Gerrit and Bill were amongst the first to drop out of college and take off looking for adventure. They spent a year hitchhiking around the world during the early 60s in search of a mystery woman they had seen in a movie. Each began with one thousand dollars in his pocket, a sleeping bag and a backpack. No hostels, no luxury hotels, given places to sleep by peasants, princes, priests and prostitutes they were nearly dumped out in the middle of the Persian Desert, used unwittingly as a cover for drug smugglers in the Kyber Pass, night club entertainers and celebrities in Calcutta, thrown out of Burma, official greeters for a brothel in Phnom Penh, thrown out of Cambodia, rode a taxi through Viet Cong territory to Saigon, locked with crates of dying monkeys in the hole of a ship crossing the South China Sea, first male models to appear in a Hong Kong fashion show, thrown out of Hong Kong, nearly killed by jellyfish before being thrown out of Borneo, hitched a ride with crocodile poachers in Australia, sailed through the heart of a typhoon in the South Pacific. Invariably, the first thing people who read this saga say is, "I can't believe you are still alive." An honest response would be, "Neither can we."

This book offers hilarious and serious guidelines to people planning to join a bare boat sailing cruise in the Caribbean. Read about Lefty, the Princeton engineering professor, who gives up sailing because he is unable to tie a bowline. Don't become a Purple Pink Love Lady who goes sailing to "find someone." She does find someone until that someone finds someone else on another boat. Rather than returning from the cruise with love in her heart, she returns in despair with her cheeks blistered from the sun, her toes crushed from the stern ladder and her thigh purpled from a spreading bruise. Will she ever go sailing again? Will she try the personal ads instead? Find out. Learn all the ways you can avoid responsibility. If you are a man, learn how to avoid lifting the dinghy engine, hauling up the anchor chain and clogging the toilet. If you are a woman, learn how to avoid steering and the politically incorrect jobs of shopping, cooking and cleaning. Pay attention to the sections on roommate assignment and potty training. You may become more intimate with your roommate than either of you would like. A beginning sailor who is inadequately potty trained can create for himself or herself a situation of almost infinite embarrassment. Don't skip the potty training section even though it is unavoidably impolite. Help with cooking but do not take responsibility for it. You can only lose. Don't let the dinghy drift you to Panama. Do not let the many perils described in this book, perhaps reinforced by your status as a novice sailor, deter you from group cruising. After all, the author has experienced worse perils and still loves the sea. In the last section, he explains why group cruising is worth the hassle even for one not protected by the excellent advice