NEW EDITION 2008 - including lots of photos! Chasing the Horizon is a delightfully demented Celebration of A Way of Life. It is an outrageously funny, often touching, and continuously shocking tale of a modern sea gypsy. Cap'n Fatty's story is too bizarre to be fiction. Father wears floral skirts; mother is a tad vague. Sister Carole isn't interested in her millionaire suitor; she's too busy smooching with the kid in the cesspool truck. Their strange live-aboard boat caravan includes Mort the Mortician, Backwards Bernie, Ruby Red the Conman, Barefoot Benny, Geeper Creeper, Para the Paranoid, Lusty Laura, Xlax, Shark Boy, the Pawtucket Pirate, Bait Broad, Colonel Crispy, Scupper Lips, Bob the Broker, the Pirate Queen, Otto the Owner, the Twin Slaves of Green Slime-and even a terribly long-winded fellow named (Hurricane) Hugo. All seem hell-bent on avoiding the cops, the creeps, each other, and especially the Dreaded Dream Crushers. Dive in!

Chasing The Horizon: The Life And Times Of A Modern Sea Gypsy

Sports & Outdoors

Goodlander, Cap’n Fatty

Biographies

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Dozens of sea stories from the most outrageous marine journalist in the Caribbean "I've always been astounded at the number of requests I get for reprints. 'Send me a copy of that story where you puke on the nuns...' or 'remember the story where you smashed a Baltic 51 into the reef off Antigua?' or 'do you have a copy of the one where the West Indian fisherman screws the charter cook on the foredeck?' Yes, indeed, I do. Somehow, in the sweet innocence of my youth, I always thought that being a professional writer would be, well, sort of refined and dignified. The savage reality, at least for me, has been anything but.The Collected Fat. What an awful title, eh? People thought it was some sort of disgusting diet book. Even my mother was reluctant to read it. But it has some great early stories of Caribbean sailing madness--written with a more confident hand than Seadogs, Clowns & Gypsies. These stories are among the best I've ever written. Imagine how that makes me feel.

Collected Fat

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

"Is there a secret to writing well? Yes. It is the truth. Whenever a paragraph sags, I simply ask myself, 'What is the truth here, Fatty? What are you really trying to say?' What I want to do is to write another good sentence." Cruising World Yarns has 3 dozen of Cap'n Fatty's best sailing and cruising stories from the pages of Cruising World magazine.

Cruising World Yarns

Water Sports

Cap'n Fatty and Carolyn, aboard their modest 38-foot sloop Wild Card, sail through pirate infested waters. There are numerous pictures. Of particular interest is their participation in the 27 boat 2010 MF convoy between Oman and Aden, Yemen.  Countries focused on include Malaysia, Thailand, the Maldives, Oman, Yemen, Sudan, and Egypt."Normally," says Cap'n Fatty Goodlander, "our cruising life is idyllic. We're surrounded by good people in benign waters. But not always. There were numerous times during this trip when we were scared by either Somali pirates or the land sharks of Egypt. The Mideast isn't all fun and games. Normally, we sail to 'fun' destinations like the Caribbean or the South Pacific. Not this time. We sailed right through the Gulf of Aden as our short-distance VHF radios cackled with pirate attacks on nearby freighters..."

Red Sea Run: Two Sailors in a Sea of Trouble

There are currently around 2,000 Somali pirates actively engaged in stealing, kidnapping, extorting, enslaving, imprisoning, torturing, terrorizing, and killing innocent sailors in the Indian Ocean. Piracy in this area currently generates over $238 million annually, and costs the public around $12 billion annually. The largest ransom paid for a single ship is now $13.5 million, and increasing. Insurance companies are making small fortunes, as well as “private security” firms. Shipping costs are skyrocketing. Currently, around 700 hostages are being held under appalling conditions, some for longer than a year. Countless Third World sailors have been killed and/or enslaved. With each passing day—and each mega-ransom paid—Somali pirates grow bolder, more violent, and move further afield. Occasionally these pirates attack small yachts as well as large ships. This book chronicles each of these terrifying “pleasure boat” attacks on the Lynn Rival, Tanit, Rockall, Quest, and more. It shines a light on who the pirates are, how they operate, and how they came to be. It also takes an in-depth look at how and why the four American hostages aboard the Quest were executed in cold blood.

