A Speck on the Sea

[ThistleCap]

Now this is an interesting book.  A Speck on the Sea by William H. Longyard, (International Marine/McGraw Hill) approx. 350 pp., is an accounting of "more than seventy..big adventures in small boats."  With a hefty series of notes, bibliography and index, it is also a good voyaging reference book.  It takes you from Inuit kayak accounts from well before Columbus and St. Brendan to present.  It includes an account of not just the trip, but also background information on the skipper and what led him to make the trip, successful or not.  A couple of interesting accounts just to give you an idea of what to expect are how John Ford, owner of Ford's Theater,  financed an Atlantic crossing in the hope he might get his name associated with something other than Lincoln's recent assassination in his theater, to  how Paul Boyton traveled 25,000 miles floating on his back in a chambered rubber suit, to the voyages of John Rob Roy MacGregor, the father of recreational boating.