Pundits say Lin and Larry Pardey’s very first book, Cruising in Seraffyn, launched 50,000 dreams and still inspires potential voyagers. In the years since this best-selling nautical narrative and its four sequels appeared, the Pardeys went on to write several useful and well received how-to books including Storm Tactics Handbook. But with encouragement from many of her earlier readers, Lin has finally returned to her roots with the story which continues sailing adventures right where she left off in the award winning, Bull Canyon – A Boatbuilder, a Writer and Other Wildlife.
Taleisin’s Tales – Sailing towards the Southern Cross includes stories from paradise and hard-won lessons in seamanship, as Lin reflects back to the first miles she and Larry sailed on their second cruising boat – one they built from trees they cut themselves then shaped into a small but very able blue water vessel. The story takes the reader from launching and sea trials through those initial cautious 1000 coastal miles between California and the Sea of Cortez, discussing everything from sail handling to dinghy racing to the relative luxuries of bicycles and a custom-built sitztub to encounters, both pleasant and surprising, with sailors and locals along the Baja peninsula. Then it launches the reader across the Pacific on Taleisin’s first offshore leg to French Polynesia, through the Cook Islands and Tonga, then on to New Zealand. In the style readers have come to expect from Lin, this book relates stories sometimes harrowing, sometimes cautionary, sometimes hilarious – and often heart-warming, especially when it comes to encounters with the people of the South Pacific who become family. If there is a lesson to be gained from reading Taleisin’s Tales, it’s that slowing the pace and taking each day as it comes brings unexpected moments of clarity and joy. And that sailing across an ocean on a small boat is not easy but, with the right partner and attitude, can be beautifully rewarding.
Taleisin’s Tales will be officially launched at the2016 US Sailboat Show, Annapolis this autumn.
Taleisin’s Tales, Sailing towards the Southern Cross – 200 pages, paperback, $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-929214-11-2