Somali Pirates and Cruising Sailors: A Compilation & Rumination of Recent Events in the Indian Ocean that Impact on Cruising Yachtsmen

Heavy weather management is simple—there are only two basic rules. The prudent mariner must control his vessel’s speed and angle to the wind and seas. That’s it. There’s nothing complicated about these concepts. However, the offshore execution of these concepts at sea in 50+ knots of breeze and 30+ foot seas—what we traditionalists call offshore seamanship—can vary greatly depending on the boat type, number of hulls, sea state, wind force, the proximity and direction of land, the presence of ocean currents, underwater topography, and a hundred other evolving factors. Storm management can—and does—get complicated fast. This book covers everything the offshore sailor needs to know about vessel preparation, reducing sail, reefing, towing slowing drogues, deploying a parachute-type sea anchor and, ultimately, hanging to a Jordan Series Drogue. (340 pages, 42 photos, 36 illustrations.) Its core premise is simple: a used $3,000 sailboat can be safer offshore than a new $3,000,000 yacht if it is storm-proofed, has the proper gear, and has a crew who knows how to deploy both. Are you considering taking people you love offshore with limited funds to spend on marine safety gear? If so, read this book. It will both save you money and provide peace of mind. Storm survival isn’t rocket science. It’s all basic, do-able stuff. The emphasis is on practical what-actually-works at sea—with awareness that safety gear costs money and takes up valuable space. This book is aimed at frugal, safety-conscious cruising couples with few pennies and large dreams aboard small vessels on big oceans. Can’t afford a fancy parachute sea anchor? Then consider the lowly, widely available automobile tire—even a discarded retread will do. Or deploy a fender. Or toss over a torn sail… How long should you stay in a storm? Why? Should you minimize or maximize your time within? Why? What are some of the critical decisions you’ll need to make? Is there a lee shore or do you have plenty of sea room? When is a “favorable current” the worst news possible? What is the one thing you must avoid? Under what circumstance should you, if you want to make more miles downwind, toss your dock fenders overboard? Which is best during an extended blow—bow-on or stern-to? Why? What does the center of lateral resistance have to do with anything? How can ten cents worth of kite string save your life? Why are transoceanic sailors obsessed with hording air? Why, for gosh sake, would anyone immediately take a drink if they thought they were sinking? When is the best, most logical time to heave-to, set a parachute sea anchor off your bow, or deploy a Jordan Series Drogue from your stern? What tools should you carry? Where is every boat’s lumberyard located? This book, unlike many, makes definite statements—with no hemming and hawing. It says you should never lay-to or scud. It says parachute retrieval is extremely dangerous. It cautions against any “running set” in mature seas. What about a tennis ball? What do drag queens have to do with it? Do what with burst fenders? When should you happily and gratefully discard the $2,000 worth of storm gear you just purchased? What are the two basic choices as a hurricane approaches? From where do you step into a life raft? Storm Proofing shows you, step-by-step, how to survive a large storm aboard a small vessel on a big ocean—and at the cost of mini-bucks.

Storm Proofing your Boat, Gear, and Crew: Surviving a large storm aboard a small boat on a big ocean

