Aka

Rating:
Summary: A great tale by a remarkable man
Review: The late Tristan Jones was, in real life, a solo-sailor of small boats; one of those intrepid iconoclasts who look back at the rest of us from the brink with a sardonic grin as if asking how we can stand living in the safety of the herd.

Aka is Jones's novel of a small-boat sailor who agrees to enter a solo race around the world, replacing his friend who was killed in a highway accident. In a parallel story, Aka and his school of bottle-nose dolphin follow their customary itinerary in their annual migration to the calving ground at St. Paul's Rocks in the equatorial mid-Atlantic, which, according to Tristan Jones, is what is left of the lost continent of Atlantis, formerly populated by the dolphins' great friends, the Sea Kings.

Jones's hero, Conan, is a competent sailor and the details of life at sea on a small boat are absolutely authentic. Still, he manages to go overboard in mid-ocean and watch his boat nonchalantly sail off without him--

"...and he wept like a lone child lost in the dark, appalling reaches of infinity."

Tristan Jones has sailed the Atlantic eighteen times, nine times alone. Of his book, Ice, Sterling Hayden, who has himself washed more salt out of his sea-boot socks than most of us have sailed over, says, "What an epic book written by such a glorious man..."

For those of us who are drawn to the sea a story like this, written by a small boat sailor, is ambrosia, whether the author writes well or not. Tristan Jones writes very well. He was awarded first prize for the most distinguished book of 1979-80 by the Welsh Arts Society. he is also a member of the Explorer's Club and has sailed the highest and lowest latitudes on earth (he has sailed farther north than any other man.)

About Aka, Jones says: "If my tale can bring to people ashore a little of the joy, a little of the elation and wonder, and even a mite of the pain and suffering that voyagers and other mammals know at sea, then any carping of pierhead critics will be to this book as the squeaks of an un-oiled sheet-block are to a vessel safely at anchor in her own quiet haven."

Amen!

Joe Pierre
author of The Road to Damascus