Customer Reviews

By Way of the Wind (Seafarer Books)

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

 

 

The book tries to cover too much territory. Over four years of life is crammed into just over 200 pages. That does not allow for much detail. While there are some nice anecdotes hiding in the pages, it is mostly "went here, saw this, did that, went on to the next place".

The book is written by a sailor for sailors. If you don't know a jib from a rode, or why broaching is a bad thing, or any number of other nautical terms, you will be lost and confused. I'm interested in sailing, but not a sailor so most of the jargon went right over my head. After a while some of it started to sink in, but the author assumes the audience is familiar with nautical terms and sailing techniques. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but limits the audience the book will appeal to.

While the author starts out as an inexperienced sailor, he seems to have forgotten that by the time the book was written. We are not part of this learning curve from sailing neophyte to salty dog.

The author has a comfortable and fluid writing style. He has a pleasant sense of humor. This book could have been longer as it skips too much of their voyage. The sequel is also excellent with the same gripe. Both have a lot of sailing terms, but those without the background can just ignore them.

If you are interested in cruising on a sailing yacht, "By Way of the Wind" is an excellent book to read. Jim Moore is certainly no heavyweight as an author, but he is forthright and clear in his description of events and discoveries that he and his wife made aboard their yacht.

The book is basically his recounting of experiences as they bought a hull, finished and fitted it out, and then sailed around the world in it. This was done with no prior experience and very little training. They learned a few lessons the hard way and he shares some of those lessons in his book. Any person who is thinking about going cruising could learn a few things from his book that would help with deciding whether or not cruising is for them. Learning from the Moore's mistakes could also make a first voyage a little more pleasant than it might otherwise be.

Jim Moore is an opinionated man from an older generation and it shows in his writing. If you are a narrow minded person who childishly expects the whole world to toe your political line, your are not likely to enjoy this book anymore than the first reviewer did. If you can overlook differences in viewpoint to see some humor or learn a few things then you will probably like his book. I enjoyed it and learned a few things.

BY WAY OF THE WIND is readable, but author Jim Moore seems too busy trying to end every sentence with a witticism to bother telling us the complete story of the circumnavigation undertaken by himself and his wife on their boat "Swan."

Typical of Moore's strained humor is his constant reference to Molly as "the Mate." At first endearing it soon becomes condescending through repetition. Yet it's clear that Molly had so much more to do with "Swan" and with their adoption of the sailing life than Moore tells us.

For example, he and Molly built "Swan" but the building process (which took years) is tossed off in a brief couple of pages. It seems to me that "Swan" deserves more respect as the centerpiece of the story. Every sailor knows that building a boat is rife with all sorts of interesting snafus, some of which might have added to this story.

Moore skims over most of his anecdotes the same way. BY WAY OF THE WIND is written in a very passive voice and does not engage the reader dynamically. There seems to be little passion expressed by the Moores, who, after all, left a typical suburban lifestyle to go a-sailing. Why? And who are they?

BY WAY OF THE WIND reads as if you are listening to a book on tape. It probably would make a pretty fair one. But I've read many better sailing narratives. I would have enjoyed this much more if I'd gotten to know Jim and Molly and "Swan" quite a bit better.

very entertaining, wrote about all the things I wanted to hear about, reasonably detailed in expression, overall very good.

I read sailing books because I am a sailor and I love reading about sailing. I do not read sailing books with the expectation that I will encounter great writing or even good writing. However, my appreciation for a sailing book is contingent on the writing not getting in the way. I found Moore's references to his wife as "the mate" distracting. This coupled with rather superficial naratives left me bored and not wanting to finish the book...which is a rare occurance with me. There are lots of good sailing naratives out there so unless your running out of things to read, keep looking!

I almost didn't buy this book based on the other reviews but that would have been a mistake. The writing ain't that bad. There's certainly worse out there. But then, this is not literature, it's a sailing story. Yes, he refers to his wife as the "mate" but so what? Technically that's correct. He also refers to her as miss "prim and proper" and other "cute" names befitting certain situations. Also, Jim Moore is human and he did some stupid things, like the event with the rifle. But who among us hasn't done something stupid (or several somethings?)

All in all, it's a good read.

Jim's writing style stands out from the usual sailing stories. Lots of detail, a bit of romance, a lot of humility, and a quirky sense of humour that keeps me grinning from the first paragraph to the last. We are building a cruising sailboat and this book is definitely one of the reasons! If you're looking for a sailing story that's a bit different, you've found it ion By Way of the Wind.

I am an avid reader of non-fiction sailing stories. Most sailors are not necessarily great writers (although a surprising number of them are), but they make up for it with honest, unadorned recounting of adventure and decent introspection.

I had just finished a great sailing read that went so quickly that I couldn't wait to get right into my next one, which unfortunately was "By way of the Wind" by Jim Moore which I had ordered off of Amazon at the same time I ordered the one I had just finished. Man, was Moore's book a shock, coming off a well written book. I managed to get to page 20 and gave up in disgust.

Too bad, there is a story here, but Moore is such an astonishingly poor writer that it's nearly impossible to believe someone published this book. After realizing how truly bad the writing was, I looked at the book cover to see if it was a known publisher, like Knopf or Scribner or someone. Sheridan House put it out. I've heard of them, but not much. I think they specialize in sailing stories, and evidently will publish anything if it's about sailing. Don't they employ editors at Sheridan House?

This book is kind of fascinating, in a perverse way, as an example of how not to write a book. In fact it could almost be as useful in that way as a great book. It's quite instructive as an example of what to avoid as a writer. It is the kind of thing that freshman journalism students parody. I could pull dozens of quotes from the book (in just the first 20 pages that I read) to illustrate my point, but I don't want to waste any more time on this book. It's dumb, sentimental, self-conscious, narcissistic; tries to be funny, but isn't; tries to be articulate; but isn't. In the right hands this could have been interesting. In Moore's hands it's just appallingly bad. Stay away from it and move on to some of the great sailing writing.

I was a bit disappointed in this book - the stories were a bit mundane - the type any sailor would have. I want to read about things more exciting than the norm!