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RIVERS.By Griff Rhys Jones. Paperback, 129mm x 198mm, 288 pages, full colour and black & white illustrations.
In punts, canoes and rowing boats, Griff Rhys Jones takes us on a tour of Britain's extraordinary rivers.
He battles through the gorges and waterfalls of Scotland's wild mountains, drifts across the plains of east Anglia and plunges into the Wye, exploring the legends and stories of Britains's rivers on the way. How did man harness the power of water in feats of engineering such as the Manchester Ship Canal, or the fountains at Chatsworth or the weirs of Hertfordshire? What's it like to fall through a canyon in the Highlands, snorkel through a bog, slalom down a rapid, or ride the Seven Bore? How were rivers a source of inspiration for Constable and the hermits of Bridgnorth? Griff investigates the love affair between cities and rivers from Liverpool's Mersey to london's Lea.
From reminiscing about childhood holidays on the Suffolk Stour, to taking the plunge in the Tay on a wintry morning, Griff shares his personal journey along the river systems of Britain - always accompanied by Cadbury, the faithful water dog.
NZ$33.00 + delivery.
DEEP WATER DVD.By Roadshow. DVD, 93 minutes running time.
Set against the backdrop of the turbulent sixties, Deep Water is the stunning and thoroughly absorbing true journey of Donald Crowhurst - a 36-year old father of four, free thinking electronics inventor and Sunday sailor - and his part in the very first solo, non-stop, round-the-world nautical race the Sunday Times Golden Globe described as one of the last century's most extraordinary stories on the high seas, this inaugural race was dubbed "The Everest of the Seas" and sparked world-wide media attention.
Crowhurst is driven to compete in the newest trimaran boat and secures finance from a local businessman, however the deal is conditional upon him completing the voyage and should he fail Crowhurst must buy back the boat.
The other competitors include: Frenchman Bernard Moitessier who takes the lead but rather than collecting the prize, opts to continue on around the world again in order to save his soul; and Robin Knox-Johnston, a merchant seaman who professes to have entered simply because he does not want a Frenchman to win.
Once at sea Crowhurst's start is depressingly slow and communications are intermittent, however he soon starts to radio through a series of increasingly record-breaking daily distance. Crowhurst becomes an unlikely hero and the British public holds its breath daring to believe the underdog can win. As the world waits on tenterhooks for this extraordinary man to cross the finish line and sail into port to a hero's welcome, the jaw-dropping truth is revealed.
Deep Water features interviews with Crowhurst's family and friends, journalists from the time and the sailors whose lives were irrevocably changed by the race. Incorporating archival film, news clips and original 16mm footage and tape recordings made by the racing sailors, this quality production of drama and mystery on the high seas is a fascinating portrait of man pitted against himself.
NZ$35.00 + delivery.
OUTRAGEOUS GRACE.By John Otterbacher. Paperback, 127mm x 198mm, 244 pages.
Some people simply refuse to give up, and John Otterbacher is just such a man - former senator, family man, budding ocean sailor, and heart attack victim. But John is not a victim.
After seven operations in eight months, the doctors are beginning to give up on John's heart. They're talking about a transplant and a move to a slower pace of life, but John is dreaming about the oceans, his beautiful yacht and a trip he's determined to make.
This is a gritty account of a battle against letting outside events take control and one man's steely determination to do better than simply survive. Inspirational, incredibly moving and beautifully written, this book will change the way you think about death - and life.
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
KHUBILAI KHAN'S LOST FLEET.By James Delgado. Paperback, 134mm x 215mm, 225 pages, Black and white photographs.
After finally achieving what eluded even his grandfather Genghis Khan - the conquest of China - and inheriting the world's largest navy, Khubilai Khan turned his sights on Japan, which he attacked with an immense armada in 1274. Vastly outnumbered and facing total massacre, the Japanese prayed to their gods for survival, and the very next day the Khan's entire armada was destroyed by a 'divine wind' (kamikaze). When the Khan tried again seven years later, with a fleet double the size of the first, the very same thing happened.
