Rating: 
Summary: Why no map?
Review: I loved going along for the ride in this well written sailing travelogue full of wry good humor and human insight, but I really would have appreciated a map/chart. Maybe I'm supposed to carry around a mental image of the Pacific in my head? Anyway, another really good sailing memoir is Peter Nichols' Sea Change: Alone Across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat (also, maddeningly, without a map).
Rating: 
Summary: Surprise on the book jacket
Review: I loved this book, for many of the reasons listed in the reviews prior to mine (including most of the reasons people did not like the book, like the Travel Writing 101 part of it -- it was nice to hear a chorus of voices about traveling at sea). One complete surprise for both me and a friend who read it was that despite the fact that this book is an outward journey paralleled by an inner journey, one major facet of who this man is was revealed in the author's blurb, not in the book itself. After all the personal reflections and cogitations, this revelation was completely unexpected. I won't spoil for you what it was ... just encourage you to read the dustjacket after finishing the book. And I do indeed encourage you to read the book!
Rating:
Summary: My boyfriend made me read it - I LOVED IT
Review: I never thought I would read a book about sailing. Now, I have, but this book is about so much more. I expected a tale of storms, women, rum, and male-bonding. That is all here, but again, there is so much more. Dr. Patterson has lived an incredibly interesting life thus far. He tells of growing up in Small Town Canada, yearning to escape. Paying for Medical School by serving in the Army, yearning to escape. Becoming romantically involved with a very demanding and complicated French woman, yearning to escape. He tells of working in the Canadian Arctic, provides a very interesting Book List and, of course, sails across the Pacific. I imagine Kevin Patterson to be an extremely entertaining dinner guest. It was lovely to listen to him tell his story to me. And a master story-teller he is. His book jacket promises a novel. I can't wait!
Rating:
Summary: from the prairies to the seas
Review: I share with Patterson a common birthplace, and find it interesting that such dryland backgounds can inspire such wonderful prose about water. This is perhaps the best book about the therapuetic benefits that water and sailing can impart. I quoted Patterson's book frequently in my own recent overview book about outdoor recreation (including sailing) and water ethics - Deep Immersion: The Experience of Water (nominated for top environmental book of the year). Patterson well knows the magic that water can impart upon sentitive souls and would certainly agree with Thoreau's dreaming while sailing: "We were about to float over immeasurable zones of earth, bound on unimaginable adventures" (quoted in Profitably Soaked: Thoreau's Engagement With Water"; Green Frigate Books, 2003) i.e. the co-journey of sailing and exploring the outside world with that within.
Rating:
Summary: I go on a sailboat journey but don't discover myself...
Review: I'm a blue water arm chair sailor. I've read dozens of open water adventure books and this one is good but not great. So its worth a read for a number of reasons. One, if you are young, go on an adventure it will in general improve your outlook on life. Do it before you own a house, car, have a family of small children...
Don't go on it to get away from your troubles, they will be on the boat with you whether you pack them in your douffle or not. Kevin and Don both needed to grow up. One gets the feeling that Don did grow up but that Kevin hasn't yet. Oh well, in all likelyhood he will. But he has a ways to go, if the destructive relationships he has with the women in this book are any indication.
Now on the Sailing adventure part, which is why I was reading this book in the first place, its good. They have the usual storms, days just sitting, lots of general useful information like stay near the US coast until you are parallel with Hawaii, etc. Get a lighter weight boat hull than a fero cement (guck what a material!) Reef before you need to, do some shakedown cruises before you leave etc.
But the general message I got was, just go! Get the boat, find someone who knows how to sail, and leave! Don't obsess about the what if's. Bring friends, and dramaine and books and just go!
So its not J. Solcum's or Gypse Moth Circles the world, or Dove, but its in the same vein and I hope the sales of this book pay for some more adventures... Good luck Kevin, may the wind be at your back. May you find a woman to share your dreams with.
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: If you are looking for a travel guide to the South Pacific, this is not the book for you. If you have never sailed, it does give an inkling of the moodiness of the sea and its power. I found that frightening. It is a detailed account of a voyage of self-exploration that just as well could have taken place wherever two points of comfort are separated by a wide expanse of emptiness. It has its white-knuckle moments as well as marvelous descriptions of stress-free paradise. For anyone who has spent time alone and has been forced to probe one's soul, this will be a very good read.
Rating:
Summary: Profound
Review: If you have ever felt what you considered to be a loss of epic proportions, if you have ever sat in your easy chair on a Saturday night reading a book about escaping, if you have ever even once looked at a beautiful sunset over the sea and wished for a moment you had it in you to venture out into it - into the very heart of it, you will love this book. At its base, it's an account of something that most of us can relate to - relationships that turn out to be not exactly what we envisioned. Patterson takes his a step further than most and even though he has never sailed before he makes an adventurous voyage across the Pacific, seeking answers. Does he find his answers? Read the book. You will not be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Northern Exposure at sea
Review: If you were a Northern Exposure fan, you'll recognize Joel, now at sea. Patterson gives voice to the experience of being mundane: pathetic self absorption intermittantly mixed with honest self awareness. Horse latitudes and gales. A book worth living with for a while.
Rating: 
Summary: A Sailing Story- sort of.
Review: In this autobiographical book, Kevin Patterson, medical doctor, unsuccessful army officer, and failed lover, takes us and a series of increasingly reluctant crew members along on his sailing trip from Vancouver to Tahiti and back. By the last leg of the journey, Kevin, unsurprisingly, is sailing alone. This book is not a sailing manual, in fact it becomes apparent that even by the end of his journey Kevin is still unable to sail. It is not adventure writing. It is instead a meditation on travel and travel writers and Kevin himself. And if Patterson's thoughts are sometimes a little banal, his love affairs a little adolescent, his prose not always up to par with the authors he generously quotes, and even if the ending is a little abrupt, then this does not stop the book from being an interesting read. Patterson is witty and clever. However, it it's a funny travel book you want, look to Bill Bryson, for meditations on travel look to Chatwin, for damn good travel writing read Theroux, and if it's sailing you're after then you can't go wrong with Slocum and Montessier. If you've read them all and a few more then try this.
Rating:
Summary: A few good scenes
Review: Kevin Patterson did a good job of writing a narrative here. A travel essay in name only, this book really is a somewhat restrained "story of my life" discourse. Such stories are not easy to write in a way that is interesting to read, but Patterson manages to weave some downright gripping moments into the work. His statement regarding the end of his letters-fueled love affair in Paris is classic: "She asked me what the desert had been like. 'There were rattlesnakes there'. 'So you dropped one in an envelope'. I did not go to Paris again". Witty, succinct and very real. Unfortunately, this tactile writing does not appear often. Much of the story is a self-indulgent treatise on 'wow, I did something real nutty and I actually survived'. It is a decent read but not a book I would call memorable. Then again, maybe I am spoiled after reading about Shackleton and such. Patterson seems to try to take us into his inner circle sort of connection with various writers he reads on his sailboat. This is downright tedious. Oh, yes... he seems to take a few parting shots at Theroux as well. Not necessarily a big Theroux fan am I, but I must say I find his work far more memorable. Nice debut, Mr. Patterson, now let's get a little grittier.
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