Following Seas, Sailing the Globe, Sounding a Life

Customer Reviews

She quotes from the logs of Columbus and Cook, in whose wake she is supposed to follow - Beth Leonard, however, is a different kind of sailor. She is not an adventurer, she is a tourist. There's nothing wrong with being a tourist, but there is something inherently offensive about not recognizing it.

She fails to point out, for example, that it is her career, and her companion's, that have allowed her the freedom and capital to purchase and outfit a boat. She talks about saving money to contribute to the boat fund by living on an expense account, but never makes the connection that only by being a consultant could she afford to cut her ties to the world. She has sailed a contemporary version of the grand tour, and is painting it like a long, strange trip. Yet she would be an evangelist to those who don't have the resources of an ex-consultant, to those for whom the choice is not so simple.

What did this book set out to accomplish? They didn't sail anywhere particularly exotic, at least by the standards of other, better, sailing books, nor did they do it in a particularly novel way. "Following Seas," from its descriptions of the Azores and explanations of sailing terms, is clearly written for an audience unfamiliar with world cruising literature.

Anyone with no experience, however, would be much better advised to read any number of better works (for example anything by Lynn and Larry Pardey), that concentrate less on the self (this is how I changed) and more on the craft and the world around it (this is how you do it, this is what I found).

Leonard's prose is tortured and overwrought; she cannot get through a sentence without three modifiers or images, and I cannot get through a paragraph without grunting in annoyance. I got this book as a gift, and I still feel cheated.

Book Index