In 1888, a US Navy sailor begins writing letters to his niece. The letters tell her where he is and what ventures he has gotten himself into. His sailor letters are retrospective, written after things happen. He also must tell her how he got to the place in time he started writing. He is educated for the time, trained as a naval navigator, lighthouse repairman, and watch repairman. His language is as he would speak to his fellow crew—clipped, as sailors use few G sounds, and an apostrophe is used to indicate the word is shortened, as they do. He is honest and kind. He is well trained in sword fighting. His enlistment contract is not the standard form. His mother’s attorney wrote it. The fleet admiral approved it as he had served with the sailor’s uncle. His uncle was a noted ship navigator, shipmaster, an author of navy lore, and now provided ocean metrological data to the naval observatory. He has carried this on. His early experiences involve train travel to San Francisco. The ship charts the then Northwest Territory and the Alaskan coast. His group verifies charts of the Missouri River. Mostly, his ship supplies food provisions to navy frigates in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean.

Along the way are hurricanes in the Atlantic, typhoons and earthquakes in the Pacific and the Orient, wild times on Navy ships and on Navy liberty ashore, as well as rescues at sea--including the famous sinking of the Mary E in the 1976 Miami-Nassau race. There are also evocative stories of idyllic cruises and places, like Nantucket, Scandinavia, Greece, and the coasts of the United States. Robinson's stories are peopled with a warm, amusing, and frequently dramatic cast of characters, including yachts themselves--ranging from sailing skiffs to large ocean-racing machines, and most things in between--old and new, large and small, in storm and calm. His has been a rich sailing life and his stories tell of it with fascination and inescapable entertainment.

"I wanted freedom, open air, and adventure. I found it on the sea." Alain Gerbault The Untold Tales of a Sailor at Sea invites you to look behind cruise ship doors and join in one woman's adventures during her life at sea. Lincee Tang decides to celebrate her milestone thirtieth birthday with a vacation cruise which ignites her desire to sail away to many ports of call proudly wearing the uniform in the Entertainment Department. Lincee's story of making memories at sea unveils the hidden truths and untold stories of the sailing crew who work hard to make passengers' ocean journeys enjoyable. Taking hold of her courage to lose sight of the shore, Lincee discovers hidden talents within, forges ahead with resilience in tough situations, and has her chance at romance and love. Discover how removing inhibitions and fear of the unknown can lead to a whole world of possibilities and adventures. Finding growth in unexpected social, emotional and spiritual avenues leads one to explore how it is possible to reach new horizons. "The Sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever." Jacques Cousteau "They that go down to the ship, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep." Psalm 107: 23-24 "You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore." Christopher Columbus

"An unabridged republication of the following works originally published by Marvel Comics, New York: A Sailor's Story (1987) and A Sailor's Story, Book Two: Winds, Dreams, and Dragons (1989)"--Title page verso.

AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN eBOOK! In 1955, Garcia Marquez was working for El Espectador, a newspaper in Bogota, when in February of that year eight crew members of the Caldas, a Colombian destroyer, were washed overboard and disappeared. Ten days later one of them turned up, barely alive, on a deserted beach in northern Colombia. This book, which originally appeared as a series of newspaper articles, is Garcia Marquez's account of that sailor's ordeal. Translated by Randolf Hogan.

Sadiki fears the worst when he is tossed from his ship in a storm. But a chance encounter with a serpent changes his life and that of the Pharoah.

EYES UNDER THE WATER When Steve Waterman left home in 1964, he was looking for the most exciting job the U.S. Navy had to offer. So Waterman became an underwater photographer, joining an elite group that numbered only fifteen men in the entire navy--men always on call for unusual and interesting assignments. Yet it was the time Waterman spent in Vietnam with Underwater Demolition Team 13 that deserves special respect. Existing in a state of adrenaline driven alertness, UDT-13 men carried out their harrowing missions. Stealthily, silently, they crept through Vietnam's waterways, never knowing if the next bend in the river concealed VC patiently waiting to spring a fiery, murderous ambush. Employing the wit and unvarnished honesty that got him into trouble more than once during his thirteen years in the navy, Waterman unfolds a compelling tale of an ordinary sailor who chose to serve his country during one of the most controversial, challenging times in its history.

A family with wanderlust, a sailboat to carry them across oceans, and an 11-pound dog to watch over them… These are the elements of this delightful memoir of adventurous living. Young newlyweds Peter and Dorothy Muilenburg found their way from New Hampshire to the Virgin Islands. He had been a civil rights Freedom Fighter, jailed in Mississippi while protesting racial injustice. In St. John, she founded the Pine Peace School. They both taught. On an East End beach, he built a sailboat strong enough to take them anywhere, and they put to sea with their two young sons. But their crew was not yet complete. Santos, a schipperke, came to them as a tiny puppy and sailed with them all his life—75,000 deep-sea miles—four times across the Atlantic, crisscrossing the Caribbean, coasting the U.S. eastern seaboard, exploring the Med, ranging up African rivers. A lightning rod for trouble, he survived a kidnapping, hurricanes, raging surf, being lost overboard at sea, and was twice given up for dead. And he watched over his family with fierce and abiding devotion. If you want to see the world—really see it—go by sailboat. And if you want to absorb the world through every pore, take a venturesome dog as your guide. The bright spirit named Santos became a legend to millions of readers through the pages of SAIL and Reader’s Digest magazines. Now Peter Muilenburg—a wise and observant chronicler with a true wanderer’s desire to engage the world on authentic terms—has written this captivating story of familial love and adventure, unforgettable people and places, and an amazing schipperke who has sailed right into the sea dog hall of fame.

"It was the sea that made me begin thinking secretly about love more than anything else; you know, a love worth dying for, or a love that consumes you. To a man locked up in a steel ship all the time, the sea is too much like a woman... Things like her lulls and storms, or her caprice... are all obvious." The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea tells the tale of a band of savage thirteen-year-old boys who reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call "objectivity." When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealize the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard their disappointment in him as an act of betrayal on his part, and react violently.