Sopranino

Early one morning in 1951 a tiny blue sailboat slipped silently out of Falmouth Harbor in England. Aboard her were two young men, quietly setting out to do something that no one living had ever done before.

For centuries boats had been built as strongly as possible, to withstand the enormous power of the sea. But Patrick Ellam and Colin Mudie had a theory that if you built a boat light enough she would lift over the tops of the waves and so survive.

To prove this they had built the smallest boat that would carry two men and their stores. The wood planking of her hull was barely thicker than a cigarette, and for lightness she had no motor and no transmitting radio.

Then together they set out on a voyage that was to take them to four of the continents of the world and across the Atlantic Ocean before they arrived in New York, their chosen destination, more than a year later.

This is a true tale of high adventure in our time. Of gales and calms and waterspouts at sea. Of landing alone on uninhabited tropical islands. Of hostile knives glinting in the moonlight of deserted docks.

Written by the two men who made the voyage, this book takes you far away from the problems of this century, to a world of sea and sky and clouds and stars; a world in which man by his skill and judgement must make use of the vast elemental forces of nature to bring him safely to the place where he would be.