Zeezeiler werkt de wereld rond en steekt de de Andes en Zuid Amerika over met zijn zeilboot. Vooral de belevenissen met de lokale bewoners, veelal indianen, zij leuk en interessant.De tochten over de rivieren de Amazone en de Paraguay zijn indrukwekkend. Richting Andes dringen deze rivieren door tot gebieden waar door een mens niet meer te leven valt; met name de insecten maken het onleefbaar. ( )

The Incredible Voyage
Author: Tristan Jones
Publisher: Early Bird Books / Open Road Integrated Media
Publishing Date: 1977
Pgs: 432
Disposition: Hoopla eBook via Irving Public Library - South Campus - Irving, TX
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REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Summary:
Follow the supreme adventurer, Tristan Jones, as he takes a solitary and intrepid six-year voyage on his small craft, The Sea Dart. Covering a distance twice the circumference of the globe, from the lowest body of water in the world—the Dead Sea—to the highest—Lake Titicaca in the Andes—Jones finds himself "a thousand times beyond the limit of endurance." With tenacity stronger than any obstacle, Jones refuses to give up his adventure, even after falling prey to several disasters that could have killed him. Struggling against the mighty current of the Amazon, hauling his boat over the Andes Mountains and capsizing off the Cape of Good Hope do not discourage him.

This gripping story is a testament to his indomitable spirit and thirst for danger.
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Genre:
Travelogue
Adventure
Non-Fiction
True Story
Sailing
World Record
Biography
Nautical Fiction

Why this book:
I love this book. I’ve read it three times before. The first time I read it, I immediately read it again. And I read it a third time about 25 years ago. Yes, some of it is no doubt a cock-and-bull fable, but it is a good read.
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The Page 100 Test:
√◄ - good to go.
∞◄ - read on.

Favorite Character:
Conrad is a great character.

Tristan’s running back to stand the dock until Sea Dart was out of sight being shipped home from Montevideo to England is the most in-character thing Tristan does in this entire book.

Favorite Scene:
Considering the era and where they were the pucker factor was probably incredible when the heavily armed and belligerent-sounding Israeli Naval Patrol Craft spotlighted the Barbara as they coasted off Lebanon southward towards Haifa.

Favorite Concept:
6,000 miles of desert coast without seeing a tree from Israel down the Red Sea to Barawa,after they gained the Indian Ocean sounds like a rough stretch. No wonder they took turns staring at the clump of trees like deranged men. I mean…damn.

Language migration and absorption, after the Age of Sail, Swahili inherited a word "goddamni manowarri" which came to mean any foreign sailors in the area of Mozambique and Madagascar, because the British, French, Dutch, and Portuguese, invariably, referred to one another as some similar sounding term.

Best Line:
"In extremis, survival is the result of being angry with yourself for being a bloody fool!" Amen, Mr. Jones. Amen.

Hmm Moments:
Jones reminds me of my Uncle Robert.

I wonder if the face to face with Emperor Haile Selassie actually took place.

"Eventually, we reached Puerto Suarez, the Bolivian frontier town. The South American Handbook states that if is "fit for neither man nor beast." I will go further and say that it is the asshole of the Americas, north and south! It consists of a few unpainted, rotting wooden shacks slouched around railroad sidings, the lines of which are overgrown with jungle and alive with mosquitoes. On each side of the siding is a noisy fog-ridden swamp of fetid, stagnant water that stinks to h high heaven. During the twilight hours millions of mosquitoes rise off it, crowding the night air so thickly that there is hardly room between them to see the giant moths, which smash headlong into every light they can find. Over all this hovers a smothering, dank heat, making for an experience rather like putting your head into an oven full of rotting rats." - You get the impression that he really doesn't like that place. And that’s his commentary on it after being in two jails…at least two jails in South America and running/sailing for his life a few times since leaving Israel and rounding Africa.

Uhm Moments:
Well what the hell did Tristan expect sailing into South Africa in that era with a Black crew member? At least he did the right thing and stood up for his men, but geez. Bad planning. Bad form. Apartheid South Africa sucked. Course the decision to try the Atlantic route instead of the Pacific one made rounding South Africa necessary. Despite his bluster, he could've gotten them all arrested or killed. And following through on his threat to cast off and try the run to Brazil without resupply and some TLC on the boat would've probably left them all floating in the Atlantic somewhere with the boat on the bottom of the ocean.

Calling the Ball:
I read this for the first time when I was in middle school. The similarities with Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt are there. The writing is similar. I was much too naive a reader at the time to catch it. I read this first and discovered both the Clive Cussler novels and Ian Fleming at about the same time. I think that Cussler, Jones, and Fleming would probably have all hated each other. Fleming would’ve beaten the pants off the other two at cards. Probably drank them under the table too.

WTF Moments:
After the big deal the authorities in South Africa made about allowing Alem to be working and sleeping on the boat with white men, I wonder at the self-imposed bureaucratic hoops they had to jump through to get him on a plane back to Ethiopia when his term aboard Barbara was up.

