Books Timid Spouses Are Not Allowed to Read

[Winter River]

Don't let your kids read "The Wanderer" by Sharon Creech. "Thirteen year old Sophie hears the sea calling, promising adventure and a chance for discovery as she sets sail for England with her three uncles and two cousins." Sounds good, but...

Spoiler alert 1: They sail from Connecticut to Nova Scotia to Ireland to England. (Did the author do any research on routes?) Of course there's a storm.

Spoiler alert 2: The girl is an orphan because her parents died while sailing in a storm. She survived because they set her adrift in the dinghy.

[Ocean Girl]

If she is aboard a cat then don't let her read The Spirit oF Rose Noel (a fantastic book BTW). Another good -uh er I mean bad one is Godforsaken Sea by Lundy.
Cheers,
Erika

[Anshar]

Sounds like some of these might be a good way to get rid of or avoid an unwanted guest(s)

[Talbot]

Keep her away from

Total Loss
and the
Drag Device Database.

[Jim Buffet]

Black Wave---about a couple with four kids that sail a cat into the Pacific before disaster hits. The boat is destroyed and they are lucky they come out of it alive.
Plenty of fighting, complaining, and pirate scares before they run aground on the coral.

[dcstrng]

Originally Posted by Stillraining

start this thread as a one stop shop of all titles baned off the timid spouse reading list ...

LOST; by Thomas Thompson... no hiding this from my wife, cuz she knows the families and the younger brother of the survivor is a friend of nearly fifty years... Nonetheless, fair warning: with a few exceptions, a compilation of "how not to do it..."

[barnakiel]

Nothing I have read comes close to the real thing. If you spouse likes to sail, she can read whatever she likes. If she does not, any book will be good to 'prove' to you that sailing is too dangerous, to extreme or plainly boring.

b.

[Stillraining]

Ah!..... B your a party pooper.........probalbly somewhat true though.

But I still say this is a good list of books and movies to avoid loading up on in the dens book shelves as prelude to ASA 101 courses for the mildly timid and new sailor don't you think..I mean we all like a good thriller now and then but most of us try not to live our lives immersed in one...

Alaska Bear Tales is not the hand book to be giving your cub scouts on their first back yard camp out under the stars Im sure you would agree....at least not unless you entend to play Nurse maid all night..or worse till their Eagle Scouts...

[barnakiel]

B a party pooper ????? Me a party pooper ???????

Well, avoid Las Palmas unless you want to finish like one Rainbow Warrior in Auckland ;-)))))

Dead Calm
The Perfect Storm

and Wind, by Coppola, unless you want to hear: "Honey, why aren't we sailing like them?"

b.

[CarlF]

Half of my bookshelf is off limits to your wife. There's something about a shipwreck that screams "write a book". This apparently never occurs to someone who has a car accident. Here are just a few I've read with "unfortunate titles"

The Mammoth Book of Storms, Shipwrecks and Sea Disasters: Over 70 First-Hand Accounts of Peril on the High Seas, from St. Paul's Shipwreck to the Prestige Disaster

Disaster at Sea: Shipwrecks, Storms, and Collisions on the Atlantic

Ghost Ships: Tales of Abandoned, Doomed, and Haunted Vessels

Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors

Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea

Wreck of the Medusa: Mutiny, Murder, and Survival on the High Seas

Sailing into the Abyss: A True Story of Extreme Heroism on the High Seas

Even one of my favorites about modern day treasure hunting - Ship of Gold - has a graphic description on-board a paddle wheel steamer that lost power in a hurricane off North Carolina. A hundred passengers (including women and small children) bailed for three days by hand in a bucket line - the ship sank anyways with most lost (the search for the ship was fascinating - but I doubt your wife would get that far)

Carl

[Jim Buffet]

Did you like "Ship of Gold"? I started reading it about 12 years ago but didn't seem to get past the first 25 pages or so. It's right on the old bookshelf as I type.

[Stillraining]

OK Its time for another consolidation.
I can tell from some of you this will become a Shopping list... not an avoid list..

So far we have. ( Im letting slide the borderline ones..and Martha Stewart )

Books
Perfect Storm
Sailing Promise
A Voyage for Madmen
Voyager's Handbook (Rip Out first Chapter) Too Late she already read it...Fingers X'ed on that one.
Ten Degrees of Reckoning
Heavy Weather Sailing
Red Sky in Mourning
Once is Enough
The Voyage of Baraka A
Fastnet Force 10
The Sea Will Tell
Adrift
117 days Adrift
The Wanderer
Total Loss
Black Wave
God Forsaken Sea
Lost
Disaster at Sea
Ghost Ships
Desperate Journeys
Wreck of the Medusa
Sailing into the Abyss

Movies
White Squall
Poseidon ( At least ask for a beer from the fridge when the wave hits)
Dead Calm

[CarlF]

I loved Ship of Gold (full title Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea). Great story that is all the more incredible for being true. It's great history and well told with a good bit of sailing and navigation detail.

The side-paddle steamer S.S. Central America sank off the Carolinas in 1857 coming back from the California gold fields with 500 passengers including many women and children. Most drowned after a three day struggle to save the ship while trapped in the hellish storm. So much gold was in her holds that the loss created a recession in the US ("Panic of 1857"). For 130 years, treasure hunters looked in the wrong place until a young guy spent several years painstakingly researching the ship, the voyage, the passengers, and nearby ships. The book is full of "truth is stranger than fiction" research. Here's one:

A Norwegian bark named the Ellen loaded with mahogany logs was caught in the same storm. As the storm wound down, her captain alterned course from east to northeast for a better angle. At 6PM a huge man-of-war hawk swooped across the quarterdeck hitting the captain on the shoulder. The bird repeatedly wheeled and dived on the captain until he caught it and had it's head cut off. Then, thinking this bird an omen, he went back to his original easterly course. Twenty miles later, around 1AM in pitch blackness, the captain heard "agonizing shrieks, as it seemed, of a hundred human voices". The Ellen was passing directly through the swimming survivors of the sunken Central Republic. They could not be seen but only heard. The Ellen rescued over 40. The bird's actions was recorded in the log at the time and verified by multiple members of the Ellen's crew. If she had not changed course at precisely the moment, over 40 more people would have died.

As I said, the book is full of such moments - although the detailed descriptions (from the survivors) of the storm are not a good way to temp one's spouse to sailing.

Carl

[weap10]

This one takes the cake..

Overboard by Hank Searls 1977

Very good read, a definite page turner. My partner read it and shes still keen, must be onto a winner there.

[Curmudgeon]

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned The Strange Last Yoyage of Donald Crowhurst.