Survive the Savage Sea (Sailing Classics)

Review by Joel
This was a book given to me by Jim’s brother. I thought it was a joke at first. You know some leisurely boat read….while on the boat I was thinking more about sinking and what would I grab before going down. That's the big thing even out here among pampered boaters. (Puget Sound is all "protected" water, where you can expect no sea swells.) Everyone always forgets that when it happens, it happens really fast. Usually all there is time for is to get the dinghy untied and get on it. The land is only a few hundred yards away, but it is COLD water so you need to do it quick. This book will get you thinking and that's a good thing. It was published way back in 1973, almost before time itself.

Dougal is a sailing man, and he decided that before the kids were too old they would go on an around the world journey that would be the adventure of a lifetime. There was Gilligan…the skipper too… the millionaire…and his wife….a movie star ….the professor and Mary Ann…. Wait a minute….there was Dougal and his wife Lynn, son Douglas, daughter Anne, and the twins Neil and Sandy. Before they got to the Panama Canal, they had dropped off daughter Ann and picked up Robin, a young Welsh man who wanted to go to New Zealand. The book gives a bit more back story. Then they are off to the Galapagos Islands, where they encounter a ghost and they have to solve a mystery before…wait a minute…. Not more than a day passes on leaving the westernmost island and the boat is attacked by killer whales. Looking back on it, he thought the boat was mistaken for a female whale. The boat sank in less than a few minutes. They only had time to throw a life boat overboard, cut loose the dinghy and get whatever supplies they could before the boat sank.

There are several things to note about this book. First it is a first hand account of a family’s 38 day ordeal of survival in the South Pacific ocean. Also, Dougal, the author, is extremely honest about his take on the story. He lets it be known when he’s done something he thinks is stupid, and when family relations start breaking down he doesn’t pull away from it. Third he is almost detailed to a fault. All the items they find they have taken from the sinking boat are inventoried and each item becomes useful.

I think he meant this book not as a testament to what man can do but more of a survival manual for anyone planning this sort of trip. He makes it plain that the survival guide packed in with the inflatable raft was laughable at best, and discouraging to morale at worst.

I would recommend this book, even if you plan on sailing the sea.

Joel.