Dan Scheffler's Blog, page 2

Man overboard in the Mentawais!

When I heard that Brett Archibald had fallen over board in the middle of the night off the coast of Sumatra in Indonesia and that he had already been missing for more than a day, I thought that my fellow countryman was a goner for sure.

The chances of being found when you are adrift at sea are small, even when your shipmates are aware that you have gone over board and are actively searching the immediate area where the accident happened.  Spotting a bobbing head amongst the waves during the daytime in the vastness of the ocean is extremely unlikely. At night this will be impossible.

When I sailed in the same area some years ago, one of the first things our captain taught us about life at sea was that if anybody ever fell overboard, the first person who saw the incident should never take their eyes off the victim. Lose sight of him and you might never see him again. Even if people do keep track of the swimmer, turning a large vessel around takes time and getting back to the original spot where it happened is very difficult without a GPS mark. Specific techniques have been developed for this situation, but it remains a very dicey prospect. As I mentioned in my book about my own surfing adventure in the Mentawais, many captains never even attempted a rescue in the bygone days of sailing ships. Turning a large ship around with only the wind to propel you is a huge task and by the time you managed it, the ship would have drifted far away from its original position. Sailors often purposely never learned to swim in those days, so that they would die a quick death if they ever fell from the rigging or slipped on deck.

Archibald was also thinking along these lines. The Cape Times reported that the fifty year old man tried to swallow water in order to drown himself when he realised that he had been abandoned, but his sense of self-preservation would not let him go through with it. His ship mates only realised that he was gone several hours after he had fallen over board and he was left treading water with nothing to cling to for buoyancy in the darkness and in very rough seas. Imagine passing out on deck from seasickness and waking up in the water as your ship sails away from you. This must be everybody who goes to sea’s worst nightmare.

Against all odds, the South African surfer survived.

That he managed to cope with this kind of psychological trauma in addition to the extreme physical strain he was subjected to says a lot about him as a person. He sounds like the kind of guy you want to have next to you when an earthquake or a tsunami hits.

Eventually Archibald was picked up after 28 hours in the water, dehydrated, sunburnt and with holes in his face from being pecked by seagulls. After all of this, he now says that he wants to carry on with his surfing holiday. To pass up on the waves this place has would be just too hard to bear. Now, that’s a true surfer!

How to get to Padang Padang from Denpassar airport

This piece is aimed at surfers who have been to Bali, but the casual tourist might like it too.

Fight your way out of the terminal past the porters, touts and taxi drivers. Don’t give them a second glance; they will latch onto you faster than a Sumatran leech and suck you dry before you’ve even made it to the ATM. Don’t worry too much about trampling the odd package tourist, just get out of that terminal and things will improve rapidly.

Once you’ve drawn enough cash, drag your board bag out of the parking area, while still ignoring the clamouring taxi drivers. Continue walking along the road until your bags start weighing you down. The further you walk, the cheaper the fare will be when you eventually hail a cab. Keep going, you’re a sportsman after all!

When the time is right, nod at one of the hovering taxis and it will screech to a halt. Now you have to negotiate a price to the Bukit. Remember, taxi drivers are not like ordinary, friendly Balinese citizens, these rapacious parasites will sell their mothers as sex slaves at the right price. Don’t let them take all your hard earned cash.

Be firm, try to smile, but don’t bare your teeth, you don’t want to piss your driver off. Remember, you’ve just completed a twenty-plus hour plane ride, with stopovers in some pretty unholy places; you probably look like hell. Your eyes are blood-shot, your hair is matted from sleeping with your head wedged between seats and your face is hanging down to your knees from the jet lag. You smell like lemongrass hand towels mixed with bottled-up farts and old sweat and your breath reeks of chicken-or-beef and stale beer.

Take it from me, young man, your appearance will make people nervous. But this can be to your advantage; it may give you the upper hand when it comes to negotiating the fare with the taxi driver, although only up to a point. Remember what your mother told you: too much of a good thing can be dangerous. So don’t overdo it. Try not to foam at the mouth, keep your hands in your pockets and don’t lean in too close. Who knows what a nervous taxi driver will do? You don’t want him to speed off with your surfboards hanging halfway out the passenger door. Stay calm, keep your cool and get the good price.

Now climb in behind him (remember, the surfboards are lying on the front seat that’s been folded down), fasten your seatbelt (forget the plane and its constant seatbelt warnings, you definitely want to buckle up here), grip the seat in front of you firmly with both hands, choose your deity (there are thousands in Bali, this is a Hindu island) and pray. Pray long and hard and be sincere. It’s never a good idea to get on the wrong side of a god like Ganesh, who has the head of an elephant, four arms and carries a broken-off tusk as a dagger.

