SAILING AWAY

This is the story of La Graciosa’s voyage across the Atlantic and around the Americas. It is the story of the people who sailed on her and the interesting and strange places she visited and the many hundreds of exciting, funny and sometimes embarrassing things that happened to her. Two years ago I helped my brother buy his boat. She was three years old and in magnificent condition having been well looked after. But she had no history, no record of where she had been or what she had done. I decided then that I would write the story of La Graciosa and tell of how she come by her curious name, of the whale that fell in love with her and the people who have sailed aboard her and drank whisky on her decks. People like Burt, the strange hermit who lives alone in a ghost-town close to the Arctic Circle, and Jose Mario Sanchez and his gang of gun-toting dark-clothed companions who forcibly boarded La Graciosa at midnight off the Nicaraguan coast and turned out to be charming. This is a true story but it is not a journal. It is not a record of journeys and dates for such would not be interesting. Beyond that I have tried to confine the story to events and people who may hold an interest for the reader.