Customer Reviews

Adrift on a Sea of Blue Light

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If you like suspenseful adventure stories, about travels to faraway places, read this book.
If you are interested in sailing, in nature, in animals and people, read this book.
If you want to learn about life on the sea, about history and geography without the tedious textbooks, then this book is for you.
Peter Muilenburg lives on St. John, Virgin Islands. He built his boat Breath, a 42' ketch and sailed on her with his family in the Caribbean and Mediterranean Sea in Africa and North and South America spanning 20 years. The stories are about the experiences, encounters and adventures, dangerous situations and even brushes with death. The characters are real and vivid. The information, the facts shared by this excellent teacher are priceless, the described sceneries breathtaking.
Reading the book you get much more than knowleldge and entertainment. You get insight in the author's life philosophy, his love for his family, his compassion for every living creature, his deep humanity, his respect for the sea and his sence of humor. After reading the book, the reader becomes a wiser, better and happier person.
Besides the countless merits of the book, there is one quality that makes me reread it time and again; it's unique language. Sometimes I feel the author uses his pen as a paintbrush, a magical one, because his paintings are not static, ther are in constant motion. Other times I hear a distinct melody in the words, or a mountain creek whose rhythmic tune reflects every pebble and rock which lies in the cascading water's way. A simple detail of the narrratives become lively and significant in his words:

I thought the many personal and historic anecdotes and "tales" had a spiritual and often humourous thread that connects all humans. (and dogs!) There are tears at times, but a rejoicing at successful outcomes, achieved not just by luck, as the author might have you believe, but by a careful filing and retrieval of life experience. The wide variety of cultures, non-monetary riches in our lives and the common foundations we all have are all themes in this book.

Peter Muilenburg has led the life that we all dream of...building a beauty of a ship with his hands, raising a family on her...traveling to distant ports. What sets this book apart from others is Peter's quiet humor and the delicate weaving of the magic of the Caribbean, the characters of these lovely islands and the adventures of Santos, a dog who surely must have been a pirate in a past life. This book proves there is still treasure to be found in the Caribbean...each chapter is a gem.

"Adrift on a Sea of Blue Light" by Peter Muilenburg.
Reviewed by Nancy Terrell

I don't know when I have enjoyed a book of stories more than "Adrift on a Sea of Blue Light". Perhaps it is because sailing is also my passion or it may be that taking a good book in hand is just a wonderful way to spend the day - either way this collection of nautical tales recounting the lives of Peter and Dorothy Muilenburg, their sons Diego and Raff, their adorable Schipperke Santos and the love of their lives, their 42' gaff rigged ketch BREATH, is about as good as you can get. The book is rich in lore and love - life of a simpler kind - the way it was when many of us arrived in the Caribbean decades ago. The tales revealed between its covers are warm, human, poignant and hysterically funny. I found myself laughing out loud picturing Santos chasing donkeys out of the Muilenburg's beach house and frolicking with an elephant on the beach in St. Lucia.

Ironically, when I first moved to St. John in the mid 80's, from St. Croix, my friends and I took a delightful day charter on BREATH. Peter, Dorothy and I had much in common as we had been Freedom Fighters in Mississippi in the 60's. While I missed being jailed, like Peter was, I was equally incensed by racial injustice. Being also a teacher, like Dorothy, I admired how she had started Pine Peace School in St. John. Here are two people that actually live life, not just exist through it. They both have passion - for the sea and their family and friends. This wonderful reverence for the adventures of just plain being alive shines out on every page of this book.

Having lived in the Virgin Islands since 1968, Peter built BREATH, one of the largest boats ever to be constructed on St. John, on the beach at East End. During the past two decades she has become a part of St. John's sailing lore. I see this beauty often; with her tan bark sails, taking charters up the Sir Francis Drake channel in the BVI.

Besides chartering, they made two round trip voyages to the Mediterranean and West Africa, as well as numerous voyages between North and South America. Her longest voyage,1989-1991, took them to the Azores, throughout the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas, as well as hundreds of miles up the Gambia River in West Africa. In 1995-1996 she went again across the Atlantic, visiting new locations---Galicia, Morocco, Lanzarote and Guinea-Bissau. BREATH has sailed often to Venezuela, Jamaica and all through the Bahamas as well as a voyage of mercy to a Haitian children's hospital during the '94 blockade carrying antibiotics and crutches donated by the VI Rotary.

