Seafaring books, three new releases to feel like you’re on a boat even at home

At this “dreary” and gray time of year, where you work away from your boat, there is a way to “escape” and get back on board. An ancient but foolproof way. Buy a good sea book. We have scouted three titles for you, released in 2021, that will make you feel on the boat! Among the waves of the oceans at Vendée Globe, in the crystal waters of a Polynesian atoll, in an old seaside village.

Three sea books to make you feel at home on the boat, too

“The Soul in the Ocean,” by Giancarlo Pedote.

The first sea book, fresh off the press, is “L’Anima nell’Oceano,” in which sailor Giancarlo Pedote recounts his solo round-the-world voyage(published by Rizzoli illustrati for Mondadori Electa, 256 pages, 25 euros) .

A book in which Giancarlo recounts the emotions he saw reflected in the Ocean, “characters” he saw come on board to question him, provoke him, challenge him, tempt him. But above all, it speaks of the search for that something that even in the Great South, even when the sky has been gray for days and there is a danger of encountering icebergs, fills the cells of the body with sunshine and energy: plenitude.

All this, experienced during one of the toughest sports competitions in terms of living conditions and duration: 80 days at sea alone, competing in extreme racing boats, with no assistance, no possibility of stopovers, accompanied by deafening noises, extreme temperatures, deep reflections.

“This book is not an account of the Vendée Globe: it is part of it. When I was alone, it was cold and the boat was banging around nauseatingly, I felt supported by so many people and felt privileged to be able to be their eyes, their sense of smell, their sense of touch, all five senses: when I took a picture, it was for them, when I narrated something in a video, it was for them. I tried to share everything, because an experience jealously guarded and not shared, loses value” said Giancarlo Pedote, who relates, “When I returned home, I realized that I had not been able to say it all, that so much still needed to be told, etched under the skin. And so it was that on sleepless nights, in the time I had left free of commitments, I began to write unfiltered pages of this book“.

Filled with photographic images, introspection and flashbacks revealing episodes from Giancarlo’s life, “The Soul in the Ocean” will be in all bookstores starting Nov. 30 and is already available for pre-order on major online stores.

YOU CAN PURCHASE IT HERE

“Barefoot, disheveled, tanned” by Raffaella Marozzini

The second volume we highlight is “Barefoot, Disheveled, Tanned” by Raffaella Marozzini (Giulio Perrone Editore, 282 pages, 18 euros). The book tells of the round-the-world boat trip that the Roman author, a maritime broker with sailing in her blood since she was a young girl, undertook with her husband on an Etap 39s (just under 12 meters by 3.85), Obiwan.

Why, in our opinion, should it be read? Primarily, it is a story of great passion: that of a woman who decides to dedicate her life to sailing, leaving her job, renting her house and selling cars and scooters. Then, it is full of useful considerations and advice for those who sail: Raffaella left from Nisyros, Greece, and Obiwan is currently in Australia.

You will find many hints, places, suggestions that can be an inspiration for your next cruise. Especially the Polynesia section, it will make you want to drop everything and head off to wild atolls to dive among manta rays and take part in, for example, an unforgettable Fijian Christmas lunch.

YOU CAN PURCHASE IT HERE

“Earth Sickness,” by Tomas Gazo.

The third book we present was written by the talented journalist from Imperia, Tommasino “Ino” Gazo. It is a novel entitled “Earth Sickness” (Writers Next Door, 158 pages, 9.50 euros).

This is the synopsis of the novel which, in the end, has only one major protagonist. Passion for sailing.

1950s. A village that breathes and lives next to the city of Imperia: a crossroads even during the post-World War II period of all of western Liguria. Francis, a sailing enthusiast, is twenty-five years old and works as an apprentice shipwright in Master Berto’s shipyard.

Sun, sea, a craft that has something poetic and adventurous in its veins at the same time, a quiet village where numerous girls from Germany and Northern Europe vacation in the summer. A desirable life? No. Francis is basically a young man left alone to cope with everyday life: the death of his father has prevented him from graduating from college, precluded him from the opportunity to escape, if you will, from a world that on closer inspection sounds narrow-minded, often inhospitable.

But one day he meets Elisabetta, a young Milanese woman who has come to enjoy the sun and sea, and the two fall in love. But he continues to feel lost in the distance between their two worlds: a postwar Milan beginning to revive itself and a province struggling instead to make progress an opportunity. After the first months of estrangement, kept alive by love letters, Elizabeth informs Francis that their feeling is doomed: her father has betrothed her to a young man capable of turning around the fortunes of the family business. She will disappear, forever.

Francis has a friend, Leonardo: a workmate with whom he always quarrels, and to whom, year after year, he grows closer. The two of them, together, do regattas, almost have a good time… they will even begin work on building a house boat – a kind of boat that does not sail, a floating houseboat – just for Elizabeth’s father: the project, however, will remain unfinished, the skeleton of the boat to rot in the yard.

A few years go by. Progress then comes, and it tastes of plastic and new materials with which to make boats of all shapes and sizes.Master Berto will close the shipyard, Francis and Leonardo will look for a new life. The former will become a sailor on merchant ships plying the Atlantic, the latter a fisherman and occasional bricklayer. Francis’ opportunity will come unexpectedly: a distant relative bequeaths him a house and more than a little money.

So here was the idea, get a boat, live on the sea during the months when he would not sail on the merchant ships. But that idea, in the face of a world he cannot understand, becomes a definitive life choice. Set out to discover another life, in search of himself. And never return to the ground.

YOU CAN PURCHASE IT HERE

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