The 25th Anniversary edition of St. John People is as diverse and interesting as the rainbow-hued Virgin Island residents that populate it's 290 pages--from Pappy Sewer to Elvis Yearwood and Guy Benjamin; from Ethel McCully to Cid Hamling and Ernest Matthias; from Andromeada Childs to Herman Sprauve, Gerda Marsh, and Herman Prince. What does St. John have to do with the birth of the Atomic Bomb? Read Nancy Gibney's enthralling profile of local lay-about Robert Oppenheimer to find out. Who was John Anderson and why did he write the Night of the Silent Drum? Ruth Lowe, author of "St. John Backtime", will tell you. What caused a young senator-to-be Theovald Moorehead to request a discharge from his Naval career, rush back to St. John, and begin his fight against the National Park's plan to 'relocate' the local population to Green Valley (Fish Bay)? Local journalist Amy Roberts will be happy to inform you. Why was the original title of the most famous book ever written about St. John--"I Did it with Donkeys"--rejected by its New York publisher? When was Coral Bay the 'big city' on St. John? Which St. John artist/craftsperson has a piece in the Smithsonian Collection? How did Kitty Oppenheimer's sailboat end up in Panama? What happened in 1733? What's the local legend about those red rocks on Mary's Point? What local sailing inkslinger drove the POTUS crazy by sailing back and forth in front of Caneel Bay with "While Nixon Lazes, Indochina Blazes" painted on his gaff-rigged sails? Interested in artists? Les Anderson and Karen Samuel couldn't be stylistically more different--and yet both couldn't be more passionate about their love of this tiny island and its smiling people. Are you wondering about the different writing styles of such local literary talents as Amy Roberts, Dana Harrison, Shurna Rabsatt, Lito Valls, Lynda Lohr, Susan Barry, Doris Jadan, Gilbert Sprauve, Erva Denham, Guy Benjamin, and/or Cap'n Fatty? Russian opera singers? Freedom riders? Crazy sea gypsies? Vogue magazine? Who was the Bionic Creole? What professor with a doctorate in linguistics from Princeton speaks fluent French and was bahn here? What's the connection between the East End and Walt Disney's "Fantasia"? Whose 'Backyard' was it? What famous St. Johnian vowed she'd never be a waitress nor a secretary--then fell in love with Love City so much she did one for years in order to afford a lifetime of the other? It's all in the newly updated St. John People--a 'must-read' for local folks, long term residents, and short-term visitors alike.

St. John People: Stories about St. John residents by St. John residents

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Independently published

This book contains 58 years of seamanship and ship’s husbandry distilled into more than 350 readable pages. It is chockfull of technical information gathered during three circumnavigations and a lifetime of living aboard in foreign ports. It tells you the nitty-gritty technical details of the sea gypsy lifestyle. It isn’t merely about the boat, it is also about the knowledge required to safely handle that boat and, ultimately, how to manage the cruise as well. It contains what every sea gypsy understands—but few marine publications address—the good, the bad, and the ugly of ocean cruising. It does not cop-out by telling you to throw money at your problems by hiring marine experts. It does exactly the opposite. It informs you how to not need those experts. It clearly communicates the morality, the economy, the karma, and the delights of sailing the world with empty pockets and full hearts. Cruising offshore isn’t rocket science. It is all basic, logical stuff. The skills required can be explained step-by-step. This book reveals the reality of buying a well-found, inexpensive boat and outfitting it for living aboard—then taking it inshore gunkholing, coastal sailing, offshore cruising, and ocean storm-strutting. Reading this book is like sitting in the cockpit of a battered ketch at anchor in an exotic port—and having one of the most famous circumnavigators spin yarns, tell jokes, and give the most outrageous of advice on cruising under sail. Forget the “you gotta have a pile of money” rock-hugger thinking. You don’t. There are a million good reasons why not to go to sea—lack of money is not one of them. Basic seamanship is far more important than coinage—and you can’t buy seamanship. In fact, circumnavigators with large purses actually have less fun than work-as-you-sail sea gypsies. This book was not written for the edification of Topside-clad yachtsmen or teak-trodding credit card captains—but rather for the working-class sailor attempting to transit from dirt dweller to ocean vagabond without losing sight of the daily fun factor. Does sailing across an ocean on a small vessel seem like an immense challenge? It doesn’t need to be—if you are prepared with a well-found boat, strong offshore safety gear, and some basic seamanship skills. Fatty and his wife Carolyn are currently on their fourth circumnavigation. They sail across oceans with no more concern than most yachties experience while putt-putting to the fuel dock. Are you just getting your sealegs but have a burning desire to live within Mother Ocean’s warm embrace? To be truly free? To sail to Borneo, Madagascar, Cocos Keeling, the Caribbean, and Chagos? To kiss life full on the lips from the deck of a small boat on a big ocean? Then you are in luck. This book is written with the specific aim of helping sailors exactly like you accomplish these very real, very worthwhile cruising dreams—without a massive amount of money, complication, or BS. Welcome aboard!

Cruising Boat Basics: Hints, Tips, and Tricks for a Fabulous Life Afloat

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