Patrick Ellam was in the British army in World War Two when a notice said Officers are needed to volunteer to drop alone by parachute behind the enemy lines, so he went to Spy School where he learned burglary, forgery, silent killing and other useful things. Then he spent three years with the top secret Special Operations Executive, moving people and things from one place to another. You could call it smuggling. After the war he sailed from England to America in an 18 foot boat and spent ten years moving all kinds of boats from one port to another, which gave him the details that he needed to write this book.

Patrick Ellam

read every word

in three large dictionaries,

two American ones and the Oxford,

to create this book.

One of the world's most experienced sea adventurers, the veteran of countless ocean voyages, including yacht deliveries on nearly every ocean, single-handed passages, and offshore cruises, has set down the wonderful collection of tricks, lore, shortcuts, techniques, and precautions that he has accumulated over the years.

As Ellam says, "This book is for the yachtsman-whether sail or power-who already knows how to handle a boat under normal conditions and is familiar with the principles of piloting and seamanship but who would like to know more about the problems he may encounter-and how to deal with them-when he undertakes longer passages than he ever has before. For a long time we spent as many as 250 days a year making delivery passages-over all kinds of water-in many different kinds of boats, both sail and power. From that experience we arrived at the concepts and techniques presented here.

"Some of the techniques can be used every day, while others are for special occasions. But following the broad concepts of how to plan and execute a passage enabled us to make one after another, with a high degree of reliability and safety."

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.