Rough and Tumble

Publisher: Seafarer Books, 2003 £ 9.95

Nowadays, if you have a boat the world really is your oyster.  Size doesn’t seem to matter.  Advice can easily be found, as can sponsorship for those with exceptional talent.  Even modest boats can have an engine, GPS, radio, and autohelm.  With the additional essentials of courage and determination, adventurous passages can be made quite safely.

Bob Roberts’ heart-warming tale is from a different era.  Written in the depression years of the 1930s and now reprinted, he relates how he and his friend Bully, whose only sailing experience was the odd weekend, set off in their 27-foot smack to go wherever their fancy, and the capricious winds, would take them.  Adversity was their daily diet.  Equipped with little more than a sextant, a chronometer that unsuspectedly lost a minute a day, and the boundless energy of youth, they always made their landfalls though the last few miles might take a week.  Their sea roving took them to Tangier, Tenerife, Georgetown, Port of Spain, Panama, and finally, to the uninhabited Cocos, where their beloved Thelma meets her tragic end.  They lose almost everything except their amazing zest for life, which eventually brings them regretfully home.  It’s a wonderful tale, simply told.

- DB

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