Customer Reviews

South Sea Vagabonds: A New Zealand Classic Adventure of the Sea the Mariner's Library

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

John Wray is one of those characters who doesn't fit the urban workaday lifestyle of most of us. His daydreaming about the sea and wind in his hair led him to get the sack from his office job, which was a good thing really. He made use of the time on his hands to build himself a cruising yacht. But he had no money. Not letting a small thing like lack of resources get in the way, he scrounged the materials and built his boat. The first half of the book is taken up with the fascinating details of acquiring the materials and building on a shoestring budget. An interesting and funny chronicle - especially if you're interested in building boats. The rest of the book focuses on his adventures with the boat after he gets it in the water. A pretty-much run of the mill travelogue of the South Pacific, but written with humour and the interesting prose of a hands-on blue water sailor. You can't help liking the man. The book was written in the 1930's. I hope it made him enough money to enjoy a long and happy life at sea.

I read this book whist sitting on a yacht in the southern ocean...which is not the best place to read it. Jonny Wray does not write exceptional prose but if you are not sitting in the South Pacific when you read South Sea Vagabonds you will spend years hankering for the place.

If ever a book needed to come into print in the 1990's this is it. Freedom in 200 pages..... ........If you can find it

Amazing book. Very well written and interesting. In fact this was such a good book that I read it in two sittings! Very funny, and stranger than fiction. Good illustration of how the world has changed since that time as well.

Could not say a bad word about this book, apart from I want more!

I won this book in December 1960 when I came top of the class as a Seaman Boy in the Royal New Zealand Navy. I read it from cover to cover and enjoyed every moment of it. Years later, as I cruised the South Seas, I was able to check it out. New Zealand has a Weather Station on Raoul Island, in the Kermadecs, and part of the story had these two lads taking all the oranges off the Island to make their fortune back in New Zealand, when they sold them. They ate them all before they got back home! Well ....I found those orange trees and as they had said they had torns on them. Maybe they did consider them the best tasting oranges in the world, but having an orchard in my grandfather's back yard, with many fruits to sample, I can not truthfully say I was impressed with the oranges of Raoul Island. One time we were there was the 9 June 1966....my eldest daughter's birthday. We left a group of birdwatchers there, and the following day headed home. At the end of the Kermadecs we got a call to say an earthquake had occurred on Raoul Island and we returned in case they wanted off the Island. No.... the water from one lake had overflown and contaminated the other lake, but they still had fresh water tanks to rely upon. We stayed there for the remainer of the day, just in case. One of the Officers made the mistake of throwing a fishing line over, and it was on for young and old. By the end of the day we had covered the upper deck with red and blue bass; a 60lb kingfish; and six 90lb Hapuka (Groper).

This book is everything you could want to spark the imagination. I guess my copy was a much earlier edition as I got it in 1960. Still....I would say the story is still the same. They even tell us how to cook potatoes (spuds) by first boiling them for ten minutes before roasting them. Enjoy!

The author in this true story builds a 32' sailboat boat from driftwood in his parents front yard to fulfill his dream of sailing in the south seas. The story is interesting historically , entertaining and inspiring and I recommend it.

This book is in very good order, but it is a paper back and does not have the photos in as the hard cover does.