Customer Reviews

Taking Terrapin Home: A Love Affair With a Small Catamaran

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

 

 

Interested in catamarans, cruising, outfitting and crossing the sea? If you are do not buy this book. This smallish tome is long on ego and little on hard information. We do learn that our boorish captain has a baron in his bloodlines, that he is a divemaster, an amateur anthropologist, has relatives at Cambridge and seems to jump from London and back again seemingly at will and from anywhere. We also know that to sail with him is not fun(ask the poor couple who endured his company on one leg of the journey only to flee port as soon as they arrived). I have never heard such a littany of failures at sea or just plain miserable passages since Herb Payson's Blown Away. Unlike Payson, the skipper here is humorless and of little interest. As for sailing insights, you won't find much of value here. This unfortunate yachtie never talks of his boat's abilities relative to other craft(monohulls) when faced with difficult or uncomfortable circumstances. Our inadequate admiral is all too puffed-up with himself and his new-age anti-smoking, anti-population, anti-crew attitudes to properly attend to a simple shore power problem or understand that when you kill a dolphin fish it dies and it loses its color along with its life. Some ecologist our unfortunately named "captain".

This book is the biggest load of rubbish that I have read about a small boat voyage. His insistance on fancy gadgets is an insult to the great sailors of yesteryear like Moitessier and Tangvald etc. He did not seem to enjoy the voyage either and his endless bitching and moaning about the motor makes me wonder why he didn't biff the bloddy thing overboard along with the rest of his other "essential" electronic gadgets. I mean to say, a sail boat is for sailing! And his "essential" list is an absolute joke. If you want to read a book about real small boat voyagers who did it without all the fancy equipment I give you three authors: Shane Acton, Peter Tangvald and Bernard Moitessier.

This book is described as a "look at one of the great sailing routes of the world through fresh eyes" it is not a fresh look at anything. this man bemoans every aspect of offshore sailing. Mathew Wilson appears to have an extreemly narrow set of conditions to which he would potentially be happy with, anything outside of this is met with his disdain, his dissapointment and myopic negativity. There is only one thing worse than sailing in beautiful waters and on a capable boat and complaining every step of the way; that is publishing a book on how much you hated the experience. I wasted thirty dollars and some hours of my spare time.

As for using the word "cogent" like it is some literary sword cutting your way through the uneducated to impress the learned, I suggest using it only once, might have more impact that way.

As for your vessel needing repairs from time to time, well that is boating...you just deal with it.

Poor book.

The book is a delight to read. For anyone who is or has been a boat owner and has been cruising with family members or girl friend/fiancé/wife/lover will find this book very entertaining (been there, done this). The author writes in a very easy to read descriptive manner. Anyone contemplating making a similar voyage can indeed pre-live the experience through this book. The fact that this was done on the Heavenly Twins 27, a great little cruising catamaran, may also be of interest for multihull enthusiasts. The author goes through many details of the boat throughout the chapters as well as having great summaries in the back of the book as check lists on what he had on board and the specification of his HT 27. This is however not a guide on catamaran sailing. Highly Recommended reading.

The author commissioned the building of his Heavenly Twins 27' Catamaran in England. He then sailed her via France to his home in Florida. His voyage takes him through the French canals to the Mediterranean, and homeward bound across the Atlantic. Wilson entertains you with a fresh in-depth look at one of the great sailing routes of antiquity, vividly describing his encounters with nature, crew and fellow cruisers. His command of the language [The King's English] offers a light touch that makes for pleasureable reading. "Terrapin" contains a vast amount of practical information which should prove invaluable to anyone contemplating such a voyage -- or merely dreaming about it. In short, "Terrapin" is a delightful and informative book