The Chronicles of the Schooner Lusty I

This true adventure started innocently enough with a casual remark between two friends having coffee one dreary April afternoon at the University of Washington cafeteria in seattle. "Let's buy a boat and sail to the South Pacific." Well, with almost insurmountable difficulties, that's exactly what happened. Neither one knew at the time how much their lives and the lives of hundreds of others around the world were to change because of that offhand remark that fateful day. The adventure turned out to last almost ten years and covered more than 30,000 nautical miles. The boat, an old wooden two-masted sailing schooner, was named Lusty I. That was prophetic and appropriate for the dozens of men and women who helped make the journey. The resulting tale is a sort of postmodern version of Homer's Odyssey. Instead of journeying homeward and unintentionally getting seduced by women and caught up in adventures, the men and women aboard the Lusty I chose to flee the safety of home with the hopes of finding seduction and adventure abroad. And they found it. They weathered dangerous storms in a leaking boat, fell in love, got shot at, got shooed away from island resorts by mafia bodyguards, found buried treasure, ate exotic meals, scaled volcanoes, witnessed the mysterious "green flash," and visited a multitude of fascinating cultures and tropical Islands of unsurpassed beauty. Beyond the tales of adventure and debauchery, the book also offers us a glimpse at a world much different from the one around us today. Ports of call included the Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand, the New Hebrides, the Solomons and Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, Ceylon, Seychelles, Mombasa, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, Brazil, Trinidad, and dozens of islands in the Caribbean. Perhaps by revisiting this journey, one will be better able to understand the world we live in now, but whether for edification or just sheer fun, come along and enjoy this sailing saga with the author and the many friends of the schooner, Lusty I.