The legend of the kamikaze - revived as a Japanese national legend when they modernised and militarised, culminating in the suicide bombers of the Second World War - has endured for centuries, but the truth has remained a mystery. Now, after decades of painstaking research and underwater excavation, leading marine archaeologist James Delgado has discovered what really happened.
Based on original sources as diverse as actual sunken ships, archaeological excavation on land, temple inscriptions, hand-painted scrolls, woodblock prints, and historical and literary records from China, Japan and Vietnam, this book is a captivating journey back through the mists of time. It tells the fascinating tale of the great Mongol's maritime forays, offers a compelling study of where myth, legend and history blend and blur, and solves one of history's most enduring mysteries: what sank the Khan's immense fleet?
NZ$37.00 + delivery.
THE LIGHTHOUSE CHILDREN'S MOTHER.By Jeanette Aplin. Paperback, 150mm x 210mm, 228 pages, Black and white photographs.
This is the sequel to Jeanette Aplin's classic The Lighthouse Keeper's Wife, the review of which follows below.
The family have now moved south from rugged Stephens island to a remote, wave-splashed dot in Fouveaux Strait - Dog Island, only a few feet above sea level.
Here, as the idyll and magic of island life spin their web ever more closely around the two families who live there, the author finds the old problems of lighthouse isolation get a fresh twist. She writes engagingly of solitude and of her own mother's influence as she ponders the old question: how much of the way we were brought up do we automatically repeat with our own children?
Always candid and happy to laugh at herself and as ever at one with the natural scene, Jeanette Aplin carries her readers with her as she faces new challenges, falls in and out of love with small things, and finds new strenghts. They cannot help, too, but wonder with her - is this really the right place to be raising children?
Over three years on Dog Island, living a way of life now gone forever and with her husband, children and the other family as tutors, the author gains more insight and learns more about the complexities of 'being human'.
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
SAILING'S STRANGEST MOMENTS.By John Harding. Paperback, 135mm x 215mm, 257 pages.
Whether sailing the Seven Seas in search of adventure, fresh opportunities, unknown lands or to set new records of endurance, mankind has for centuries met with nautical triumph and disaster in almost equal measure. Powerful currents and feckless shipmates, unseen reefs and vengeful whales, monster waves and unimaginable storms, mysterious happenings and fateful miscalculations - all have plunged the unsuspecting sailor into desperate life-or-death struggles.
The strange stories generated by the sea and those who choose to sail upon it cover every emotion: desperate seamen are driven to eat a dead companion in order to survive; a round-the-world sailor is confronted with the ghost of Christopher Columbus, who guides him through a storm; a young, newly-wed bride is forced to take command of a three-masted clipper ship when her husband falls perilously ill. These and a legion of other sailing tales that often defy logic are included in this fascinating book that will appeal to armchair sailors and salty sea dogs alike.
NZ$25.00 + delivery.
TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST.By Richard Henry Dana. Paperback, 105mm x 172mm, 407 pages.
In 1834, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., took time off from his studies at Harvard to sign on as a common seaman aboard the brig Pilgrim. This is his story recounting the treacherous voyage he embarked on around Cape Horn to California. It documents the singular joys and incredible hardships that sailors encounter. his daily journal endures as one of the most vivid accounts of the relationship between man and sea ever published. Dana's journey originally served as a poetic protest against the brutal injustices against sailors at that time. Today his story still rings true as a powerful portrayal of the testing of man's courage and endurance
NZ$15.00 + delivery.
THE LAST GREAT ADVENTURE OF SIR PETER BLAKE.By Alan Sefton. Paperback, 130mm x 198mm, 280 pages.
This captivating book follows the late Sir Peter Blake - legendary yachtsman and adventurer - on his final, ill-fated voyage. It tracks him and his dedicated team on the blakexpeditions exploration vessel Seamaster to the environmental pulse points of the planet as they look to generate greater awareness of the need to take better care of our world.
Sir Peter's last adventure began in New Zealand in late 2000 when he set out to once again cross the Southern Ocean to Cape Horn. After exploring the breathtaking Beagle Channel at the foot of South American, he took Seamaster to 70 degrees south, among the icebergs of Antarctica, then headed north, up the coast of South America, to the rain forests of Amazonia where Seamaster navigated 1400 miles up the Amazon and Negro Rivers.