Under no circumstances should you get involved in a discussion with the driver about how he is handling his vehicle on the road. Don’t do it! Just concentrate on not soiling your seat or vomiting down the back of his neck. This will only make him turn around to see what you are getting up to while still screeching headlong into the traffic on the wrong side of the road. Luckily for you, Balinese road users are very forgiving. They always let the idiot that has overtaken on the blind rise back into the lane just before that oncoming truck mows him down. He will really have to behave like an arse to enrage them. So relax. The out of body/ near-death experience technique of hovering just above the seat and observing events in a detached and far-off kind of way always works for me.

Keep an eye on the landmarks, though. You’ll be coming back to Kuta soon enough, so you want to know the way. Like flies to flypaper, surfers are drawn to Kuta. Even though it will cost you entire surf sessions and countless barrels, you will be pulled towards Kuta like a lemming to a cliff. Every few days the fleshpots of Bali’s deepest tourist trap with all its Australian girls, Bintangs and Benchongs will lure you in. You will not be able to resist for very long. And when you wake up the next morning in that god-awful cheap room you got for the night, hung over or not, alone or not, you will regret the whole experience and swear to yourself never again. But before long you’ll be back.

However, I digress. Keep an eye out for the landmarks. Don’t be alarmed when the driver skips the first traffic light, they all do. Just make sure he turns right. If he carries on straight, he’s taking the long way round. At the T-junction opposite Wank Internet Cafe he should turn left. Carry on past the signs for “knalpot” (silencer workshops). When you get to the Ladies Room Boutique, you’ve gone too far. The Kak Wok Warung on your right might look interesting, but try to resist the urge to stop and see what is in the wok. You want to reach your destination as soon as possible. Stay focused.

Don’t panic if you see lots of tanker trucks on the road with “semen” written on their sides. Bali does not suffer from an infertility crisis and you won’t be abducted to a local stud farm and be forced to donate yours every six hours by big hairy guys holding up tattered copies of Hustler to help you along. Semen means cement in Indonesian and there is a lot of construction happening on the Bukit. The developers are trying their best to turn the place into another Costa Del Sol, so hurry along to see it before you’re too late.

By this time you’ve passed the Jimbaran turnoff. You want to come here one evening to feast on the best seafood in Southern Bali. The night market is something to behold, but leave the Chinese girls alone. They are pretty and very petite, but their relatives are always close. Have you heard of the Triads? They are not to be messed with at any cost. Knee caps are good to have. Hold on to yours.

Soon the turnoff to Balangan will be on your right. The chilled out beach and mellow waves are a welcome escape for those who got too cocky at one of the shallower reefs and then paid for it in blood, or for those who just want to get away from the ravening crowd at Uluwatu for a while.

When you see the signs for “Full Blooded Aussie Burgers and Cold Piss”, you know you’ve almost arrived. This is the favourite hangout for our cousins from the land of Bruce and Sheila, so brush up on your Aussie rules football. Try not to mention the rugby, you want to make friends with them, remember. As much as you might like to deny it, us South Africans are pretty much just like the boys from down under, so just get on with them. Anyway, you’re the only Saffa in a sea of Oz.

Now Padang Padang, Bali’s own Pipeline, is approaching fast and beyond it, the legendary Uluwatu. Can you smell it yet? The scent of clove cigarettes and incense from roadside shrines mingle with the sea air, a prelude to the offerings that happen daily at the reef-temples of the Bukit. Thousands of surfers come to worship there every year, to sacrifice themselves to the demons and gods of the deep. Like faithful sheep they wait in the line-ups for a chance to take off on a big one, to be flayed on the reef and to be dragged along the coral, so that they might be given a chance of getting that once-in-a-lifetime barrel, if the gods so wish.

When you get to the bridge where a little stream runs into the sea, climb out of your taxi, grab hold of the railing and congratulate yourself. You’ve made it! Now look towards the ocean. This is what you have come for: translucent water framed by chalky-white cliffs and emerald green foliage, white coral beaches full of tanned bodies, bright bikinis and low slung board shorts. And the waves! Perfect tubes, ruler-like walls, line after line stretching from Padang Padang through Impossibles, all the way to Bingin. Some of the best waves you’ll ever surf. Waves that you will remember for the rest of your life. And waves that will make you eat your pride raw.

