The Sea is for Sailing
by Pye, Peter
pub by John de Graff, Inc., NY, 1961 -       - first pub in Great Britain in 1957 - isbn (none) - LCCN 61- -- maps p. 14 - 27 - 131 - 173 -- black & white photos in several places to illustrate the text -- Total 192 pages.
      Peter (Dr. MD) Pye, his wife Anne and youth Christopher as crew, sail Moonraker, their 29 ft. cutter built in 1896, from England through the Panama canal, past the Galapagos to the Marquesas and Tahiti in the Pacific. Then to Hawaii and on to British Columia, Canada on the E side of Vancouver Island (just past Victoria, B.C.) where they stayed a long time living with The Smeetons (whose boat was Tzu Hang) and who had a small farm on Vancouver Island).
      Later they sailed south visiting a San Francisco, California and Monterrey, California then on down the coast of Mexico and Central America, through the Panama Canal. From there they sailed north visiting the Cayman Islands, and around the western end of Cuba to Miami, Florida and Charleston, S. Carolina then to Bermuda then back to England.
      This book contains good and interesting descriptions of the places they visited. They were not in any hurry and often stayed long enough in each place visited to be able to properly describe them and how life is there.
      They are mostly sailors, though they did have an auxiliary motor, it was fussy. (Which was common for sailboats at the time.) Moonraker did not have any self steering as most modern, post 1980 boats have.
      I probably read this book more than 40 years ago and was looking in my collection for my next read. I saw this on the shelf and read it again. It was a very good read, even a second time. It is well written and has a more interesting story than many modern sailing adventures. It is also a window into what life was like in the late 1950s in several places in the world.
I recommend reading it. If you can find it.

~2022_02_05~

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