As the world knows, Sir Peter was murdered by river pirates on the eve of Seamaster's departure from the Amazon in Decemebr 2001.
Drawn from the logbooks kept by Sir Peter, and edited by his colleague and close friend Alan Sefton, this book relives that last, fateful voyage and at the same time celebrates both Sir Peter's passion and concern for the world in which we live.
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
FLOOD TIDE.By Heather Heberley. Paperback, 138mm x 213mm, 260 pages.
Flood Tide, sequel to the widely read Weather Permitting , chronicles more of the Heberley's adventures by land and sea. And there's a lot to write about as this extended family on Arapawa Island is so often in the centre of crisis, big or small, with their fishing and farming and involvement in the rather many searches and rescues in the Cook Strait area.
This book also traces the fascinating family history down from Worser Heberley and revelations of his diary, and throws new light on the history of the area. Hilarious yarns and pranks from the family's whaling days are balanced by the sombre recounting of tragedies over the years.
Heather Heberley tells how "this island innocent" was catapulted into the turmoil of a book launch and a New Zealand-wide author-tour after her first book was published. She writes with candour about her feelings and with humour about her quite unexpected career as "the speaker" at so many gatherings.
Throughout this warmly written autobiography runs the story of a remarkable family, told with honesty, freshness and love.
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
RIDING WITH WHALES.By Heather Heberley. Paperback, 148mm x 210mm, 260 pages.
Heather Heberley in her first two books, Weather Permitting and Flood Tide, wrote about her own life on Arapawa Island in Queen Charlotte Sound. While she researched, she talked to many other women who had spent most or all of their lives in the remote Sounds.
This book, Riding with Whales, began because of these meetings and the huge admiration she feels for these older women, all pioneers in their way.
They have great stories to tell about a way of life now mainly gone forever. The impact of whaling on nearly every family, the awesome responsibility for their children's futures whent he women were their only teachers, and the unbelievable differences which electricity eventually made to their lives - all of these and much more thread through this delightful book.
The lives of the thirteen women featured in this book, two maori, eleven Pakeha, cover a large part of the 20th century. Their stories are dramatic, funny and tragic in turn, and always touching in the honesty with which they talk to Heather Heberley. Nobody complains. Nobody dwells on her health problems. As one of them says, looking back on a life of physical danger, loneliness, huge responsibilities and sheer, unremitting hard work, "it's just the way it was."
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
LAST OF THE WHALERS.By Heather Heberley. Paperback, 149mm x 210mm, 212 pages.
This is the story of a remarkable man, Charlie Heberley, a story loveingly researched and written by his daughter-in-law Heather Heberley.
Charlie and his mates - who could also be rivals - were the last of a breed of men New Zealand will never see again. Years before he died in 2000, Charlie became an ardent conservationist, blasting those countries which persisted in unbridled whaling, including that done under the guise of 'research'.
The famous Worser Heberley was his great-grandfather. With whaling in his blood, young Charlie joined the Perano whaling enterprise. He soon became an acknowledged leader. It was a rough, tough and dangerous occupation, enlivened by constant pranks, and sustained by the whalers' code of honour.
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
WEATHER PERMITTING.By Heather Heberley. Paperback, 138mm x 210mm, 222 pages.
Young Heather Heberley, coming as a bride form Auckland to a remote bay in the Marlborough Sounds, did not realise how much the words, weather permitting, were to rule her life. Sea tragedies, the sinking of the Mikhail Lermontov, her husband Joe's role in search and rescues where the rescuers' own lives were at risk - all these are detailed alongside the often funny, sometimes tragic aspects of the Heberleys' farming and fishing life.
Heather Heberley's unassuming but robust story shows how she grows into a mother, mechanic, plumber, teacher, farmer, nurse, woolclasser, and licensed skipper. She changes from a young townie into a confident capable woman. This is a love story. The mutual love and respect of her family nourishes her capacity to learn, and to shape, laugh at and enjoy her own life.
More than a million people each year pass the South Island's isolated 'first house on the right' on Arapawa Island, just inside Tory Channel. Heather's marriage into the well-known Heberley clan and her arrival, in 1963, at their bay, have given her the fascinating and formative experiences that make up this compelling autobiography.
