Quest for Adventure is a collection of stories written by Sir Chris Bonington looking at the adventurous impulse which has driven men and women to achieve the impossible in the face of Earth’s elements: crossing its oceans, deserts and poles; canoeing its rivers; climbing its mountains, and descending into its caves. Bonington selects seventeen of the most thrilling expeditions and adventures of the mid-late twentieth century, uncovering the common thread that drives men and women to achieve the impossible. Following a new preface, he charts such outstanding achievements as Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki voyage across the Pacific Ocean; Francis Chichester’s round-the-world tour in his boat Gipsy Moth IV; the race for the first non-stop circumnavigation of the globe under sail; and Ice Bird’s sail around Antarctica. Away from the ocean, the travels of one of the world’s most outstanding desert explorers, Wilfred Thesiger, are detailed, journeying through what is menacingly called the Empty Quarter. Bonington returns to familiar ground as he writes about some exceptional mountain adventures, including the 1970 ascent of the South Face of Annapurna; Hillary and Tenzing’s first ascent of Everest; Reinhold and Gunther Messner on Nanga Parbat; Andy Cave’s triumph and tragedy on Changabang; and the Warren-Harding-led first ascent of The Nose of El Capitan in Yosemite. Wally Herbert’s team crossing of the Arctic Ocean and the equally gruelling Fuchs/Hillary crossing of Antarctica are written about in detail. More recent adventures include the race to make the first circumnavigation of the globe by balloon – a high-stakes race with a high-profile cast, including Richard Branson and Steve Fossett. Quest for Adventure concludes with an account of the cave diving epic the Dead Man’s Handshake, leaving the reader with a chill in their spine and an appreciation for the natural wonders below the Earth’s surface. Bonington’s eloquent writing on a subject in which he is a passionate authority makes for a highly engrossing read for adventurers and armchair explorers alike.

David Hillyard, founder of the famous firm of boatbuilders in Littlehampton, was born in the late nineteenth century, at the height of the Big Boat era. His family were stalwarts of Rowhedge in Essex, where the aristocratic owners of the enormous cutters dicing in the Solent sent their skippers to pick their racing crews of hard-bitten fishermen. Yachts, in those days, were for the very rich, but the men who sailed them were often the reverse. Perhaps it was a consciousness of this divide that led Hillyard-a devout Christian, descended from a long line of fishermen-to build boats that were robust, practical, and within the means of those lacking the advantage of dukedoms or armaments factories. This account of David Hillyard's voyage from apprentice boatbuilder to founder of a boatbuilding dynasty will be deeply interesting not only to owners of his boats and enthusiasts of traditional boatbuilding, but to anyone interested in the story of messing about in boats as practised in Britain. It also provides fascinating insights into the development of a small but significant corner of the relationship between the people of these islands and the seas that surround us.

Based on official Hydrographic Office data with additional information from across Imray's network, tailored to appropriate scales and level of data for leisure sailors. Imray's award-winning cartography includes a familiar, logical colour scheme, coloured light sectors and fine overprinted latitude and longitude grids to make plotting easier. On this edition the magnetic variation curves have been updated with the latest data. There has been general updating throughout.

When Adrian Hayter set out single-handed from Lymington, England on his thirty-two-foot Albert Strange-designed yawl Sheila II, local betting was seven to one that he would get no further than the English Channel. His destination was New Zealand, and the odds were definitely against him. In 1949 perhaps only eight people had sailed solo around the world, and single-handed long-distance sailing voyages were rare. Adrian, then thirty-four, was a soldier, not a sailor. In the previous decade he had been a close observer of the Partition of India and fought as a soldier in the Second World War and the Malayan Emergency. The latter, Britain's brutal reaction to the Communist uprising of 1948, had driven his decision to sail halfway around the world, single-handed. More than sixty years later, and in the thirtieth anniversary year of Adrian's death, Lodestar Books is republishing the story of that voyage, Sheila in the Wind, first published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1959. As a sailor, Adrian recounts his foray into celestial navigation, a back-street appendix operation in India, armed escort by Indonesian authorities at sea, and eating barnacles off the hull to avoid starvation. As a writer he is trying to make sense of the humanitarian disasters that brought him to this voyage. Sheila in the Wind is more than a report of a 13,000-mile adventure; it's a story of the human spirit.

