This was a good read in the format of a journal. This Swedish couple took turns writing chapters about where they were and what they were doing. They documented the reality of trying to get repairs in foreign ports along with the joy of discovering new places. This book brought back memories for me as we completed a flight around the worlds in 2008 and a circumnavigation of South America in 2006. We visited many of the places they did and enjoyed reading about it from the viewpoint of sailing rather than by flying. The only complaint I have is they stopped this book in New Zealand and I don't think they wrote the second half of the journey yet!
Just in, the second part of this story will be released in May 2011 in Swedish (and hopefully) followed up with an English translation. I'll post an update to this when I hear more.
Written by Arne Martensson
The big adventure begins when Yaghan leaves Bullando Marina in Stockholm on June 1, 2006. Arne and Helene Martensson have both left important banking jobs in order to take on an entirely different kind of challenge - circumnavigating the world. Arne is chairman of Handelsbanken as well as on the board of some of Sweden's largest companies when he and Helene decide to pursue their dream and sail around the world. They travel west through the trade wind belt along the equator in the wake of James Cooks first expedition. They continue all the way down to the dangerous, but beautiful, Antarctic after which they sail up the coast of Chile and around the islands of Patagonia. The Yaghan is a 62-foot Hallberg-Rassy equipped with the latest in modern technology and everything else that makes a cruise around solitary waters easier. All important functions are doubled as an extra precaution in situations when help is a long way away. Arne and Helene write about how to equip a yacht to cope with an extreme circumnavigation, criteria for weather and route analyses, fantastic scenery and, above all, about their choice to leave the financial world in order to lead another kind of life. The Yaghan website and blog attracted 600,000 hits during the three year circumnavigation and the twenty-one movies at YouTube have been watched 120,000 times during first six months. The channel is Etaomega07. The Swedish edition of the book sold almost 10,000 copies the first twelve months.
Published by Norstedts, the ISBN is 978-91-1-302809-5 and our rating for this book is