The Biggest Boat I Could Afford
Hughes, Lee. THE BIGGEST BOAT I COULD AFFORD. Sheridan House 2004. ISBN 0-9542750-4-7. 304 p.
This promised to be a great book. It looked similar in scope to Frank Dye's "Sailing to the Edge of Fear" which told of his sail from Florida to Lake Superior in a 17 foot Wayfarer dinghy. In fact it was a lot more similar than anticipated as the boat that Lee Hughes used was in fact Frank Dye's "Wanderer" purchased by happenstance on the used boat market.
However, New Zealander Lee Hughes is no Frank Dye and although it is the same boat it is not the same trip. Most disappointingly Hughes doesn't even make his stated objective of sailing the entire U.S. east coast as he packs it in after reaching New York. On the other hand it may be just as well. He isn't much of a sailor and doesn't communicate much of an interest in the adventure. It takes 250 pages to get from Key West to Annapolis and then about 40 pages from there to New York. If he had gone as far as Maine it would have taken about 3 more pages. He seems to have undertaken the trip to deal with fear of sailing and when that disappeared, as he stated in his diary " Because I'm not finding it hard or frightening any more, just a bit ho-hum and uncomfortable." By Annapolis I too was beginning to loose interest.
Rather than read this I recommend Frank Dye's original.
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