Further Reading...

I have just finished reading "Voyages of a Simple Sailor" by Roger Taylor. More on the 'Further Reading' page - suffice to say that this is a book that deserves a place on your shelf - excellent writing and interesting from from the first page to the last.

7. 'Voyages of a Simple Sailor', Roger Taylor, ISBN 978-0-9558035-0-5, 2007. An autobiography detailing Roger's sailing adventures. More than this though, it gives an insight into single-handed sailing, the mental strains of dealing with heavy weather and a great deal of solid practical advice to anyone afloat in a small sailing craft.

For any Corribee owner who has been out in worse than they are comfortable with, Roger's description of sailing through the overfalls off St Alban's Head in a near-gale will reassure them:

'I now felt confident enough to give Mingming a more severe test by deliberately putting her beam-on to a breaking crest... Over she went onto her beam ends. I expected that she would stay down, recovering slowly. To my amazement, she snapped up immediately.'

Steve Pavey

Voyages of a Simple Sailor details the escapades of its author around the world, most of them seafaring. Roger Taylor's travels began at 15 when he hitch-hiked around western Europe. After graduating, he stretched his legs to Singapore, where his long hair ensured the confiscation of his passport. In Greece he sold his blood. In Australia he applied for a job with the Police Department and they decided he was just the man to teach English at a local high school.

So, despite the nautical cover and title I thought there might be something in this for me, a non sailor. I was right. Not only is Roger Taylor a great storyteller, his enthusiasm for throwing himself into the next adventure kept me turning the pages.

If you are a sailor, no doubt you will appreciate the rigours of being an able seaman on the square-rigger Endeavour II and the tenacity and endurance required to build your own 6m craft and sail it (twice) across the Tasman Sea. But what struck me was the author's ability to extract universal truths from the dangerous situations he survived.

For instance, Roger Taylor's philosophy on sailing is to eschew as far as possible the modern gadgets and electronic wizardry of the 21st century. Keep it simple, is his maxim. In doing so he tests his own skills and personal resources to the limit. In a world where it sometimes seems that machines rule over human endeavour, the author's story is inspiring.

Offshore

A great book Roger - well done!

Phil Slade (Editor - Gaffers Log)

Bonsoir

It already over! It didn't last the weekend. Hopefully it is written in English so my reading is slower and more tiring! It was half past one on saturday night, my eyes were falling and I was still going for "an other last page" like a ten years old boy. It has only one default: when you find the world "end" you are frustrated and waiting for the next one : "Ming Ming northern voyage" perhaps. A great book with lots of adviced and a very expressive description of life being alone offshore.

It gave me, if necessary, the will to go back!!!

Merci Roger.

Eric Andlauer

- Hear hear. I finished it today also. Truly a fine book. I read in the same way, just one more page, just one more page. We must have been reading in tandem Eric.

Nicki Crutchfield

As many of you will know, Roger Taylor's book 'Voyages of a Simple Sailor' is now in print. I pre-ordered a copy not knowing what to expect but reckoned it would be worth a read just for the Corribee tales. Now having devoured this book over a weekend, I can heartily recommend it. The stories of Roger's earlier adventures are riveting and exceptionally well told and, with the story of his Jester Challenge in Mingming, add up to a unique and hugely entertaining book. Details can be found at www.thesimplesailor.com/book.

Declan McKinney (Corribee Forum)

Dear Roger

I have recently completed reading your book 'Voyages of a Simple Sailor' which I found enthralling from start to finish. A most enjoyable read indeed. Your humility and uniquely unpretentious style was most refreshing.

Paul Webster

Skipper, Essex Smack The Quiz.

Firstly I would like to thank you for your book, I really enjoyed it and hope that your next is underway? The reason I have contacted you is to ask about buoyancy. I fully agree with your thinking, I would rather stay with a boat full of water than take to a life raft. I believe you used foam for buoyancy on Mingming? If so what type? Perhaps you could think about doing an article on your web site? I am sure that there are plenty of other people interested in the modifications you have carried out on Mingming.

All the best

Kevan Manley

Salut Roger,

Je voulais juste te dire que j'ai reçu ton livre, que je lis avec un immense plaisir. Endeavour 2 est maintenant pris au piège dans great exhibition bay, et vient de virer de bord pour la seconde fois vers le nord. La côte sous le vent se rapproche…C'est l'un des meilleurs livres de mer que j'ai jamais lus, et j'en ai lu beaucoup !

