Taleisin's Tales

by Lin Pardey

Overview

Including stories from paradise and hard-won lessons in seamanship, Taleisin's Tales reflects back to the first miles Lin and Larry Pardey gained together on their second boat – one they built lovingly with teak carvel planking over sawn black locust frames. The book begins with the boat launch and the transition from their cherished Seraffyn, and includes details from outfitting, provisioning and final detailing during the early months Lin and Larry spent getting to know their new bluewater cruiser, as well as moments of melancholy as they let go of attachments to their first trusty boat that took them around the world. The story takes the reader through those initial cautious 1000 coastal miles between California and the Sea of Cortez, discussing everything from sail handling to dinghy racing to the relative luxuries of bicycles and a custom-built sitztub. It reveals surprising and pleasant engagements with other sailors and locals along the Baja peninsula. Then it launches the reader across the Pacific, sailing with the Pardeys on Taleisin's first offshore leg to French Polynesia, through the Cook Islands and Tonga, then on to New Zealand, where they eventually made their new home. In the style readers have come to know through the Pardeys' ever popular Cruising in Seraffyn series and Lin's award winning Bull Canyon, this book relates stories sometimes harrowing, sometimes cautionary, sometimes hilarious – and often heart-warming, especially when it comes to encounters with the people of the South Pacific who become family. If there is a lesson to be gained from reading Taleisin's Tales, it's that slowing the pace and taking each day as it comes brings unexpected moments of clarity and joy. And that sailing across an ocean on a small boat is not easy but, with the right partner and attitude, can be beautifully rewarding.
Taleisin's Tales takes the reader from Bull Canyon, California, to Kawau Island, New Zealand, where, after 28 years of voyaging on Taleisin, Lin and Larry now spend their time running a small nautical publishing company and managing a very small boatyard, puttering about on their fifteen-foot Herreshoff sloop and reflecting on their five decades of bluewater cruising.


Taleisin's Tales captures a sweet moment in the sailing career of "the first couple of cruising"--a time when Lin and Larry didn't quite know their boat, or each other in it; a time when Taleisin was still a fair-weather craft whose dinghy threatened to come loose in the first blow and whose locker latches still failed to secure their contents; a time before two mere mortals had grown into the legends they would become. Through forty years of writing, Lin Pardey's gift has always been to capture the joyful metaphysics of an adventuresome love affair in the bronze-and-wood details of boomkins and bobstays. Talesin's Tales takes us through the early steps, uncertain at first but ever more confidently toward farther horizons, steps that ultimately lead to the one shared life which just may turn out to be the happiest in all of our voyaging literature." --Tim Murphy, Editor-at-Large, Cruising World









What the reviewers have to say:

"I'm not sure which writer I admire more: the young girl in lust with tomorrow's cruise or the respected sailing sage looking back on a life well lived on a small boat cluttered with large dreams. One thing I know is that Lin's pen has been whispering to me for over forty years now--and this is one of her best." -- Gary 'Cap'n Fatty' Goodlander, author of Buy, Outfit and Sail

"Lin Pardey has done it again! Her first full-length cruising narrative in many years is as fresh and relevant as those tales that entertained and inspired a generation of sailors decades ago. Once you step aboard, you won't want to step off again." --Charles Doane, Cruising Editor, Sail Magazine

"Taleisin's Tales captures a sweet moment in the sailing career of 'the first couple of cruising'--a shared life which just may turn out to be the happiest in all of our voyaging literature." --Tim Murphy
Editor-at-Large, Cruising World

Product Details

BN ID:	2940156905027
Publisher:	Pardey Books
Publication date:	11/02/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

“After voyaging tens of thousands of engineless miles under sail, penning more useful marine books than Hiscock and Moitessier combined, and receiving more awards for their pursuits than Tom Hanks has for his, Lin and Larry Pardey are entitled to their well-earned nautical opinions.” — Herb McCormack, editor-at-large, Cruising World

Lin and Larry Pardey have been called, ‘the enablers’. Their books and videos have encouraged sailors of all ages to stop dreaming and start doing. The knowledge they share has been earned during the four plus decades they have been voyaging together, years during which they completed both east-about and west-about circumnavigations on board their own self-built, engine-free cutters, Seraffyn and Taleisin. During their most recent east-to-west voyage, they sailed below four of the great Southern Capes, including Cape Horn. Lin and Larry have delivered more than two dozen boats across oceans and raced on their own and on other peoples’ boats. To date, Lin has sailed almost 200,000 miles and Larry has accumulated over 220,000 miles at sea.
Lin and Larry’s articles have appeared in: Cruising World, Sail, Good Old Boat, Wooden Boat, Practical Sailor, Yachting World, Yachting Monthly, Classic Boat (UK), Cruising Helmsman (Australia), Boating New Zealand, South African Yachting, Nautica Brazil, and Yacht (Germany).
Their 12 books and 5 video programs have been published in the United States, England, and New Zealand; and translated into German, Russian, Italian and Japanese.
Lin and Larry sailed through the Line Islands then south to New Zealand where they have a home base and small boat yard on an island north of Auckland. It was here that Lin finished writing her eleventh book, an award winning memoir called, Bull Canyon, a Boatbuilder, a Writer and other Wildlife, then went on to write the sequel, Taleisin’s Tales. Lin also publishes books by other authors choosing ones which she feels will inspire others to make adventurous decisions.