NZ$30.00 + delivery.
AROUND NEW ZEALAND IN AORERE II.By Frank Davis. Paperback, 147mm x 210mm, 192 pages. Full colour photographs.
This is Frank Davis' personal account of a trip around new Zealand in a 35 foot yacht called "Aorere II". The trip lasted from december 1980 to march 1981. The time however is not important as the places are still there in all their glory. Frank himself calls the book "A small piece of writing by one man who kept a diary of his thoughts while circumnavigating his country with a wonderful group of friends in a very special and much-loved yacht". He continues with "I just hope that I manage in my account of this personal voyage to give you some idea of the magical places that still remain in this beatiful and much loved land of ours. There are remote wonderlands which can still only be reached by vessel or float plane or by foot. Some are breathtaking in their wild beauty and if this book stirs some of its readers to go out and search for themselves these remote places in Aotearoa new Zealand, the author will be satisfied".
NZ$35.00 + delivery.
ISLAND OF THE LOST.By Joan Druett. Paperback, 140mm x 208mm, 284 pages.
In January 1864, five seamen from the wrecked schooner Grafton are stranded on an island speck of land some 300 miles south of New Zealand. Battling ferocious winds, relentless freezing rain and an impenetrable coastal forest, their chances of survival are slim. But under the leadership of Captain Thomas Musgrave, they miraculously cling to life for nearly two years before building a vessel and setting off on one of the most courageous sea voyages ever.
Meanwhile, in May 1864, on the same island but twenty miles of impassable cliffs and chasms away, another ship is wrecked and nineteen men struggle ashore. This crew, however, succumbs to utter anarchy and only three remain to be rescued a year later.
Using the survivors' journals, Joan Druett tells a gripping tale of leadership, endurance, and the fine line between order and chaos.
NZ$33.00 + delivery.
A LONG SLOW AFFAIR OF THE HEART.By Bruce Ansley. Paperback, 152mm x 232mm, 213 pages.
Craving adventure, Bruce Ansley goes in search of happiness on the French canals. He and his wife Sally buy a canal boat, the River Queen, in Holland and sail it through Belgium to France. They travel through old battlefields, the great vineyards and wineries of Burgundy and find the ideal way to live in Paris: on a boat.
La Belle France seems flawlessly to live up to Bruce's expectations. The journey takes the couple through quaint villages and picturesque countryside; it introduces them to colourful people, excellent food and lots and lots of wine. Bruce and Sally find themselves part of a floating community whose people range from hilarious to eccentric to astonishing. Yet aboard the River Queen another drama plays out. Fault lines appear in the perfect life, threatening the ideal escape with an unhappy ending. Throwing the cards in the air is one thing, but knowing how they will land is another.
With humour and a poignantly candid touch, Ansley documents a journey within a journey: the internal shifts of a marriage that just might not make it home. This memoir takes us vividly and unforgettably to France: but it takes us further than that - deep into the winding, secret interior of the heart.
NZ$35.00 + delivery.
A RACE TOO FAR.By Chris Eakin. Hardback, 142mm x 222mm, 310 pages. Black and white and colour photos.
In 1968, the Sunday Times organised the Golden Globe race - an incredible test of endurance that had never before been achieved - a round the world yacht race that had to be completed single-handed and non-stop, wwithout pause for supplies or refuelling.
Of the nine sailors who started the race, four pulled out within weeks. The remaining five each have their own remarkable story. Chay Blyth, fresh from rowing the Atlantic with John Ridgway, had no sailing experience but managed to sail around the Cape of good Hope before retiring. Nigel Tetley sank whilst in the lead with 1,100 nautical miles to go, he survived but died two years later in tragic circumstances. Donald Crowhurst began showing signs of mental illness whilst at sea, he tried to fake a round the world voyage before disappearing and leaving his boat adrift in an apparent suicide. He was never found. Bernard Moitessier abandoned the race whilst in s strong position and dropped anchor in Tahiti, where he settled and fathered a child by a local woman despite having a wife and family in Paris. Robin Knox-Johnston was the only one to
NZ$35.00 + delivery.
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