A Speck on the Sea
by William Longyard
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Book Summary Information
Author: William LongyardEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-07-27
ISBN: 0071440291
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
Book Reviews of A Speck on the Sea
Book Review: Monohulls only, the shorter and sillier the better
Summary: 2 Stars
I got this book as a birthday present. Thanks, Honey! It was on my wish list. I'm a small boat sailor, it looked interesting.
So, I've read it, and thought about it a bit, and read parts again, and listed below is what I think. Before I tell you what I think, though, I should confess that I'm a multihull sailor. I like small multihulls, I built one, I sail it, little multis are my sort of boat. So, I'm not pretending to lack any bias here, I like what I like.
Mr. Longyard likes what he likes, too, and it's his book, so he gets to write about it. What he likes is small boats going a long way, "small" apparently meaning "short waterline", and apparently the shorter the better. I'm not sure about that. I'll come back to it.
So, the book starts with some history, has a good bit on the Rob Roy and McGregor, a good bit on Fenger and Yakaboo, and in general is very enjoyable when it deals with this sort of kayak like boat. I suppose my interests and his intersect there; the boats are monohulls, so he thinks they're ok, and they sail well, so I like them.
He also gives a short history of the West Wight Potter, which was nice, since I always wondered who thought that was a good idea. Apparently an early model was being delivered by sea, was unable to claw off a lee shore, was washed up on shore, then trucked around the difficult bit and finished the trip. This rather mixed achievement was enough to launch the model to success, somehow. The cheery tone taken in this section, which was when stripped of the superlatives about a boat that was well out of its comfort zone and ended wrecked on the beach, was a little surprising to me.
Later, in a section on the rather stupid "shortest "sailboat" to cross the Atlantic" record, the cheery and admiring tone continues. It's pretty clear that these little four and five foot waterline boats can't sail to windward to any effect, but apparently that's ok. At one point two of the four foot something 'boats' are described as "windbound" and unable to launch; unusual word, that. "Windbound". Sort of a passive voice way of saying they had a headwind and they couldn't sail to windward, which I guess gets to be a serious problem in these things.
Both of these sections bugged me. Treating dangerous, bad boats as cute or stubborn or something else complementary only encourages people to try them. And it's not like Mr. Longyard can't be critical, or even scathing; the section on California artist Bas Jan Ader, who was lost at sea in a Guppy 13, left me in little doubt what Mr. Longyard thought of that attempt, or of Mr. Ader's artwork. But apparently it's a good idea to try to cross the Atlantic in a four foot boat. Ok.
Multihulls are almost completely ignored. A Prindle sailing through the Caribbean gets about a paragraph, the British Newman brothers who sailed an outrigger called "The Spirit of Cleveland" across the Atlantic get a page; I'd love to know more about that boat. In both cases capsize was mentioned as a terrible menace, which perhaps shows some of the author's feelings on the subject. Francis Brenton's story is apparently too good to leave out. His boat (two canoes lashed together) is briefly admitted to being a catamaran, but is thereafter called a 'raft' or a 'dugout canoe'.
Wharram crossing oceans in a 23' cat for the first time in the '50s gets not a line. Nothing on Nicol, nothing on Piver, nothing on Brown. Nothing on that more recent guy with the nomad lifestyle thing and the Microship trimaran, nothing on that other guy who sailed a Tiki 21 all over the place and back down under. Nothing about any of the guys who have sailed the Fulmar tris all over, or Ida Little and Michael Walsh who sailed a beachcat all over the Caribbean, or any of the people who have tried or managed to sail a small cat across the Atlantic. This really does bug me; the book gives unstinting praise to oddball boats which are frankly bad sailors, and to dangerous record chasers in things that are barely sailboats at all, and ignores real sailboats making real passages. A 'sailboat' of under four feet LOA gets pages of fulsome praise, and Wharram sailing from England across oceans with two young girls as crew and starting a revolution is left out. What are we doing here?
Oh well. Aside from this rather glaring omission, it's an interesting book. The writing is brisk, there's enough on each story to set you off to find more if it's to your taste. I could wish for more pictures, but in the day of the internet I suppose you can all do what I do, and google up each boat as it appears in the book for a better look. I do wish I could find something, anything, on that dratted "Spirit of Cleveland".
There's a nice bibliography at the end of the book, and a section on "Other notable voyages". I enjoyed seeing Verlen Kruger make the cut, I camped out next to him at the first Watertribe challenge in Florida a few years before he passed away.
So, I don't intend to appear unkind about this. The book is for the most part fine in what it covers. I do wish we could stop paying attention to silly freakshows like 4' boats sailing across the Atlantic, it only encourages them, but I suppose if I want a book that says what I think I should write it myself. If you like boats you'll like this book, I think, and you'll certainly run into some stories you hadn't heard before.
Summary of A Speck on the Sea
"A gripping compendium of noteworthy small-boat voyages made over the centuries."
--John Harland, author of Seamanship in the Age of Sail
A Speck on the Sea chronicles the greatest ocean voyages attempted in the littlest boats. These feats include:
- Diego Mendez's voyage to rescue Columbus
- William Okeley's escape from slavery in a folding rowboat
- Ernest Shackleton's death-cheating journeys
- And more
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