Overview

The Caiad is structured around a decade-long around-the-world voyage in a sailboat undertaken in his fifties by a novice sailor who brings his family with him and learns along the way about boats, sailing and the sea, as well as about himself. The title is derived from the pseudonym Caius used by the author, who presents most of the story as a third person narrative. As he learns the ropes amid many embarrassing and potentially dangerous errors caused by his inexperience, and as he survives exhausting and terrifying trials at sea, Caius, who grew up as a shy child and became a tentative, indecisive and unfeeling adult, gradually gains confidence, self-respect and ultimately a composure and tranquility and a softer and more generous nature that had eluded him most of his life. The family crew includes Caius s wife Jane and their combined family of six children of wide-ranging ages. When Caius must return to his job, the boat is watched over by a liveaboard mate, a series of four young men who also began with little or no sailing experience and who travel from port to port during their successive tenures as the boat moves on around the world, and this is their story as well. When his children s schools intervened Caius sometimes had to seek out other crew for long passages, leading to some interesting interrelationships. Alone at the helm at night in the middle of the great oceans the author muses about life, science, oceanography, cosmology, the nature of time, infinity and mortality.

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9781306965019

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