Meh / PFFT Moments:
So he sailed on the Dead Sea, but not in the Barbara or the Sea Dart, just an unnamed skiff. The record is that of sailing a sea-going vessel on the lowest and highest bodies of water in the world isn't actually broken. That's disappointing. I didn't remember that from previous readings. I understand the limitations. But while the man sailed on both and all the waters in between, the boat didn’t. Seems to me that the record could have an addendum added to it, if someone had the balls to attempt it with a single boat.

Probably bullshit, but the idea that in his first afternoon in Colombia, as he's waiting for the harbor master to appear, someone stole onto the Sea Dart, with as small as she is, and lifted his shoes while he took a siesta on deck is hilarious. So, he was robbed...and robbed again...and robbed again...and then, arrested. +++ "When in danger or in doubt, hoist the sail, and fuck off out."

The Sigh:
I disagree with Jones on the conquistadors. He abhors their rape of the Incan Empire, but respects their efforts. I don't. Every story does the conquistadors no honor. Stories that do portray them as heroes, when you peel back a few layers they are shown as the villains of the piece, right alongside the clergy who went with them to gather souls and gold, more of the later, less of the former. Heroic Anglo Narrative, hello.

A Path I Can’t Follow:
Running the gauntlet from Israel down the Red Sea to Ethiopia was a near thing. Knowing now that a lot of this is a fish story doesn't detract from it at all. Glad wide-eyed, impressionable me didn't join the navy or merchant marine based on the tall tales aspect of it all.

Suspension of Disbelief:
Uhm, vampire bats attacking people in the Amazon? Tristan writes like this is commonplace, but PBS suggests that this is rare. I’m taking PBS’s side in the debate and that the bats are getting a bad rap.

The Nazi, former Nazi, yacht club on Lake Titicaca is probably a fish tale, well told, but probably horse hockey.

Not sure that I believe that Sea Dart was there. With as much detail as he includes, I believe that Tristan made the trip, but everything after his leaving Barbara may be a fable. It's a good fable.

Right there, he hadn't planned on crossing the continent, but he had the St. Nicholas gifts for Christmas Day in Brazil? This feeds the idea that parts of this aren’t whole cloth.

Turd in the Punchbowl:
Pizarro is as much or more of a SOB as Cortez ever was. What he did to Atahualpa did indeed seal the fate of South America and all her peoples, but her fate was sealed when the Pope gave his blessing to Spanish and Portuguese adventurism in the Americas. As surely as when Columbus and Amerigo voyaged westward.

We get it, Jones. Some people around the world have different ideas about bathing, hygiene, sewer, and sanitation. But, dude, you're from the era of Austin Powers' teeth. Maybe pump the brakes a bit, you elitist, yacht prig. Hell, you stated that you've pulled some of your own teeth, plural, and made no mention of dentures. I realize I'm arguing with a dead man. I'm arguing with a world that was. Or rather one man's perception of that world. I just wish he could've gotten out of his own way and let an awesome story tell itself.

Wisdom:
Jones talks about going through a tropical cyclone in the Indian Ocean or storms at sea in general. "if they have never experienced a full-blown storm at sea, that the ocean voyager becomes blase about it, or that the living fear of Christ does not enter into his soul and emerge down his spine to his balls. Because he doesn't and it does. Every time. At least in my case. Most of the ocean voyagers to whom I have talked about this agree with me, but there are some who tend to ply down their true feelings...I suppose some guys still have the remains of shore-side machismo in them. Not me; when I shit I shit, and I don't give a damn who knows it. If they think any the less of me for being honest about it, then let them take off and navigate in a rip-roaring cyclone, with certain death under the lee in the black, stormy, rain-lashed, uncertain depths. Let them peer, eyes aching with want of sleep, into the darkness in a heaving, crazy, thundering hull in God's vastness; let them strain their ears away from the roaring wind and try to pick out the sound of surf on the deadly reefs. Then they can look down their noses, if they like. But don't let them tell me they were not afraid..." This speaks to me today as much as it did when I was a kid. Yes, I do, to some extent, blame and praise Jones for teaching me a lesson at an impressionable age.

Juxtaposition:
Alem being Imperial Ethiopian Navy. Its first sailor, prior to joining the crew of the Barbara, was issued the Empire of Ethiopia's first professional seaman's passbook with his number being #00001. He probably had to have had some family influence to get him there. and considering the value of the siesta, whatever its name where you are at, when the heat climbs into the horrid latitudes, Jones' comment about having to ride Alem to keep him from giving up and to get the job done seems both fair and unfair. Child of elites who thinks that something(going sailing down the east coast of Africa on a yacht) is one thing and joins up only to discover it's something else entirely(fighting winds, storms, and the sea, and being amongst many different peoples who he looks down upon and having to rub shoulders with them). Look no further than his attitudes towards the Moslem peoples that they encounter in all the ports of East Africa. Juxtapose that with the fact that any Ethiopian Navy, and at that time, they didn't have an outlet to the sea, much less any ships, would be in and amongst Arabic peoples for its entire existence.

