Don't look now, but the Audrey Eleanor stands docked and beckoning you into these pages for some of the most absorbing, spellbinding and hilarious tales ever to float from the decks of a Canadian vessel. Masterfully employing a keen memory, a mariner's perceptiveness and a flair for propelling words into vivid images, Dawn Kostelnik navigates literary cruisers into an extraordinary array of escapades and predicaments. The matchless trails and tribulations she sets out will bob in the reader's memory long after the venerable Audrey Eleanor has emerged from her latest stretch of placid or stormy waters that mark a particular chapter's adventures. Imagine having an unexpected spell of furious weather and looming rocks threaten to reduce your pride and joy to a soggy mass of splintered lumber-with your life and limb in jeopardy in the process. Picture a pack of elusive rats, doggedly chewing their way through one of the most important investments you've ever made. The Audrey Eleanor's amazing odysseys and bizarre misadventures will leave you alternately quaking and shaking your head in admiration at Kostelnik and Captain Rick Cousins' sheer grit and persistence in vowing to bear down and carry on-and admiring their profoundly- engrained love for their vessel. Whether you're the wizened skipper of a weather-beaten schooner or someone whose maritime knowledge fits into a rowboat's bailing can, you'll relish the stories you'll discover aboard the Audrey Eleanor. The amazing capers that await you after shoving off will take this volume to a permanent and prominent mooring place on your bookshelf -Jim Butler, Editor Whitehorse Star newspaper