Treacherous Waters

A small sailboat pitchpoles in the violent waters near Cape Horn; the husband-and-wife crew face a weeks-long struggle to stay afloat and survive aboard the damaged craft. A sailor miscalculates the path of a typhoon; hours later, his lover is torn from his grasp by savage seas. Their 46-foot ketch dismasted and nearly swamped by a huge wall of water, three sailors race to bail her out and rerig her before the sea can deliver a death blow. A woman is knocked unconscious in a storm; when she recovers consciousness, her fiance is gone--she is alone on the boat. These are just a few of the tales of adventure, tragedy, and loss that you'll find in "Treacherous Waters."

A small boat in distress on a vast ocean is a tiny stage on which the entire human drama plays out during a struggle for survival. In this collection of true stories, some of the most notable nautical writers of the past half-century provide riveting accounts of terrifying, perilous, and challenging experiences at sea. Here are triumph, disaster, love, courage, guilt, rescue, and death as captured by Webb Chiles ("The Open Boat"), Jim Carrier ("The Ship and the Storm"), Gordon Chaplin ("Dark Wind"), Tami Oldham Ashcraft ("Red Sky in Mourning"), and many more.

Some are intensely meditative tales, others are pure adventure. Some reveal personal insights, while others focus on the events as they unfold. Still others will make your heart race and your palms sweat, while some, in the end, will leave you weeping.

The lessons learned from these harrowing adventures are as diverse as the people who experienced them. They range from a better understanding of rough-weather sailing to a profound appreciation of the will to survive. While many of these sailors discovered deep wells of strength and resourcefulness within themselves, others never recovered from the bitter losses they suffered.

"Treacherous Waters" offers compelling reading to avid sailors, devoted nautical readers, and anyone who loves a good story well told. It will transport you to remote polar waters, send you scudding toward jagged tropical reefs, and leave you wondering how you might respond when faced with an overwhelming life-or-death challenge.

Even with the most strenuous struggle, the sea sometimes overwhelms.

A hurricane can take an entire ship and all its crew. You may come to after a knockdown and find your partner simply vanished from the boat. You may lose hold of your lover in a turmoil of water and never find her again. You may watch your daughter die in the life raft. In the true stories in "Treacherous Waters," all of those and more come to pass. . . .

Contributors: Tami Oldham Ashcraft - Marlin Bree - John Caldwell - Jim Carrier - Gordon Chaplin - Webb Chiles - Lisa Clayton - Ann Davison - John Guzzwell - Jonathan Hall - Reanne Hemingway-Douglass - Tristan Jones - Gilbert Klingel - Kim Leighton - Louise Longo - Richard Maury - Dougal Robertson - John Rousmaniere - Tim Severin - Deborah Shapiro and Rolf Bjelke