This book aims to help yachtsmen and motorboaters pass the ICC test - essential for anyone wanting to take their yacht or motorboat to the inland waterways of Europe and to many European coastal waters too. Now completely revised and updated for the third edition, Bill Anderson explains the syllabus in detail, provides revision notes on all the subjects in the test, and includes a set of self-test questions and answers at each stage to help readers take the ICC test with confidence. 'Well presented, well illustrated and clearly written...a concise and handy guide that will fulfil all the candidate's requirements.' Nautical Magazine

The 8th edition of Pearson's Canal Companion to the Severn & Avon is increased from 96 pages to 160 pages and features a square-backed spine with sewn sections for added durability. COVERAGE: Includes the River Avon from Tewkesbury to Stratford; the Stratford-on-Avon Canal; the Worcester & Birmingham Canal; the Droitwich Canals; the River Severn from Stourport to Gloucester; the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal; the Cotswold Canals from Framilode to Lechlade; and the Grand Union Canal between Birmingham and Braunston. THE CANAL COMPANIONS: A good guidebook should fulfil three functions: encourage you to go; explain the lie of the land when you're there; and provide a lasting souvenir of your journeys. The Canal Companions tick all three boxes - and more besides. 77 editions have been published to date, amassing sales in excess of half a million books.

Chart scale 1: 350 000 Plans included: Figueira da Foz (1:15 000) Nazare (1:15 000) Porto de Peniche (1:10 000) Cascais (1:15 000) Lisboa Approaches (1:65 000) Lisboa (Lisbon) (1:30 000) Sesimbra (1:15 000) Entrance to Rio Sado (Setubal) (1:40 000) Setubal (1:40 000) Sines (1:30 000) On this edition the chart specification has been improved to show coloured light flashes. There have been numerous updates to harbour developments across the chart, this includes completed harbour works at Sines. The plan of Lisbao Approaches has been extended westward so to include larger scale approaches to both Lisboa and Cascais. There has been general updating throughout.

"I first met her in Tollesbury and immediately fell for her. She was an -Essex girl through and through but not like all the others, although she was shallow. As far as I could see then there were only two problems. There was a big age difference-fifty-five years. She was born in 1904 and I was ten back then in 1959. None of this mattered to me but the second problem would be trickier: my Dad loved her too." So begins Nick Imber's affectionate account of his family's love affair with the barge yacht Nan, who was to give so much pleasure to three generations, across twenty years from the 1950s to the 1970s. We share Nick's childhood excitement on first encountering Nan, his teenage pride in skippering her for the very first time, and his quiet pleasure as his own children take to the water in her. Nan took good care of them all; whether exploring a peaceful East Coast river, braving a gale at sea, or drying out on an idyllic Devon beach, she demonstrates that the humble barge yacht has so much to offer the young sailing family.

Chart scale 1: 350 000 Plans included: A Coruna (1:50 000) Ria de Corme e Laxe (1:75 000) Ria de Camarinas (1:50 000) Ria de Muros (1:75 000) Approaches to Ria de Arousa (1:150 000) Ria de Arousa (1:150 000) Cabo de Cruz (1:40 000) Vilagarcia (1:35 000) Illa de Arousa to Cambados (1:40 000) Ria de Pontevedra (1:150 000) Ria de Vigo (1:150 000) Baiona (1:85 000) Viana do Castelo (1:30 000) Leixoes (1:20 000) Barra do Rio Douro (1:20 000)) On this edition the chart specification has been improved to show coloured light flashes. There have been numerous updates to harbour developments across the chart. The plan of Ria de Camarinas has been extended westward to include a larger scale approach and full charting of Las Quebrantas bank. There has been general updating throughout.