Amicalement,

Jean-Paul Deloffre

Roger,

I am the owner of the much loved Tern Tu - Junk rigged Corribee. I host the Corribee/Coromandel Yahoo discussion group also.

Just wanted to write and tell you how much I have enjoyed reading your book, wonderful tales and you tell them so well. My 11 year old son Louis, who is totally captivated by boats and the sea is waiting to read it next. He insisted that I read the bit about when you first bought Mingming to him last night.

The Mingming challenge had me in stiches! A good friend of mine who lives in Tampa, Florida has been captivated by the words and pictures on your website - the whales made her quite emotional, but it seems these creatures have this profound effect on us for some reason.

Sure you are very busy preparing for the Jester Azores, here's hoping for minimal disasters!

Good luck & Best Regards

Mike Auton

Hi Roger

I've enjoyed your book. Very vivid. Congratulations!

(But I think I'll stick to swimming in it!)

Marion Whittow

A top book. Inspiring.

Simon Dunn

----- Original Message -----

From: David King

To: Roger Taylor

Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 2:29 AM

Subject: Voyages of a Simple Sailor......

....arrived late here in the bulky after Easter post. I sat down just after lunch with the aim of reading the first chapter.........later that evening......

Bravo Roger! It is an excellent book. Firstly, I raise my hat to you for your singular and intrepid courage: you have used your abilities and life to achieve far more than the majority of us.

Having once owned a bilge keel Hurley 22 I know something of sails fully filled to travel at the speed of a tractor in second gear and often pointed the wrong way up a down escalator, so that the view and position on the face of the earth changes little for hours on end. I applaud your wish for a relationship with the sea and ocean through the offices of the simplest craft rather than an obsession with a sailing machine and the ocean coming second.

I didn't know about your love of sailing so that all came as a surprise. What came as a greater revelation is your ability as a writer. My definition of good writing is for it to be a sheet of pure, clean glass through which all there is to see is revealed. I am always suspicious when, as I read, I find myself thinking what a wonderful metaphor, golden passage etc. More often, of course, the comment is quite the opposite. I much prefer suddenly coming to the realisation that the writing is so good the medium passes unnoticed. You achieve that and it is no mean feat and this despite your forgivable delight at skilfully flourishing (like a toreador's cape) all those nautical technicalities that add authenticity. In the introduction to 'Heart of Darkness', Sebastian Faulks notes that Conrad was a very skilled and experienced sailor. He goes on to suggest that amongst sailors, Conrad was perhaps known as a great sailor who also wrote novels, and among novelists as a great novelist who was also a sailor. I don't mean to make you blush by so auspicious a comparison so much as to make the point that great and exciting as your adventures are, it is the account of them that particularly impresses me. A brilliant coup, choosing to announce the climax in the first page and then moving from ferocious storms and shipwreck to fickle winds, becalmed and drifting away from your destination, when you could so easily have given the account the other way round, from the present to the past and so building to the traditional notion of climax.

You spend much time alone, but you also write well about people. I enjoyed the spat on Endeavour with the scurvy mate who became a bosom pal eventually. You have told me enough about Brenda and Sam for me to get an impression of the Taylor family.

On page 90, I could have wished for the line from Browning, 'she stirs, she moves, she seems to fill the thrill of life along her keel,' and a couple of sketch maps of the ocean routes would have been useful, but these are trivialities.

I know something of Lyme Bay round to Plymouth, the seas and the cyclones around the North Island here, and the fearful reputation of the Tasman, yet it was your last voyage that intrigued me most. I so enjoy your intimate knowledge of the seaway, its tides, winds and moods. Your account reminded me of the pleasure I derived years ago from 'Riddle of the Sands'. Perhaps you might retrace that journey and write some more.

There are so many facets of the book and your approach to life I want others to know about that I have compiled a list of those to whom I shall lend it, always ensuring that the book is returned for I already want to dip into it again for particular insights and experiences - your delirium in the stormy Tasman, for example: you must be alone in having such a response and giving such an account.

What a remarkable thing to have done, I congratulate and thank you for the pleasure the book has and will continue to give me.

There are so many questions I want to ask. Perhaps one day we shall find the opportunity.

