Water Travel

In 1930, two novice paddlers - Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port - launched a secondhand 18-foot canvas canoe from the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2,250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages.

Joshua Slocum was believed to be the first man to sail single-handed around the world. After a distinguished career, where he worked his way up from cabin boy to captain, Joshua Slocum wrecked his ship off the coast of Brazil. Turning this catastrophe to his advantage, he built a sailing canoe from the wreckage and sailed back to New York. Moreover, he wrote Voyage of the Liberdad, a chronicle of his trip, and earned some literary success.

As Tammy explores mountains and beaches in paradise, she’s fueled by the allure of new cultures, creating memories that have made her who she is today. Throughout her island adventures to the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and Curacao, as well as hikes through national parks in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, surprises lurk at every turn—from navigating floods to fending off avian ambushes. Embracing the chaos, Tammy turns each misadventure into a story worth telling.

These essays recount his adventures alone and with friends, taking listeners through the seasons. In Paulsen’s north country, every expedition is a major one, and often hilarious. Once again Gary Paulsen demonstrates why he is one of America’s most beloved writers, for he shows us fishing and hunting as pleasure, as art, as companionship, and as source of life’s deepest lessons.

Tania Aebi was an unambitious 18-year-old, a bicycle messenger in New York City by day, a Lower East Side barfly at night. In short, she was going nowhere - until her father offered her a challenge: Tania could choose either a college education or a 26-foot sloop. The only catch was that if she chose the sailboat, she'd have to sail around the world - alone. She chose the boat, and for the next two and a half years and 27,000 miles, it was her home.

John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads "I’m Not Psycho", he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. But who should we be more worried about, the delicate film director with genteel manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash?

Including stories from paradise and hard-won lessons in seamanship, Taleisin's Tales reflects back to the first miles Lin and Larry Pardey gained together on the second boat they built lovingly with teak carvel planking over sawn black locust frames. The book includes details from outfitting, provisioning, and final detailing during the early months Lin and Larry spent getting to know their new bluewater cruiser, as well as moments of melancholy as they let go of attachments to their first trusty boat.

Set in the remote arctic region of Northern Canada, this book takes listeners on a harrowing canoe voyage that results in tragedy, redemption, and, ultimately, transformation. George Grinnell was one of six young men who set off on the 1955 expedition led by experienced wilderness canoeist Art Moffatt. Poorly planned and executed, the journey seemed doomed from the start. Ignoring the approaching winter, the men became entranced with the peace and beauty of the arctic in autumn.

Stuart Woods had never owned more than a dinghy before setting out on one of the world's most demanding sea voyages, navigating single-handedly across the Atlantic. How, at the age of 37, did this self-proclaimed novice go from small ponds to the big sea? Now with a new afterword that looks back at how one transatlantic race changed his life, Woods takes listeners on a spectacular journey not just of traveling across the world, but of being tried in fire, learning by accepting challenges, appreciating the beauty of the open water, and living to tell about it.

Unrelenting winds, carnivorous polar bears, snake nests, sweltering heat, and constant hunger. Paddling from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay, following the 2,000-mile route made famous by Eric Sevareid in his 1935 classic Canoeing with the Cree, Natalie Warren and Ann Raiho faced unexpected trials, some harrowing, some simply odd. Warren's spellbinding account retraces the women's journey from inspiration to Arctic waters, giving listeners an insider view of planning a three-month canoe expedition to the successful accomplishment of the adventure of a lifetime.

An immersive journey through the culture and cuisine of one Japanese town, its forest, and its watershed - where ducks are hunted by net, saké is brewed from the purest mountain water, and charcoal is fired in stone kilns - by an American writer and food stylist who spent years working alongside artisans.

Erik Weihenmayer is the first and only blind person to summit Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. Descending carefully, he and his team picked their way across deep crevasses and through the deadly Khumbu Icefall; when the mountain was finally behind him, Erik knew he was going to live. His expedition leader slapped him on the back and said something that would affect the course of Erik’s life: “Don’t make Everest the greatest thing you ever do.” No Barriers is Erik’s response to that challenge.

Richard Henry Dana, a law student turned sailor for health reasons, sailed in 1834 aboard the brig Pilgrim on a voyage from Boston around Cape Horn to California. Drawing from his journals, Two Years Before the Mast gives a vivid and detailed account, shrewdly observed and beautifully described, of a common sailor's wretched treatment at sea, and of a way of life virtually unknown at that time.

Come aboard with Heyward and Charlotte as they transform a worn-out hull into a first-class blue water cruiser. Then take off and cross oceans with them, feeling their desperation when equipment failures force ingenious workarounds in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Share the highs of navigating the crystal waters of French Polynesia and the lows of crossing pirate-infested waters in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden. Travel ashore with them to places not covered in travel brochures, meet natives untouched by the modern world, and navigate the political waters of Guantanamo Bay.

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.

Dr. Rebecca Harper-Buchanan continues her journey in the 1800s on the Cattle Creek Ranch. She is now a qualified doctor, as well as a trained veterinarian. Rebecca must contend with the health problems of both animals and humans without the benefit of modern medicine she once enjoyed.

Erik and Emily skillfully reveal that it is possible to live big on a shoestring budget while giving their family an astonishing education in adventure, creativity, purpose, and grit. Told alternately by Erik and Emily, Seven at Sea is a portrait of a captivating and resilient family and a celebration of the courage it takes to head for something over the horizon.

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.

This 148-day journey began on Darcy Gaechter’s 35th birthday. She sold her successful outdoor adventure business, upsetting her partner and boyfriend of 12 years and getting them both fired in the process. The emotional waters that would fester and erupt on the ensuing journey were often more challenging to navigate than the mighty river itself. With blistering lips and irradiated fingernails, Darcy would tackle raging Class Five whitewater for 25 days straight, barely surviving a dynamite-filled canyon being prepared for a new hydroelectric plant.

For centuries, mariners have spun tales of gargantuan waves, 100-feet high or taller. Until recently scientists dis​missed these stories - waves that high would seem to violate the laws of physics. But in the past few decades, as a startling number of ships vanished and new evidence has emerged, oceanographers realized something scary was brewing in the planet’s waters. They found their proof in February 2000, when a British research vessel was trapped in a vortex of impossibly mammoth waves in the North Sea - including several that approached 100 feet.