Can you see it yet? Can you smell it? Can you feel it? This is the Bukit. Welcome to Padang Padang.

Drinks Like a Sand Dune

He drinks like a sand dune.

In the early evening, when we arrive in the restaurant after our surf session he is already at the bar, soaking up glass after glass of booze. By the time we retire to the little thatch huts between the trees for the night, he is still there, leaning heavily on the counter in front of him, eyeing us blearily.

When we get back in the morning following the first surf of the day, we find him in the same place, knocking back tooth-loosening cups of coffee just to get straight before he heads off to bed. Caffeine hardly touches him; he’s done so many hard drugs, his body is indifferent to most stimulants. And it shows in every line on his face. He is about forty-five, but he looks seventy.

He used to be a very good surfer; the best guy in the water on almost any given day, no matter where he surfed. He could have been a real contender on the world tour during the eighties and nineties, but he never quite got there. He did well in some contests, but failed in too many other events on the tour. He said that he was a free-surfer at heart, that the desire to win was not strong enough in him. “Winning isn’t everything.” But lets be honest, he was lazy. He lacked the drive and the work ethic to beat the rest of the field, especially when the waves were poor. So he faded back into obscurity after a few years of notoriety and fame. The pretty girls were no longer that interested and neither were the sponsors. He gradually retreated to the comfort and consolation that booze and drugs offered and from that point on his life unraveled quickly. On a good night, when his head is clear he’ll tell you stories about it all, cautionary tales.

Tonight he is in a pensive mood, thinking back on the years when he stayed under those palm trees along the point, long before the hotel had been built here.

“Those were the days, mate.” He looks out towards the point break where translucent green waves break along a row of black rocks and yellow sand. There is a wistful expression in his eyes and for a second or two they light up with the memories of those years when he was truly alive.

“We used to sleep in hammocks that we strung up between the trees and when it rained we all had to huddle under the tarp that we used as a cooking shelter. There were never more than ten of us here and not everyone surfed. Six guys in the water were considered a crowd.”

Then his countenance changes again and he retreats back into that familiar, negative mindset.

“Now look at it: fifty clueless kooks on a good day. And you wonder why I no longer surf!”

But we both know he can’t surf because his body has packed up. The drugs have shriveled his nerve endings and fried his neurons. His muscles have atrophied, his lungs can no longer expand and his heart only flutters. The hotel has become his home now; the owner puts him up for free. (His bar tab makes up for the missed rent.) Apparently the two of them go way back, to the times when they used to camp under the palms. His friend had built the hotel and things progressed from there. But now they are acquaintances only. The friendship has faded, like all his other relationships. Nobody can put up with the mood swings, the anger and the unpredictability. One ex-girlfriend still sends money, a kind of alimony born out of pity and guilt and he hates her for it.

I try to lighten the conversation by asking him about the surf. Will there be waves tomorrow? But he no longer knows the ocean. He has forgotten the rhythms and the cycles of nature. For him the world is constant and predictable: tomorrow he will wake up in a haze and when he eventually makes it out of his room, he will find his way to the bar, where he will drink and watch as the tourists and the surfers come and go. A good looking girl might attract his attention, but he won’t really be interested, he has no chance of catching her eye and anyway, his body has long ago lost any impetus to respond to the opposite sex. He will drink until dawn and then he will go to bed.

The next day will be the same. He will continue to drink like a sand dune.

Eating out in Sumatra

It was breakfast time and I was sticking to the principle of trying to experience the local culture as realistically as possible.

Padang is one of Sumatra’s largest cities and it is the jump-off point for most surfers who travel to that magical chain of islands nearby called the Mentawais. I was killing time in the port, waiting to board a ship.

Across the street was a little eatery filled with old Indonesian men. This was a no-frills establishment catering for the locals and there was no English on the menus. The recently opened McDonalds and KFC joints were popular with many visiting surfers, but I avoided them. Why even bother to leave home if you’re only going to eat American fast food, sleep in rooms decorated with Western posters and never mix with the locals? So I walked into the warung with my phrasebook handy and greeted the owner / waiter in Bahasa Indonesia. Although greeting people in their own language (or, in this case, a language that is at least local to Indonesia) is great for breaking the ice and creating goodwill, the trouble is, of course, that people then assume that you can actually speak the language. The owner returned my greeting enthusiastically and then carried on talking, no doubt enquiring about my stay in Padang, my health, my family and so forth. All I could do was to look back at him blankly and shrug my shoulders apologetically. I sat down at a plastic table, grabbed a menu and stared at it for a while. And then I stared at it some more. It was impossible to make any sense of it at all. At one stage I wondered whether I was holding the thing the right way up! There were some basic Indonesian phrases that I knew and I could ask for the prices of items in a shop, but deciphering a local menu not meant for tourists was not one of my strengths. How I wished for one of those Chinese menus with pictures of the dishes! All the patrons at the warung watched me with great interest, but it was clear that none of them spoke a word of English. The owner waited expectantly. To buy time, I tried another Indonesian phrase that by that time I knew well and used often – “I don’t speak Indonesian very well”. My audience found this most amusing and had a good laugh. With a sheepish grin, I hid behind my menu and tried to think of something to order.

