Rating: 
Summary: Don't bother
Review: The nautica was OK, but the "naughty"-ca was not! This man is an openly unrepentant fornicator, adulterer, and blasphemer. I got so tired of his morose existential navel-gazes that after the first four chapters, I just couldn't continue. Yes, I pity him and do most sincerely hope that he someday finds the Answer.
Rating: 
Summary: A journey is trying to find the way!
Review: This book is a fine antidote to several myths: that all journeys are high-minded adventures and that all doctors are arrogant jerks. While Patterson's persona early in the book is that of hapless goofball, his insightful review of modern travel literature and his path of self-discovery are what make this a fine read. There is little here of the usual tired adventure travelogue and the book is better for that. Patterson is a funny, insightful writer. You needn't be a sailor to enjoy this one!
Rating: 
Summary: More internal voyage than sea voyage.
Review: This book is as much a memoir of a particularly confusing time in the author's life as well as a meditation on travel writing, particularly his bete noire, Bruce Chatwin, as it is a sea adventure. Truth be told, the author is more intelligent than likeable but it is because of the intelligence that he manages to bring all the disparate elements and themes of the book into a satisfying whole. If it is primarily a good sea yarn you are looking for, this is probably not where you want to go, but if the more philosophical side of travel writing appeals to you I would recommend this book highly. His musings on Chatwin are especially intriguing. As a bonus the ending is harrowing and cathartic, leading to his concluding theme (that will amuse all us armchair travel readers): Stay Home--the water is only in between where you really live your life.
Rating:
Summary: More Sailing, Less Reading
Review: This book was interesting in that it proved that even someone with no sailing knowledge can survive bluewater sailing. Perhaps if he hadn't read so many books on his journey he might have learned how to sail. Instead he pretty much drifted from port to port doing about 2-3 knots. In the book he mostly writes about the books he reads, which is fine if he were reviewing books. I got bored reading about all the books he read and longed to hear more about the sailing experiences. All of the experiences he has are lost within' all of his book reviews. When he does talk about the sailing you realize that he has no business sailing around the Pacific. I the end I think he realizes this to, that is probably way he goes back to Canada and ties his boat to the dock where I'm sure it will remain until someone shows him what he's doing.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty cool
Review: This book was pretty cool. It made me wanna buy a boat. I am deathly afraid of water and sharks and starfish, but I think I could forget about all that now. Now the call of the ocean rings in my eardrum. Even if I get eaten by some kind sea creature, I would be happy, because this book made me want to get into that dangerous and polluted water to experience what the sea had to offer me. If all I got was death, I'd still be happy, cuz this is a good book.
Rating: 
Summary: A Journey At Sea
Review: Though I would think twice about joining Kevin Patterson on his journey at sea, I would not hesitate to read this book. Kevin Patterson has a way of taking you along anyway. Through wild weather and days and days in the doldrums, subsisting on noodles and frozen pie, you gain a pretty real sense of life at sea. There are mishaps and no apparent way of bathing, but at the same time you get to visit some rare places: Penrhyn Atoll, Palmyra, Tahiti. You also get to read over Kevin's shoulder and drink brandy long into the night in the dimly lit cabin and discuss writers you otherwise may not have read: Chatwin, Theroux and many other accounts of sea adventure. Then you wake in the morning, a little fuzzy and bleary-eyed only to discover the main sail has torn and wrapped itself around the mast. But wait. You are not at sea at all. You are on the sofa by the fire, reading a great book. He's the one who has to deal with the sail and eat cold curry noodles for breakfast. What a relief. What an incredible book.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: Twenty-nine year old Patterson, fleeing a failed love affair and the Manitoba winter, buys a 37-foot sail boat in Vancouver and sails to Tahiti and back. Patterson has no sailing experience, but he attracts a companion, Don Lang, who does. They brave storms and boredom. They even survive a brief stay in Hawaii.Not surprisingly, the voyage gives Patterson a chance to think. The results, included here, make this more than just a travel book. He discusses the reasons why men roam and travel writing as a genre. Among the author's inspirations are Bruce Chatwin, Wilfred Thesiger, and Eric Newby. For a modern-day Canadian (or American) to have heard of these classic travel writers, let alone discuss them with any measure of authority, is an achievement. I'm impressed. For that alone I have to give this a high rating. The author concludes that while men may travel to escape, it is no solution to their problems. It is better to stay at home and deal with them. Travel as escapism solves nothing: you just bring your troubles with you. Patterson's critique of Chatwin is spot-on. For all their enthusiasm for nomadism, Chatwin and the others fell far short of the ideal. They were never true nomads. Chatwin always had his American wife ensconced in an English cottage to come home to. And Thesiger, despite living for years in Arabia and Iraq, relied on a considerable annual private income and his mother's flat in London. They travelled only because they could afford to: home was always there for them. And that, I think, is one of the points of this book. It is settlement -- home -- that first encouraged the growth of civilisation, which in turn has allowed men to think, to travel, and to write at leisure. And of course without that we would not have such fine books as this one. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: What a Bore!
Review: What a self-indulgent book: 1. Tedious quotations from dozens of other travel authors 2. tedious paragraphs about his supplies 3. cliched insights into "the human psyche" 4. The author is the least sympathetic "character" in his book but we have to hear his thoughts for 300 pages. Why did his girlfriends or his sailing partner put up with him? This book received many good reviews but I think all those "professional" critics were taken with the idea of the story "Melancholy Doctor Has Heart Broken And Goes To Sea But Doesn't Know How To Sail!" not the book itself.
Rating:
Summary: What a tale!
Review: What a tale! Read it--if you feel the need to escape.
If not, you wouldn't understand it anyway.
Rating:
Summary: What a tale!
Review: What a tale! Read it--if you feel the need to escape.
If not, you wouldn't understand it anyway.
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