During our voyage we dealt with problems such as repairing a Honda generator ("They Have You By the Parts") and attacking radical rot ("Up Your Mast)." We had navigation problems ("there's really nothing to worry about, even if youdon't know where the hell you are") as well as marine head challenges ("much like mud wrestling in a phone booth"). I don't know how we would have survived without a sense of humor.

        What others have said:

        "...Contains more of the same jolly cruising in the South Pacific as did...Blown Away. There's also more of the same self-deprecating humor, more good seafaring yarns and anecdotes. Yet beneath the subterfuge of a raconteur and a comic is a man who knows the way of a yacht, a man who is mechanically and navigationally competent, and one who, I'll bet, is cool in a jam -- though more often then not he depicts himself as a clown. For the vicarious voyager this is an amusing and informative read; for someone bound to the South Pacific, a vade mecum. [George Carey, SAIL Magazine]

        Excerpt:

        The scene: Having returned to California after seven years of ocean cruising, we were varnishing SEA FOAM preparatory to selling her. George, a fellow sailor and yacht refinisher, stopped to say "hello."

        "D'you mean to tell me you varnish with a sponge?"

        Mere underscoring can't begin to communicate George's scorn. A craftsman, George had built his own boat. He approached varnishing with the same reverence that the Japanese approach tea drinking. His varnishing brush, which he kept enshrined in a hermetically sealed glass case in his yacht's salon, was made from the finest badger hair. I never could find the slightest imperfection in any of George's varnish work; but he could, and when I would praise his work he would point out my crippled critical facility by showing me where and how he'd screwed up. The fact that I applied varnish with one of those inexpensive sponge brushes strained our friendship to its limits. The fact that I was content with my results cost me George's respect....

"You Can't Blow Home Again" completes the saga of a family that invested a large chunk of life to travel and adventure in an old wooden sailboat -- and wouldn't trade the experience for all the inflated real estate in California.

        You'll want to own this book because it's the first edition hardcover, brand new, and I, the author, can sign it to whomever you wish. It differs from the paperback in that it contains 8 pages of full color illustrations.

        If you read and enjoyed "Blown Away," you'll find this book a continuation our adventures cruising aboard Sea Foam. The stories take up where "Blown Away" left off and follow us from Tahiti to Suvarov, Samoa, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, then back to Fiji. From Fiji we voyaged to Suvarov, Penrhyn, Hawaii and finally home to California, where we sold the boat and suffered the pains of reintroduction to land life.

Anchored in Ongea, where erosion has made all the islets seem like they're from Hobbitland.