I decided that a boiled egg would be a fairly safe and easy option to explain. I proceeded to act out putting a pot of water on a stove and boiling it, with an egg inside. My audience loved the part where I imitated the chicken laying an egg and they asked for an encore. After much waving of arms and many puzzled facial expressions from the warung owner and all the curious customers, we came to an understanding. I also ordered a cup of tea because that was something I can do with confidence. While I was waiting for my food, I kept myself busy by paging through my phrasebook. As is often the case, some of the other customers came to sit with me and started reading the phrases in the book. They found it hilarious! Soon everyone was taking a turn to read a sentence out loud, to uproarious laughter and applause. I still don’t know whether it was the novelty of reading a foreigner’s book or the actual meaning of the phrases that was so funny. It did make me wonder about what I was really saying to people when I used the book!

Quite soon, my food arrived. I waited to see what the kitchen had produced with some trepidation and the result was rather interesting. With a flourish my host put down a cup of tea with a raw egg floating inside it. I was a little taken aback, to say the least. But still, it could have been curry balls, or worse, and I didn’t want to disappoint my host. So I stirred my egg into the tea and had a taste. It wasn’t bad at all. Although I have never thought of making this kind of breakfast for myself since then, it is actually quite a practical, nutritious and time saving meal. Later on I noticed that it was quite common in Sumatra to have a raw egg in coffee instead of adding milk.

I finished my tea and left the warung, to the disappointment of the regulars. That evening they would have a story to tell the wife!

The Hungry Reef

We were sailing through the Mentawais on the Island Explorer, an ironwood ketch on it’s maiden voyage through that magical Indonesian archipelago that hangs from the equator.

On board was a bunch of surfers in search of adventure, exhilaration and of course, waves. Hardly any of us had any experience of navigation, hoisting sails or of steering a ship, but we were young, full of energy and we were (over) confident. We had already made it through a storm or two, those concentrated little cyclones known amongst the old hands as Sumatran Black Eyes and we thought that we knew what we were doing. After two weeks on the Selat Mentawai we had fallen into an easy rhythm of surfing, snorkelling and island hopping, using the ship as our mobile home. We ate what we could catch or spear in the sea, complemented by what vegetables we could buy from the local people and sometimes some coconuts and bananas that we picked on some of the islets.

It was late in the afternoon when we arrived at one of the most beautiful bays a surfer could imagine: The Playgrounds. With half a dozen breaks to choose from and the most incredible white sandy beaches you can imagine, we were in heaven. It was April 2000 and there were no land camps or resorts around. And no other yachts and no local settlements that we were aware of. The charter season had yet to start and we had the whole place to ourselves. Everything seemed so ideal. This was easy.

After downing some lukewarm Bintangs that evening, I went to sleep serenely, secure in the knowledge that tomorrow there would be waves.

That night at Playgrounds we had another tropical downpour. From my bunk I listened to the rain pounding on the deck and I drifted in and out of sleep until at some stage I became aware of a different sound overhead. Together with the rain, there was the sound of running feet, then shouting. I got up to see what was happening and when I came on deck, it was chaos. Amidst the pouring rain and the wind, everyone was running around, pulling on ropes, hauling the anchor and in the wheelhouse Gavin was starting up the engine. The little motorboat that was used to ferry passengers and equipment to and from the ship, called the tender, was submerged alongside the Explorer. It had been moored next to the ship right where the run-off water from the deck went into the sea and so it had quickly been filled with rainwater and had sunk. At the same time the wind had swung around, blowing us in the direction of a shallow reef. By the time the guy on watch had realised what was going on, we were very close to the reef, approaching it fast. To make matters worse, the submerged tender was acting as a sea anchor, preventing us from manoeuvring effectively. At the helm, Gavin was trying to put some distance between the ship and the shallows, but to no avail. He kept dead quiet, his features rigid, his face drained of all colour, wet with rain and perspiration. The alarm on the depth sounder was beeping away, the decreasing depth flashing on the screen: 8m, 6m, 4m … I peered through the rain into the darkness in the direction that we were drifting, but there was nothing to see, the danger was lying under the water. In my mind I saw the jagged edges of the reef reaching out for the hull of our ship – the huge jaws of an eagerly waiting sea monster. The beeping of the depth sounder now turned into a continuous screech, like a heart monitor on a dying patient. At that moment Gavin revved the engine as high as it would go and with an almighty roar the Island Explorer surged away from the reef, pulling the tender out of the water like a water skier behind a ski-boat. You could probably have heard us cheering all the way to Padang as the ship steered for deeper water. Gerhard stepped back from the side wide-eyed. Everybody stood around dumbfounded; the whole episode had lasted only a few minutes. Slowly we sat down in the rain, talking in low voices, marvelling at our narrow escape. This had been close, far too close. Gavin didn’t stop the engine. He just kept going way out to sea, away from danger, away from any reefs!