Jones reprsents the contrasts of his era. He is very quick to call other peoples savages, when he smeared Alem for his prejudices all down Africa's east coast, then, went to bat for him in South Africa.

"A pilgrimage to his pride..." He's lucky this voyage didn't kill him.

The Unexpected:
Need to find a book about the British Royal Navy's anti-slavery service off the shores of Mombasa which ran up until 1912. That sounds fascinating.

Missed Opportunity:
This points out something to me. I need to study African history in general; beyond the borders of Egypt, the northern Arabic states, the Boer War, South Africa, and Shaka Zulu, I'm A bit of a ditz.

Strikeout:
The whole catching a hammerhead just so you can cut some steaks out of them and waste the rest offends me. I get that this was written in a different era, but still the whole taking more than you need ideal. And then the sidebar that he did it 14 more times as he fought the Humboldt Current off South America leaves me pissy.

Jones is full of shit. No white man has ever been as offended by the word gringo as others are by that epithet used ad nauseam in racial relations in America. I won't dignify it by repeating it or alluding more precisely to it. You know what it is. And Jones felt free to use it, just dropped casually in. I know it was a different era and, by my own skein, I try to let the past be the past and not judge the writings of bygone eras by today's morality, but it's hard. My remembrance of this book may be clouded by the distances between the me who first read this and the person I am today.

Get Off My Lawn:
As much as i like Jones, he's a colonialist fool ignoring and discounting the genocide visited upon all the tribes of the Americas by the coming of the Europeans.

Dreamcasting:
Keanu as Tristan would be awesome, but we’d probably get Tom Cruise. Cruise could probably channel Tristan, but he’s have to make him a Tome Cruise character while Keanu would let the character be who he was as best as he could.

Movies and Television:
The Barbara getting shot up off of Brothers Island and escaping the Egyptian forces on the islands would make an awesome scene in a movie.

Soundtrack:
Watching some TV, and it hit me, I'm hearing Jeremy Wade of River Monsters as the voice of Tristan Jones. If they ever do an audio book of Tristan’s work, Wade should get the job, hands down.
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Pacing:
The pace is fast.

Last Page Sound:
Don't know if I would read other of Tristan's writing. Based on some of the things that stuck in my craw this time around, probably not. My attachment to this book goes back to my childhood. This book is an old friend and a tale well told, part travelogue, part sailor's yarn, part myth, part fable, part history of a world that doesn't exist anymore.

Glad that he gave us the denouement of what happened with Conrad and Huanapaco. And while Sea Dart doesn't get her hero's return to England, she does eventually end up in the hands of someone who appreciates her history. Funny that he gives us Conrad and Huanapaco's happy ending, but him, he's gone back to work to earn enough for his next adventure and poor Sea Dart sits in customs impound in lieu of import taxes. Not a great spot to end, but could've been a lot worse. And ultimately as mentioned elsewhere, Sea Dart finds a home where she is appreciated. Though I can’t find any mention of what happened to Barbara.

Questions I’m Left With:
Jones may have been the one who prompted my love of travelogue stories. I love this shit.

Sea Dart is owned by the Ikkatsu Project in Washington, an organization dealing with plastic waste in the oceans. The old boat lives on as part of that organization and continues to enjoy some celebrity as the boat that climbed to Lake Titicaca and back down. …though at this point, she’s probably a Ship of Theseus.

Conclusions I’ve Drawn:
"I have very often been in a situation in which I did not think I would survive, but, by God, I would go on trying--I was going to play the bloody game right down to the bottom line, because it's fun. Also it's very interesting. Also, for the time being, it's all we have." :/ I never realized how much of an influence friggin' Tristan Jones was on my teenage years and young adulthood. This paragraph imprinted on me when I first read this book. I remembered the book, but didn't remember that this paragraph came from it. Play on.

Author Assessment:
This book is extremely well written, but infuriating in places. I’m probably done with Jones.

Reread Pile:
I’ve read this book three times over my life. And I’ve enjoyed it. But I enjoy it less as I look at it with mature eyes. In my fifth decade, I can say that this is probably the last time I read it.
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What an incredible read! Either Tristan Jones is an incredible liar, or this was truly an incredible voyage. I suspect that there is a little of both. What he set out to do - sail the lowest point on earth (the Dead Sea) and then sail to and on the highest point on earth (Lake Titicaca) a journey that took six years. The adventures he tells were remarkable in and of themselves, and he writes in a down-to-earth style you would expect of an old salt, but he also interviews well-researched history of the places he visits, and shares a great deal about the people and the geography. A fascinating read. ( )

The fearless Welsh sailor is also a first-rate spinner of words. Anything by Jones is more than worth the effort. Too bad he's not more well known. ( )

Jones provides his account of sailing from the lowest point of navigable water below sea level to the highest navigable water on the planet - lake Titicaca. Adventure buffs will find his story compelling, fascinating and peppered with just the right amount of jargon to make you feel as though you are sitting on the Barbara with him as he sails past middle eastern military men or slogging along beside him as his helper pulls the boat upstream through the Amazon river's headwaters.

A great read that will keep you turning pages long after you should be in bed... ( )