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Title: Through the Spyglass: A Sailor Looks at Cruising & Tells What & Why by Anne M. Hays ISBN: 1-56167-228-9 Publisher: American Literary Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: This is the essence of the cruising lifestyle.
Comment: There are several ways to plumb the essence of boat cruising: go cruising, read about people who cruise, read books that tell you how to cruise. Anne M. Hays book, Through the Spyglass, gives the reader the intuitive insights that embody the spirit of cruising. This is the Zen of cruising; not an orderly list of things to do; not a progresssion of thought to prepare the prepare the boater, but rather the philosophy of cruising, the unexpressed desires and the most deep-seated search of pioneering minds. Some of cruising is euphoris ("The view we marveled at that evening -- sparkling water studded with rocky islands, mountains in the distance backlit by a rising full moon -- was indescribably beautiful..."); some of cruising is rough and life-threadening ("...we ate and drank little, hung on grimly, and wedged ourselves into our wet bunks to try to sleep when off-watch. No one aboard thought those three days were fun..."). At first the book appears to be disjointed, with real life experiences and fictional accounts scattered in a disparate and random telling, but when you finish you realize there is an awakening spirit, a middle journey under moonless nights when the single-handed sailor feels the spirit of the creator, and the closing of a (sailor's) life. Like the old man who was too feeble to safely cruise on his beloved boat, old sailors don't quit; they just go on sailing within the paradise of their memories. Hays introspects that cruising enhances the value of time -- time to linger, time to know friends, time to wait out a storm, time to value. Time is the currency of life. The writing is good, at times gripping, at times hard bridging reality and fiction. Boats are not work, Hays implores; boats are not holes in the water into which you throw money; boats are magic carpets, and if you want to understand cruising, you need to understand the love between a person and his boat, and the person and his dreams. This might be the primer of sailing, the first book. From these stories the reader ultimately understands sailors and sailing.