Occupation Circumnavigator: Sailing around the World

Price: £14.99

This fairly hefty tome - 277 A4 pages – describes the ten year circumnavigation by a Swedish ex-lawyer. The “hook” is that he bought a boat – a 50 ft. Beneteau Oceanis – so that he could take “paying crew”, some for quite considerable periods.

The first chapters concern various aspects of the voyage- its cost ($650,000), a bit on planning etc. – and through the Panama into the Pacific. The central section then describes his lengthy sojourn through the South Pacific islands, before eventually going down the coast of East Africa and back, via the Caribbean to Falmouth and thence back to Stockholm. While he inevitably has accidents and narrow escapes, this is the clearly the expanded log/ re-edited newspaper/ journal articles of a competent sailor. Each group of islands that he visits is given a brief historical, geographical and yachtie-relevant write-up, which adds interest. The tone is somewhat flat, factual, National Geographic, probably not helped by being in translation.

Hassler finished the Swedish version of this book in 1999, and the intervening years date it. While complaining how tourism is damaging the Pacific islands, he seems to have little awareness of the contradiction of his visit there in a 50 foot yacht with its complex maintenance needs, its 1200 mile range under motor, his desire to seek out “Newsweek” or “Times” and video films while in the Pacific; his customers’ ( “paying crew”) carbon footprints as they flew out from America or Sweden.

At the end of his ten years, Hassler had paid off the bank loan on his boat so that it was now his. The price was taking on customers and being in the right place to pick them and drop them off, and have these strangers and their demands on his boat most of the time. It seems a high price to pay and has constricted what he could and couldn’t do. However, if you want to think about exploring the South Pacific, or the concept of “paying crew”, this book may interest you. - Mike Bender