Saving Our Oceans is available May 15, 2019, for $13.95.
Saving Our Oceans is a robust accounting primarily of plastic pollution slowly blanketing the oceans (and earth). The author also covers the illegal slaughter of whales and dolphins, the IWC, and most importantly, a chapter on what we individually can do to help stop the cataclysmic catastrophe that is unfolding on this planet.
Few people realize that the ocean provides 70% of the oxygen we breathe. If the ocean ails, we ail. If things continue as they are, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050, experts say. Almost every necropsy on dead seabirds, fish, whales, and pinnipeds reveals plastic, including plastic bags, in their stomachs. Over 1,000,000 seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals die every year from plastic ingestion.
Although the vast, vast majority of the plastic pollution is said to come from Africa, China, and Indonesia, it affects us all. We are facing the extinction of marine life if plastic producers don’t step up and take responsibility for their end product.
Saving Our Oceans is informative and infuriating, but ultimately it promises a bit of hope. Look for the book’s release in May 2019.
The Old Folks in the Boat provides a humorous, yet sometimes quite serious, look at two sextagenarians who take up the sport of rowing…rowing a wherry to be more precise.
The book details the learning curve of the two determined people. The first part of the book deals with the actual building of the wherry and its trailer by the author’s husband, Tom. There are good photos of the process, and the author provides a fairly comprehensive history of the wherry and rowing in this country in this first section.
The particular details of Jack Kelly provide extremely interesting reading. Jack Kelly is considered the most famous U.S. rower in American history. He was a three-time Olympic gold medalist, father of actress-turned-Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly and Jack Kelly Jr., a champion oarsman also.
The author is well-read as far as American rowers go, mostly distance rowers. She discusses several of these people in detail, and most people will find themselves ordering those books also.
The second section of The Old Folks in the Boat covers the author’s determination to row 200 miles in a 100-day period. This wouldn’t be particularly notable had she not been endeavoring to do this in the god-awful Arizona summer heat, complete with monsoons and searing temperatures. The author’s account is often humorous, and she spends her time at the oars contemplating myriad topics. Some are ridiculously humorous; some very personal.
The book has received some nice reviews even though rowing books appeal to a very small demographic!
LIFE WAS A CABARET: A TALE OF TWO FOOLS, A BOAT AND A BIG-A** OCEAN
Life Was A Cabaret is actually the first “water book,” indeed the first book, that Becky Coffield wrote. The book tells of her and her husband’s six years aboard their Cal 2-34 as they managed to travel about 25,000 miles.
Neophytes to boating, this book is simultaneously hilarious yet terrifying to think that two people, ignorant about the sailing world, took off from Newport, Oregon to Alaska where they spent two years working and traveling. “Our time in Alaska may have been the best part of the six years we lived aboard,” Becky has said.
From Sitka, Alaska, the two voyagers harbor-hopped the full length of the North American continent for five months, finally arriving in Acapulco, Mexico. From there the intrepid sailors proceeded to get their butts kicked across the Pacific Ocean to their first landfall, Nuku Hiva in French Polynesia.
People who read this book either want to go home and pack their duffle bags and take to sea immediately, or they shudder with fear and disbelief and vow they’ll never put themselves in this kind of danger – ever.
This is a fun read with the most recent edition having photos.
Westerns, Whales and Oceans 