The happenings of these voyages have been turned into delightful narratives in this book, many of them having been first featured in publications like Readers Digest, SAIL, Islands, Americas and American Way. Here are sea stories filled with adventures of another day and time and of characters that became entwined with the Muilenburg family and the sea. The accompanying black and white photos, by photographer Don Brown, lend a dreamy and exquisite aura to the pages.

While each chapter can be read separately, the tales are arranged in a sequential order that forms a continuum of a way of life spent adrift - but not without direction - on the sea of life. Whether you are cruising, want to buy a gift for someone special or just want a great read - this is the book for you. Several of the anecdotes are so memorable that I have reread them just to lighten my day. This book is a wonderful way to get away from it all and I cannot praise it enough. Hats off to you, Peter. What a fine life you have enjoyed.

If you are going to the Carribbean, have been there, know someone who is going, have an interest in what Western Africa really feels, sounds and looks like, or if you just enjoy good yarns this a great book. The author obvisiously knows and loves his sea, the peoples and places he writes about. He beautifully captures all with character and respectful humor. This a good read. You will spend a lot of time with a happy smile as you try to ration the stories out to prolong the pleasure of a good read.

Throw away your fictional tomes! Each of these true short stories speaks volumes. They leave one crying or laughing, musing about life's extraordinary intersections of boldness and chance, or improved by the author's mastery of history and the classics. Marvel at how these stories will pleasantly reinvade your thoughts. Here are nuggets about our world and its peoples, which you never knew. Here are adventures in determination and resilience that will burst you out of whatever inward-looking comfort you thought of as everyday existence. Written concisely, and with wonderful turn of phrase, the stories reveal insights about the unifying threads that weave through all of us, no matter who or where, compelling each of us forward. Here are priceless pearls of wisdom from a true man of the sea; a man of experience, intellect, and grace.

While in St. Johns on a diving vacation just last week, my wife came upon your book in a little bookstore next to the Starfish Market. She brought it back to the hotel and my intent was to read it on the long flight back to Ohio. I was absolutely enthralled with every page, and I finished it before reaching Charlotte. What a fantastic job you have done drawing in the reader and making them feel a part of the adventures that you have detailed. Thank you very much for this book, and it is my fervent hope that you will continue to write and remind us of the things that are most important in life. Thanks again for taking me on a great ride. Next time in St. Johns, we are sailing on this magnificent ship.

This book not only tells stories of adventures while sailing but also gives the reader insights into life's little lessons. It is vividly written and it made me feel like I was on the boat watching the action. If you have ever been to the islands it will make you want to go back, if you have never been it will make you want to go. I highly recommend the read.

For anyone who has dreamt of an adventurous life, filled with richness of carefree experiences and love of the sea, this book is a must read! Peter has captured and bottled the love of life's limits in old-style, sea-salt prosaic fashion. Each yarn, tastefully described and artfully woven, transports the reader into the time and place as if a holographic spec following each wave of his adventures, both on land and sea. A wonderful, light reading and entertaining book filled with tales we all wish we could have experienced!

While enjoying a full day sailing aboard Breath as paying customers some years ago, the author/captain/owner/builder of the vessel, his wife Dorothy, and their neighbors, who had come along to enjoy a sail and act as crew, talked about a book that Peter would some day publish.

After returning to the relative safety of Northern Virginia, I visited their website from time to time in order to do nothing more than copy the URL so that I could send it to friends and recommend a sail aboard Breath if they intended to visit St. John. On one of these website visits, I noticed that the book "had been realized" and was available.

This collection of stories permits the reader to read one, put the book down, and hours, days, or weeks later pick it up again with no loss in continuity. However, I almost dare you to try not to read this from cover to cover. I found each story compelling, intriguing, and well written. In fact, certain phrases caused me to search the internet to determine just why that particular phrase was used. In such searches, it became clear to me that Peter's education--the greater portion of which I am sure is self-taught--was much more extensive than mine. And as for putting the book down, I was moved to tears aboard a crowded Metro car while reading the story about a tinsmith. I thought to myself that I should put the book away for the remainder of my commute that day. But thinking and doing are two different things. I read on into the next story and the tears welled up in my eyes all over again as Peter related the sweeping overboard of their dog Santos on the Gambia River in the midst of circumstances not many of us will ever face.

Not every story is a sailing adventure. Some are about stops that Breath had made along the way to certain destinations or the destinations themselves. But this is no travelogue. It is about people, compassion, self-reliance, a love shared between a wonderful couple, and the uncertainty of life itself. I urge you to buy it, read it, and give it as a gift to others.