When Ray Whaley set out to accomplish his bucket-list goal of kayaking the length of the St. Johns River, it didn't take long for him to realize he was in over his head. The longest river in Florida, stretching 310 miles between Vero Beach and Jacksonville, the St. Johns had been paddled in its entirety by only a handful of people. Whaley found himself blazing his own trail on an exciting and unexpected adventure.In Journey of a River Walker, Whaley tells the whole story of his experience, from his preparations beforehand to the techniques he learned along the way to his daily escapades and discoveries on the water. Learning from Whaley's recommendations, along with his mistakes and close calls, readers will gain valuable knowledge that will help them in planning their own paddling trips. Whaley's journey also highlights the delicate ecosystem of the river and the importance of conserving its environment, raising awareness of the fragile yet critical link between humans and nature.A volume in the series Wild Florida, edited by M. Timothy O'Keefe.

Scale: Scale: 1:50 000 WGS 84 Includes panel of Gibraltar (1:15 000)

On this edition the chart specification has been improved to show coloured light flashes. Depths have been updated from the latest surveys where available. New plans of Ballycastle and Church Pool are now included. There has been general updating throughout.

Award-winning journalist rafts down the Green River, revealing a multifaceted look at the present and future of water in the American West. The Green River, the most significant tributary of the Colorado River, runs 730 miles from the glaciers of Wyoming to the desert canyons of Utah. Over its course, it meanders through ranches, cities, national parks, endangered fish habitats, and some of the most significant natural gas fields in the country, as it provides water for 33 million people. Stopped up by dams, slaked off by irrigation, and dried up by cities, the Green is crucial, overused, and at-risk, now more than ever. Fights over the river's water, and what's going to happen to it in the future, are longstanding, intractable, and only getting worse as the West gets hotter and drier and more people depend on the river with each passing year. As a former raft guide and an environmental reporter, Heather Hansman knew these fights were happening, but she felt driven to see them from a different perspective-from the river itself. So she set out on a journey, in a one-person inflatable pack raft, to paddle the river from source to confluence and see what the experience might teach her. Mixing lyrical accounts of quiet paddling through breathtaking beauty with nights spent camping solo and lively discussions with farmers, city officials, and other people met along the way, Downriver is the story of that journey, a foray into the present-and future-of water in the West.

Martin O'Scannall loves the old, the eccentric, the offbeat - the quirky if you like; the wandering off into byways, the exploration of half-forgotten snippets of history. And Galicia, his home for the past decade or more, is ideal territory for indulging that taste. Galicia is a time warp: rain-swept, isolated, savage and gentle by turns, as far a cry from the blazing Costas as it is possible to imagine. This book is a conversation with the past, conducted in a very old, engineless gaff cutter, armed with the Admiralty Pilot, a gallant crew, and a sense of the ridiculous. We encounter, but in unexpected ways, the likes of Drake, Nelson, the ill-fated HMS Serpent, Celtic myth and legend, and the reminiscences of those who have gone before, all interspersed with the business of managing an old yacht in the old way: Walker log, paper charts and all. Beginning, as he says it has to be, with the dreaded storm at sea.

Plans included: Rada di Gaeta (1:35 000) Golfo di Pozzuoli and Rada di Napoli (1:65 000) Approaches to Acciaroli (sketch plan) Capo Palinuro (sketch plan)

Three hundred nautical miles from shore, I'm cold and sick and afraid. I pray for reprieve. I long for solid ground. And I can't help but ask myself, What the hell was I thinking? When Sue Williams set sail for the North Atlantic, it wasn't a mid-life crisis. She had no affinity for the sea. And she didn't have an adventure-seeking bone in her body. In the wake of a perfect storm of personal events, it suddenly became clear: her sons were adults now; they needed freedom to figure things out for themselves; she had to get out of their way. And it was now or never for her husband, David, to realize his dream to cross an ocean. So she'd go too. Ready to Come About is the story of a mother's improbable adventure on the high seas and her profound journey within, through which she grew to believe that there is no gift more precious than the liberty to chart one's own course, and that risk is a good thing ... sometimes, at least.