Seamanship : A Voyage Along the Wild Coasts of the British Isles

From Booklist
Nicolson and a friend, George Fairhurst, sailed up the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland in 2003. The journey, in the 42-foot ketch Auk, took them to the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Faeroes. They were joined by a photographer, an archaeologist, and a film crew. Nicolson, the author of God's Secretaries (2003) and Perch Hill (2000), observes that "the Atlantic-besieged cliffs of the St. Kildan islands, smashed and storm-swept up to 200 feet above the surface of the sea, provide as enormous and powerful a meeting of rock and ocean as you ever find in Britain." Along the way, they saw puffins, gannets, shearwaters, seals, crabs, and a spectacular underwater cave. The book is filled with descriptive passages of the sea, cliffs, and the shoreline. There are passages revealing the anxiety and tedium that sometimes occurred, but Nicolson's love for the sea and his fervor for travel and adventure is evident from the first page to the last. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


"A genuinely intriguing, thoughtful work."

—Kirkus Reviews
"An odyssey of island hopping and psychic exploration."

—Bernard Cornwell
"A superb book, as wise as it is beautiful."

—Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea, winner of the National Book Award
"A dazzling triumph--a profound and magical account of a voyage along the wild edges of the British coast."

Book Description

From Land's End to Cape Clear, at the southwestern tip of Ireland, past Roaringwater Bay and Cod's Head, on past Inishvickillane and Inishtooskert, up through the Hebrides, to Orkney and on to the Faeroes, stretches the richest and wildest coastline in Europe, an Atlantic-battered world.

Wanting to experience the feeling that only the ocean can give you, of being "a single hair on the world's skin," Adam Nicolson set off to sail this coast in the Auk, a 42-foot wooden ketch, heading off on a 1,500-mile voyage through what he hoped would be a sequence of revelatory landscapes. He was not disappointed.

Seamanship is more than a travel journal. What Nicolson has written describes an inner journey as much as an outer one. He writes of his own yearning for wild and open spaces, but his year is strung between the competing claims of leaving and belonging, of thinking that no life could be more exhilarating than battling a big Atlantic gale and of the desire for harbor and home, for the comforts of stillness.

Disasters and revelations greet him at every turn; sacred landscapes and modern visionaries; encounters with the animals living on the wild edge of the Atlantic; a moment at which the prospect of death comes strolling on board the Auk and others in which the strains of this ocean-edge existence threaten his friendship with George Fairhurst, who was sailing with him. Above all, it is about the gaps that open up between those who go and those who stay at home.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"From Land's End to Cape Clear, at the southwestern tip of Ireland, past Roaringwater Bay and Cod's Head, on past Inishvickillane and Inishtooskert, up through the Hebrides, to Orkney and on to the Faeroes, stretches the richest and wildest coastline in Europe, an Atlantic-battered world." "Wanting to experience the feeling that only the ocean can give you, of being "a single hair on the world's skin," Adam Nicolson set off to sail this coast in the Auk, a 42-foot wooden ketch, heading off on a 1,500-mile voyage through what he hoped would be a sequence of revelatory landscapes." Disasters and revelations greet him at every turn; sacred landscapes and modern visionaries; encounters with the animals living on the wild edge of the Atlantic; a moment at which the prospect of death comes strolling on board the Auk and others in which the strains of this ocean-edge existence threaten his friendship with George Fairhurst, who was sailing with him. Above all, it is about the gaps that open up between those who go and those who stay at home.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

British author Nicolson expands on the explorations that he started in his 2002 book, Sea Room, which detailed three remote islands in the Hebrides off Scotland's west coast. He recounts how he and a friend explored the islands off the coasts of Ireland and Scotland in a small boat. Anyone who has ever entertained the idea of heading out to sea with a friend and a sail-or anyone interested in a unique perspective on these islands, which are steeped in ancient history and inhabited by Christian monks and shepherds-will find much to relish in Nicolson's descriptions of a journey and a friendship set against an often beautiful, sometimes dangerous, and always exciting Mother Nature and her seas. Given the popularity of other seafaring books like Linda Greenlaw's The Lobster Chronicles and Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, Nicolson's tale should find a solid readership. Recommended for public libraries.-Mari Flynn, Keystone Coll., La Plume, PA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews