Yachting-Live

From Publishers Weekly
A mid-life crisis and a latent sense of adventure caused book editor South to give up her life in publishing and take up residence on the Bossanova, a steel-hull trawler she bought before knowing how to captain it. The subtitle is largely hyperbolic-South’s time “at sea” was really a short, if perilous, sail from Florida to Sag Harbor, where the boat is now docked-but South makes an interesting memoir from her skillful observation of the sailing life: “Good seamanship isn’t the thoughtless instinct that salty dogs make it seem to be. It’s the good habit of always asking yourself the right questions in the right order and answering them thoughtfully.” Sometimes, she seems to have forgotten landlubbers might pick up her book; a sentences like, “One danger is that your bow will slow and your stern will get kicked out to the side, causing you to be beam-to,” is just one head-scratcher of many for the uninitiated. She can be clumsy when transitioning between sailing stories and other aspects of her life (”This sailing was happiness. For a time, happiness, too, had been Leslie.”), but her clear-eyed perspective and involving stories keep the narrative moving. This small but well-observed memoir is a worthwhile read for anyone stuck in the workaday rut.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
South, a successful book editor with stints at Ballantine and Houghton Mifflin, turns 40 with “a complicated concoction of ennui and despair,” an average midlife crisis. But her next step is far from ordinary: she abruptly walks away from her well-paying job, sells her recently acquired house in Pennsylvania and most of her belongings, and buys a used 40-foot, 30-ton trawler, planning to pilot it up the coast from Florida to Maine. South recounts the rigors of her nine-week course at the Chapman School of Seamanship, where her classmates include an aging executive, a pony-tailed trucker, an Alaskan fisherman, and a documentary filmmaker. She describes her sometimes harrowing, always challenging trip up the Atlantic coast, assisted by a fellow student and novice, a trip marked by sudden storms, tricky inlet currents, long, energy-sapping days, and incredibly gorgeous seascapes. Though not as daring as “climbing Everest or sailing solo around the world,” for South the voyage was the most “intensely meaningful” thing she had ever done, and well worth relinquishing luxuries and security. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

At forty, Mary South had a beautiful home, good friends, and a successful career in book publishing. But she couldn’t help feeling that she was missing something intangible but essential. So she decided to go looking for it . . . at sea. Six months later she had quit her job, sold the house, and was living aboard a forty-foot, thirty-ton steel trawler she rechristened Bossanova. Despite her total lack of experience, South set out on her maiden voyage—a fifteen-hundred-mile odyssey from Florida to Maine—with her one-man, two-dog crew. But what began as the fulfillment of an idle wish became a crash course in navigating the complicated byways of the self.

About the Author

Mary South was a founding editor of Riverhead Books. In the course of her career, she edited an eclectic list of award-winning and bestselling books, including The South Beach Diet. When she is not aboard the Bossanova, South lives in New York City, where she is now senior editor of Yachting magazine.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 10:21 am and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.