Sails Full and by

Rating:
Summary: Sailing Around the World the Fun Way
Review: Dom Degnon does an excellent job of captivating his reader by authoring a book covering a seven and a half year voyage around the world. The reading is not difficult to follow for even the non sailor. This book focuses more on the people and the locations visited, local stories, and relationships developed with other cultures than the specifics of how to accomplish his feat. Although, there is plenty of that thrown in for those of you hard core sailors.

Rating:
Summary: Good sailing and travel book
Review: Dom Degnon is a charming writer and accomplished world sailor. This book is the story of his seven-year circumnavigation in a 41' sailboat. Although Degnon and his various crews have their troubles with weather, officials, and other things, this was a happy and easy cruise. It should be encouraging to those contemplating a similar voyage. Things have gotten even easier now that finding where you are in the ocean is easy due to GPS. Even though I am a weekend sailor on Lake Ontario I found the book to be entertaining and educational.

I have one qualm that I cannot help voicing. The first sentence of the book goes as follows: "Listen! If you are reading this to find out the secret of successfully sailing around the world, here it is: Pack your bag and go." (Also see author statement on this page.) I almost put the book down in disgust after reading this sentence. The last thing we need out there is more poorly prepared and under-funded wanna-be world sailors. Degnon has a superbly well-prepared boat and the funds to allow him to cruise for seven years. How can the rest of us living on paychecks just pack our bags and go?

Degnon never explains how he was able to fund his adventure, but never seems short of cash in seven years. Unless you inherit a fortune or win the lottery I don't see how you can survive floating around for seven years without a regular job--and maintaining a world cruising boat ain't cheap. As a writer once said (I forget who, alas) "More boats have been destroyed by lack of funds then have ever been by storms and groundings." Herb Payson in his books has some interesting ideas about how to make money while cruising--but Degnon never touches on this issue. I suspect because he had some limitless source of funds that he doesn't want to reveal.