Taleisin's Tales - Sailing Towards The Southern Cross

Written by Lin and Larry Pardey

Including stories from paradise and hard-won lessons in seamanship, Taleisin's Tales reflects back to the first miles Lin and Larry gained together on their second cruising boat - one they built lovingly with teak carvel planking over sawn black locust frames. 

The story takes the reader from launching and sea trials through those initial cautiious 1000 coastal miles between California and the Sea od Cortez, discussing everything from sail handling to dinghy racing to the relative luxeries of bicylces and a custom built sitztub to encounters, both pleasant and surprising, with sailors and locals along the Baja peninsula. 

Then it launches the reader across the Pacific on Taleisin's first offshore leg to French Polynesia, through to the Cook Islands and Tonga, then on to New Zealand. In the style readers have come to know through the Pardeys' ever popular Crusing in Serraffyn series and Lin's award winning Bull Cnyon, this book relates stories sometimes harrowing, sometimes cautionary, sometimes halerious - and often heart warming, especially when it comes to encounters with the people of the South Pacific who become family.

If there is a lesson to be gained from reading Taleisin's Tales, it's that slowing the pace and taking weach day as it comes brings unexpected moments of clarity and joy. And that sailing across the open ocean on a small boat is not easy but, with the right parnter and attitude, can be beautifully rewarding.

189 pages