Water Travel

Sailing is an international sport that offers many rewards. Imagine white sails billowing against a clear sky, the brisk feel of the breeze on your face, and the gentle motions of the boat as it cleanly slices through the water. While sailing is a great way to enjoy the outdoors, it also requires you to be an active participant more than almost any other type of boating.

Kayak adventurer Jim Payne can’t stop running away from home. After solo trips on American and English waterways, recounted in One Inch above the Water (2008) and Discovering England (2012), Payne shares four more harrowing and humorous adventures in Worlds to Discover: Facing angry bulls and breached dams on the Connecticut River.

The 5,000+ mile route of the Loop Cruise follows historic seaport towns, natural wilderness and coastal fishing communities on a navigable protected waterway that make it an adventure of a lifetime for boaters who dream of seeing the United States and Canada from the helm of their own boat. We were lucky enough to make this journey on our 36-foot trawler, High Life, and chronicled our voyage.

Two Years Before the Mast is a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834 and published in 1840. While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles that affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway), and being something of a nonconformist, left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor.

Steve Haywood has been cruising the inland waterways for 50 years, and has amassed a following of readers and listeners keen to hear about his travelling tales on Britain’s beautiful canals and rivers. Tales from the Tillerman is both his tribute to Britain’s canals, rivers and countryside and a celebration of Britishness in all its eccentric glory. Unlike Steve’s previous titles, Tales from the Tillerman is casting the net wider and drawing from his full 50 years of experience, recounting the many hair-raising escapades he’s had up and down the country.

Interwoven with legends and lore, this story chronicles one man's adventure on Lake Superior, one of the world's most dangerous bodies of water.

When Alex Kaine scores a job with a small but lucrative travel agency, he discovers its secret: that Mystic Getaways actually controls the Mystic Gateways, a series of portals that open wormholes to dramatically altered, far-flung versions of our own world.

‘Windswept is a wonderful work, prose painted in bold, bright strokes like a Scottish Colourist's canvas’ ROBERT MACFARLANE ‘An instant classic of British nature-writing’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH A few years ago, Annie Worsley traded a busy life in academia to take on a small-holding or croft on...

Do you have a dream you must pursue, but everyone says it's unrealistic? Or that you're not qualified? Too old, too out of shape? Or you don't have the "right experience?" Glenn Damato was a 41-year-old software instructor who sought to exceed the bounds of his comfortable but humdrum existence. He embarked on an adventure for which he was miserably unprepared. Why did he do this? How did he answer the ancient human question: how do we jump-start growth in our lives? We become something we were not.

Yet familiar though the sea areas are by name, few people give much thought to where they are or what they contain. In Attention All Shipping, Charlie Connelly wittily explores the places behind the voice, those mysterious regions whose names seem often to bear no relation to conventional geography. Armchair travel will never be the same again.

The Motorcycle & The Molecule is a comical insight into intentional communities, international travel, and alternative styles of living. Mayan rulers, janky motorcycles, and mischievous beavers all make appearances in a tale inspired by a solo research expedition through Central America.

Leaving her garden to the mercy of the slugs, award-winning writer Alys Fowler set out in an inflatable kayak to explore Birmingham's canal network, full of little-used waterways where huge pike skulk and kingfishers dart. Her book is about noticing the wild everywhere and what it means to see beauty where you least expect it. What happens when someone who has learned to observe her external world in such detail decides to examine her internal world with the same care?

A tale of adventures, as Lin and Larry Pardey continue their voyaging on board their self-built 24'4" cutter. They cross the exotic sea that spawned Homer's tales of Ulysses' Odyssey, then sail through the strife torn Red Sea and across the typhoon tossed waters of the Bay of Bengal.

Join cruising legends Lin and Larry Pardey as from England they proceed into the Baltic, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Germany. During their voyage they dealt with armed guards on the Polish waterfront who watched while the people greeted them with flowers and fruit. They weathered a fierce mast-under broach in a Baltic gale. And experienced great friendships found in harbors large and small.

Whether he's chasing sailfish in Panama or hunting dove and quail deep in Mexico, Gordon England pursues outdoor sports with a passion for the biggest and best. In this collection he catches huge dolphin in the Exumas, races motocross through woods both on and off the trails, hunts ducks in brutal Texas snow and ice, hooks hopelessly large blue marlin in Nassau, and gets lost at sea in a monstrous Gulf of Mexico storm.

A North Country Life is the story of author Sydney Lea’s powerful connection to his family, friends, and the northern outdoors. Loosely organized by the changing of seasons, different sections feature essays on such topics as childhood family fishing trips in the wilds of Maine, trophy fly-fishing the northern reaches of the Connecticut River, the opening day of turkey hunting season in Vermont, and getting lost in the deep woods while deer hunting. The essays are introspective and dramatic.

The solemn, rhythmic intonation of the shipping forecast on BBC radio is as familiar as the sound of Big Ben chiming the hour. Since its first broadcast in the 1920s, it has inspired poems, songs, and novels, in addition to its intended objective of warning generations of seafarers of impending storms and gales. In Attention All Shipping, Charlie Connelly wittily explores the places behind the voice, those mysterious regions whose names seem often to bear no relation to conventional geography.

A wondrous, uproarious, and surprisingly informative account of a year spend surfing, Caught Inside marks the arrival of an exuberant new voice of the outdoors. This remarkable narrative of Daniel Duane’s life on the water is enhanced by good-humored explanations of the physics of wave dynamics, the intricate art of surfboard design, and lyrical, sharp-eyed descriptions of the flora and fauna of the Pacific wilderness.

In the late 1990s, Patrick O’Brian’s beloved, massively bestselling historical novel series was destined for film. With director Peter Weir and stars Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany signed on for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, there was only one problem: The Rose, the replica eighteenth-century warship that filmmakers bought for the production, was in Newport, Rhode Island, two oceans and thousands of miles away from Hollywood. Enter a ragtag crew of thirty oddballs and tall-ship fanatics, including author Will Sofrin.

In November 2015 Sarah Outen completed her five-year, 25,000 mile journey looping the planet by cycling across Europe, Asia and North America and canoeing and kayaking across the North Pacific and most of the North Atlantic.