Saga of a Wayward Sailor

From the Publisher
The indefatigable voyager and storyteller Tristan Jones first gained widespread popularity with the publication of his bestselling Saga of a Wayward Sailor in 1979. It chronicles Jones' adventures from 1961 to 1968 aboard his beloved CRESSWELL, a wooden lifeboat converted to cruising sailboat. Jones survives storms, dismastings, arrest by the Soviet Navy, the smuggling of Edam cheeses and Barbary apes, and being sunk by whales. We also get to meet an intriguing cast of characters: Karl, the German fish-canning salesman; Pete, the Australian smuggler; Sissie, the Englishwoman who wheedles her way permanently aboard; and Nelson, Jones' three-legged dog.

Saga of a Wayward Sailor is quintessential Jones: exciting, poignant, outrageous, and thoroughly amusing. The perfect book with which to start becoming a Jones fan.

"Jones is a natural, a tale-teller whose yarns spring one into the next as if by divine guidance. His books have a vitality that make them nearly impossible to put down." Washington Post

"Vivid...he brilliantly brings to life his traveling companions...his brief encounters with a gallery of idiosyncratic characters...Tristan Jones appears to be the ultimate." New York Times Book Review

"Jones is always unique, outspoken, delightful and full of the most remarkable tales, based on his equally remarkable experiences." Houston Post

"His language is salty, but then he is salty....He is exceptional and his oneness with the sea is classic...he is living an odyssey of such immensity that it is difficult to even imagine. He is the Joshua Slocum of our age." Motor Boat and Sailing

"Here's a rollicking, rumbustious yarn of small boat seafaring, packed with incidents and characters to make you gasp and stretch your eyes." Practical Boat Owner

"Jones's prose - a unique and arresting blend of the earthy, philosophical and the picaresque - and the sheer scale and tangential offshoots of his adventures, made him a wonderful tonic in the age of irredeemably dull books documenting yet another round-the-world race." Motorboat & Yachting

"Tristan Jones, the Welsh adventurer and storyteller, is at his most entertaining in this book." SAIL Magazine

"Autobiographical sketches from 1961 to 1969, laced with rum, schnapps and strange encounters. They principally record a series of wayward voyages and delivery trips beset by nautical disasters, and the amazing chances which have so far prevented them from ending fatally. At the start it promises to be an adventure yarn for the reader who 'always longed to run a trading schooner in the South Seas but became a chartered accountant instead'. However, considerable admiration must be extended to an author capable of overcoming so much adversity, and whose homespun philosophy is, in his own words, 'of great comfort to those at the end of their tether.' It's quite a jolly read." Cruising

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