Best wishes

David King

Dear Roger

Thanks for sending me your book. I really, really enjoyed it (if that is the right word). It carted me off to sea during a horrifyingly landlocked series of meetings and train journeys. I hope we meet one of these days, so I can buy you a drink. Has the Cruising Association got a copy? I think it would do them good.

all best

Sam Llewellyn

Voyages of a Simple Sailor

by Roger D. Taylor

published by the FitzRoy Press

RRP £8.95 (219pp; 216mm x 138mm)

Here is a book that came to us by a circuitous route - via fellow Afloat contributor, Graeme Andrews. The English author, Roger D. Taylor, was looking for a way to assist him in getting the book distributed in Australia. In setting out to read the book, it was not immediately apparent just what a strong connection the author has to Australia (and New Zealand). So there should not be great difficulty in gaining a readership for Voyages of a Simple Sailor, a collection of three short stories.

In fact there are two strong connections between the author and sailing in Australian waters. First, and the subject of his first short story, Shipwreck, is the famous loss of the Endeavour II in Parengarenga Harbour on the North Island of New Zealand. The ship had played a central role in the 1970 bicentennial celebrations of James Cook's landing in Botany Bay.

The 94-foot, 3-masted barque, renamed for the celebrations, set sail from Brisbane, after her role in Sydney was completed, for the somewhat late New Zealand celebrations of Cook's voyage, only to be washed into Parengarenga Harbour and wrecked in a wild tropical storm. Our author, Roger Taylor was a crewmember aboard Endeavour II for her final voyage.

Shipwreck tells the story of his joining the ship for the Tasman crossing. His initiation to the crew, the voyage around North Cape, the confusion and competition between master and first mate, and the fierce tropical storm encountered, are revealed. In the end, as history tells us, the gallant Endeavour II went to a sandy grave, smashed to bits on a lee shore.

The second story, Capsize, tells of his ultimate and lucky return to Australia at the end of a 1974 Trans Tasman single-handed race. This tale of near disaster as its name implies, tells more of the author's motivation for sailing. A record of the endless, physically-demanding days following the capsize, it reveals a great strength of purpose.

As Roger Taylor notes, it was in an article in Afloat (May'05) 'Do you remember - When the 'cyclone' hit Sydney?' that recalled the 1974 'Sydney Cyclone' that he read that his plucky little yacht, Roc, and himself had been lost at sea. [All the evidence now points to Taylor and Roc surviving this event and Afloat is now happy to report that news of his death was an exaggeration. - Ed]

Finally, Taylor takes us single-handed sailing in his own Atlantic waters with the third story, Calms. In the story of his competing in 2006 in the very first (and gloriously named) Jester TransAtlantic Challenge, a race for junkrigged vessels, Taylor completes his sailing opus covering nearly four years and a host of close scrapes. All in all, an entertaining trilogy, supported by some nice black and white snaps, which should have perhaps acknowledged the author's luck in its title. Voyages of a Simple Sailor is not yet available in Australia, but can be ordered from the author's website at www.thesimplesailor.com

Paul Talbot - Afloat Magazine, Australia, May 2008

Dear Roger

Many congratulations on Voyages - a wonderful story, wonderfully told. You write as you sail, not just with control and fluency, but with exciting independence. I can see why, whether it's a boat, a book or a business, if you don't design it, build it and own it, you don't want to sail in it.

We look forward to further volumes.

Best wishes

John Hunter

Dear Roger

A ripping good yarn! Was the verdict of my friend in Yorkshire, who immediately read your book. Both he and his wife are great readers and Robin thought it one of the best books he has read in a long time.

Anne Savage

Dear Roger

Over the storms last weekend I settled down in a comfy chair and read your book. I couldn't put it down till it was finished . It was like being on your shoulders living the experience through someone you know rather than some yarn. You are to be congratulated not only with the quality of the writing and the achievements but that the discipline of capturing all this is now on the record for all to enjoy.

Best wishes

Paul Williams

Dear Roger

I consumed your book from cover to cover in a few long sessions and enjoyed it hugely.

Kim Silburn

Dear Roger,

There's a bit of waiting around at the hospital. Have come home this lunchtime and am back tomorrow. The benefit of this is I am now into the 3rd section of your book.

Your style and content are certainly attention gripping. The fact that having to wade through masses of incomprehensible yachting jargon barely deflects from the enthralling pull of the story is credit to the captivating quality of your writing. The tight structure, short chapters and strategically placed trailers are all useful features. I thought the bit where you "died" was a highlight, glad it wasn't for real though.

Chris Davidson