The next morning we woke up to clear skies and calm, clear water in a different bay. The previous night’s happenings felt distant, like a bad dream, until we looked into Gerhard and Gavin’s faces and saw the dark rings under their eyes.

Elephant Bus

“You take elephant bus.”

“What? Elephant bus?”

I’m trying to leave this godforsaken little hamlet in the middle of the rainforest, the only place that could remotely pass for a settlement in these parts and now he’s carrying on about elephants! To get out, I have to reach Sukup and then catch a ferry to Kisars. Three long weeks of fruitless waiting for surf in a soggy marsh nearby have drained my reserves and set my teeth on edge. I need to get out and soon. My nerves are ragged, my guts have long since turned to liquid and my eyes roll around in their sockets when I shake my head.

There has been no surf for the entire time that I’ve been camped under the trees next to that impressive cliff at the edge of the deep bay with the tapered reef. It looked so good on the map and some fishermen told enticing tales about head-high waves pounding the shore ceaselessly. But during my stay the waves had passed the bay by completely. Storm after storm had drenched me and flooded my camp, but even though I could see big swell trains race by on the horizon, the bay has remained calm. Around the headland on the exposed side it was utter chaos: huge monster waves pulverised coral and smashed against the cliff, impossible to even approach, let alone paddle into.

I need to get some distance between me and this bay pronto, but now this guy is trying to sell me the last thing I need.

“No mate, I hate going on those phony elephant tours where they make the poor dumb animals do tricks and carry poles around and what-not. It’s degrading for the elephants and for the tourists.”

“No no! Elephant bus! Bus go elephant.”

“I just told you, I don’t want any elephant rides. I want to get to Sukup. Just a plain bus ticket as soon as possible. Any bus.”

“Yes, but next bus is elephant.”

“What? A real elephant? Have the roads washed away? What about the regular bus service?”

“Is very good bus. Brand new. At elephant.”

“I didn’t even know that there were elephants here at all! Does the bus leave from an elephant park?”

“No, sir. Very good bus. New bus. From here. Go to Sukup. At elephant.”

My nerves are jangling like guitar strings, I have a juddering headache and the sun’s too bright after endless days in the jungle. I can’t think. I need coffee, I need a drink.

“Listen friend, is there no one else here that can help me? I do not want to go to an elephant park, or to one of those sad rehabilitation centres, or a circus, or anything that has animals in it! I just want to get to Sukup! Please! Once I’m in Sukup it will be simple to get to Kisars. I want to lie down on the beach there and relax. I hear it’s a lovely beach. I want to soak up some sun and get some rest. To take a break. I’m worn down and tired, dead dog tired. Please, help me out here. Just give me a ticket. I have the name of a lovely little losmen under the palm trees near the golden beach. The landlady is supposed to be very friendly and motherly. Her name is Ibu Made. She cooks the best nasi uduk in the Moluccas, real comfort food. She will make me feel at home. Oh, how I miss home! It’s so far away. If only I could have a piece of cheese I would feel better, or some pizza, ahh…”

I need to scrape the fungus from my shirt, clean the festering tick bites, dry the dampness out of my bones. I have to escape the scorpions, the spiders and the leeches. No more checking my boots for poisonous centipedes before I ease my blistered feet inside. No more snakes and infernal whining mosquitoes! Anything to get me out of here now. If I make it out in one piece, I swear I’ll only go on sensible trips to established surf spots with paved roads and clean bed sheets. No more wilderness for me, no need for this kind of torment any more.

