RIME OF THE ANCIENT UNDERWRITER by Jim Salmon
How I Stowed the Day Job and Went to Sea
Hobblebush Books
Brookline, New Hampshire
Genre: Travel Adventure
Rating: Excellent
ISBN: 9780984592142, $ 18.95, 288 pp.
Quoting from the back cover:
“A circumnavigation wasn’t a desire, it was a need. Like Thoreau, I would not ‘when I come to die, discover that I had not lived.’”
“Jim Salmon found out when he quit his job as an insurance executive and signed onto a three-masted barque for a nineteen-month circumnavigation of the globe. Here now is an account of his voyage of discovery aboard the Picton Castle out of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. The world voyage was the subject of a popular, sixteen-part series on Canadian cable television called Tall Ship Chronicles.
“Jim weathered storms at sea and stormy relations aboard ship, tramped through a steamy Panamanian jungle, climbed the rarified summit of Kilimanjaro, and tracked wildlife on the high plains of East Africa and the Australian Outback. There are pirates and a mutiny, but mostly his account is about people, places, and the human condition as seen through the eyes of a corporate exec turned seafarer.”
A most excellent read! I thoroughly enjoyed Jim’s account of his adventures and travels. Rime of the Ancient Underwriter is well-written, well-edited and well worth reading. I had a unique perspective from which to enjoy Jim’s tale. I, too, was an underwriter at one time, for Fireman’s Fund American Life. I, too, was involved in delivering yachts: cooking, shopping in foreign ports, standing watch, working the lines–worked the port stern line through the Panama Canal. The Picton Castle stopped at ports with which I was familiar, and the bars are still in the same places.
For those of us who don’t have the driving need to circumnavigate the world, we can enjoy such an experience vicariously through the trials, tribulations, adventures, misadventures, good and bad times as recounted by this gifted author, Jim Salmon.
You won’t be disappointed.
Kaye Trout - September 5, 2012
Hobblebush Books
Brookline, New Hampshire
Genre: Travel Adventure
Rating: Excellent
ISBN: 9780984592142, $ 18.95, 288 pp.
Quoting from the back cover:
“A circumnavigation wasn’t a desire, it was a need. Like Thoreau, I would not ‘when I come to die, discover that I had not lived.’”
“Jim Salmon found out when he quit his job as an insurance executive and signed onto a three-masted barque for a nineteen-month circumnavigation of the globe. Here now is an account of his voyage of discovery aboard the Picton Castle out of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. The world voyage was the subject of a popular, sixteen-part series on Canadian cable television called Tall Ship Chronicles.
“Jim weathered storms at sea and stormy relations aboard ship, tramped through a steamy Panamanian jungle, climbed the rarified summit of Kilimanjaro, and tracked wildlife on the high plains of East Africa and the Australian Outback. There are pirates and a mutiny, but mostly his account is about people, places, and the human condition as seen through the eyes of a corporate exec turned seafarer.”
A most excellent read! I thoroughly enjoyed Jim’s account of his adventures and travels. Rime of the Ancient Underwriter is well-written, well-edited and well worth reading. I had a unique perspective from which to enjoy Jim’s tale. I, too, was an underwriter at one time, for Fireman’s Fund American Life. I, too, was involved in delivering yachts: cooking, shopping in foreign ports, standing watch, working the lines–worked the port stern line through the Panama Canal. The Picton Castle stopped at ports with which I was familiar, and the bars are still in the same places.
For those of us who don’t have the driving need to circumnavigate the world, we can enjoy such an experience vicariously through the trials, tribulations, adventures, misadventures, good and bad times as recounted by this gifted author, Jim Salmon.
You won’t be disappointed.
Kaye Trout - September 5, 2012
posted by Kaye | 1:01 PM
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