The only dissatisation I felt at the end was that this was indeed a true story and someone who seemed very special, trusting and kind took a seemingly uncharacteristic gamble and lost it all.