“Why do you keep pointing at your watch? Don’t you rush me! I’m the client you know, I’m entitled to as much time as I need to buy a bus ticket! Anyway, I want to get this whole drama over with too!”

“Just give me a bleeding bus ticket, with or without the elephant tour. I’ll wait in the bus while the others ogle the elephants! And stop pointing at your watch!”

“Elephant o’clock, sir! Elephant o’clock!”

“What? Elephant o’clock? Oh, eleven o’clock! The eleven o’clock bus? Err, sorry, yes please, that would be lovely. One ticket please.”

4.5 star review

Lavish Bookshelf gave my book 4.5 stars out of 5! Check out trhe review and a great video clip here: http://www.lavishbookshelf.com/2012/11/island-explorer-by-dan-scheffler.html





Lavish Bookshelf: Island Explorer by Dan Scheffler
www.lavishbookshelf.com

Excerpt from my book in The Bomb magazine

Check out a short extract from my book in The Bomb’s weekly edition today, coupled with a free copy of my book for a lucky few:

http://www.thebombsurf.com/blog/12/458/one-scalp-for-mother-nature

Young man, you are wasting your life!

I have a friend from medical school. As students we sometimes went to the beach together. We both loved to surf, but when it came to riding waves, he was ahead of me; I was a late comer to the sport. Over the years though, I started to inch ahead of him. I put in more water time, I got up earlier in the mornings and I was hungrier for waves.

He decided to concentrate on his career and he worked really hard at medicine. He settled where he could find the best training posts. I took jobs near the sea. Then he went to the UK and worked at some of the most respected centres for vascular surgery. I went to Indo. Repeatedly.

While I was learning about late take-offs and trying to make it out of barrels, he spent hours in theatre, becoming adept at operating, learning the intricacies and techniques of transplants, grafts and intensive care.

He lost contact with the sea. His paddling muscles are small now and he has put on weight, though he is still fit. He runs marathons occasionally. But he can’t really surf anymore: he can’t make it to backline.

On all those perfectly glassy mornings when I paddle out for an hour of bliss, he puts on a formal shirt, pulls the SUV out of the garage and commutes to work. While I’m sneaking in a session after work, he is still busy sorting out the admin at his practice, losing more hair and enlarging his stomach ulcer.

He is a successful vascular surgeon now. He can save your leg after you mashed it to a pulp while burning rubber on your bike. He can do wonderful things that took years to learn. And me? I am happy enough as a general practitioner, I like a bit of everything. But I never acquired a skill that took years to learn. Except surfing. I’m still not a great surfer, but I can do things on a board now that I found entirely impossible, inconceivable even, two decades ago when I started.

We both acquired abilities that took years to master. Which was the better option? Which one was more worth while? He can cut away a cancer to save your life, but he can’t do a cutback anymore. And I? For all the endless hours I have spent in the water, I have nothing to show. I often ask myself, could I not have done something more productive with my spare time?

Who took the right path? Of course there’s no right or wrong here. We need people like my friend. They make the world a better place.

But when we talk about surfing, he gets a wistful expression in his eyes and he says he wishes he could catch a few waves again. He admits freely that there is nothing in this world like sliding down a clean face. He longs to have that feeling back.

Then I know that what I have done hasn’t been a complete waste of time like all those bitter old people told us when we were young. I’ve collected pockets of happiness, parcels of joy. I’ll open them one day when I need them.

Travel related books with a nautical theme

I wish that I could travel more, but the reality of day to day life is that often the more mundane things become a priority. And to be honest, sometimes travel is just a lot of hard work and very time consuming. So when I have a little free time, I read about travel. I love the sea and reading about adventures on the oceans and the various islands in them is a way of escaping (but without the seasickness).

Here are some books that have allowed me to travel far away on the open sea while remaining in bed at home (given in no particular order):

Two Years Before the Mast, by R.H.Dana

Islands in a Forgotten Sea, by T.V.Bulpin

The ‘Caine’ Mutiny, by Herman Wouk

The Last Grain Race, by Eric Newby

Saltwater Buddah: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea, by Jaimal Yogis

West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief, by Steven Kotler

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

Cruise of the Snark, by Jack London

Riding the Magic Carpet, by Tom Anderson

The Spice Islands Voyage, by Tim Severin

The Happy Isles of Oceania, by Paul Theroux

Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, by Giles Milton

Islomania, by Thurston Clarke

The Sea Devil, by Lowell Thomas

Typhoon and Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad

The Pirate Hunter, by Richard Zacks