Hal Roth (1) (1927–2008)

Four stars because I'd recommend it if, like me, you finished the Odyssey and immediately started fantasizing about retracing his voyage yourself. Otherwise, you can safely skip it.

A more philosophical writer might have connected his voyage with Odysseus's in a more personal or insightful way. And a more flowery writer might have evoked the scenes of Odysseus's trip, both then and now, more vividly. Roth is a sailing geek first, literature geek second, so an awful lot of this book is given show more over to describing how many sails he used on a given day or which anchor he put down.

But he gets the basic job done, and that's the important part. He successfully retraces anyone's best guess at Odysseus's route. His scholarship seems sound; he makes a worthy point of making it clear that this is all guesswork, and when his guess at a location differs from other valid guesses, he makes that clear as well.

And it's not like it's a huge time commitment anyway. At barely 200 pages of large type with loads of pictures, it's a day's reading. (And also: loads of pictures! Big bonus.)

I've recreated his map for the internet. Hope you don't mind, Hal. I totally gave you props for it. show less

Hal and Margaret Roth had an epic mission to sail around the world. Good thing they had the kind of relationship that could withstand being trapped together on a boat for nearly two years (46 months)! Their boat, Whisper, was a 10.7 meters long, black hulled fiberglass vessel that weighed 7.2 tons.
Their journey took them from the coast of Maine to Bermuda and the Virgin Islands, though the Panama Canal, across the South Pacific, winding through Tahiti and Fiji, crossing the Coral Sea and show more Australia, Bali, Africa, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and finally back through the Atlantic and the Caribbean, ending in Somes Sound, Maine. The amazing thing is, Roth did not come from a sailing background. Luckily, he was a gifted writer and this is his account of that epic journey (with excerpts from Margaret's journal thrown in). Weather, fishing, the mechanics of boats and sailing, the culture and customs of each community and port, getting to know and establishing relationships with other sailors, even being shipwrecked on coral reef and observing drug runners. Everything Roth writes about is fascinating. He loves the word "squally." show less

Three good solid chunks of armchair sailing.

Two on a big ocean and Two against Cape Horn may sound like Enid Blyton titles, but they're actually first-hand accounts of long cruises Hal Roth and his wife made on their 35-foot sloop Whisper — around the South and North Pacific in 1967-68; through the islands of southern Chile and around Cape Horn a few years later. Roth provides a very well-balanced mixture of sailing stuff and more general travel writing about the people they meet and the show more places they visit. Neither aspect displays sensationally good writing, but equally there's nothing really disagreeable or dull. It will keep you entertained, and might inspire you with a desire to see the places for yourself. However, what he tells us about the islands and straits around Cape Horn won't do anything to change the idea you already had that these are bad places to be in a big, powerful motor ship, and absolutely crazy places to take a small sailing boat.

The third book in this collection is The longest race, an account of the notorious 1968-69 non-stop singlehanded round-the-world race sponsored by the Sunday Times. The race had plenty of drama, but, perhaps inevitably as nothing like this had ever been run before, was an organisational disaster. Nine solo yachtsmen started: six of them had to withdraw at various stages due to ill-health, storm damage or mechanical failure; another, who should never have been allowed to start, went mad and killed himself; the amazingly hairy and delightfully eccentric Bernard Moitessier enjoyed himself so much finding inner harmony on the Southern Ocean that he didn't want to return to Europe (and his wife and kids...), so he left the race shortly before the finish, did an additional half-circuit of the globe and ended up in Tahiti; the reassuringly English (but still pretty hairy) Robin Knox-Johnston was thus the only one who actually got back to Plymouth and took the prize. This race was big news when I was a child, and I remember reading Knox-Johnston's book at the time, although the details now escape me. Roth's book was written more than thirty years after the event (probably more-or-less at the same time as the excellent Channel 4 film Deep Water was being made). It draws very heavily on the first-hand accounts of the participants, which he quotes and paraphrases extensively. As an experienced yachtsman who took part in later, better-organised solo races, and knew quite a few of the sailors involved (including Knox-Johnston and Moitessier) he is able to add a bit of perspective and explanation here and there, and the story he has to tell is a gripping one, but really the book is a bit of a journalistic pot-boiler. show less

This book inspired the voyage I'm now actively planning. Hal Roth's voice is great--grounded, friendly, straightforward, encouraging. I appreciate his sympathy with dreamers on a shoestring budget. Full of valuable information, I only wish there were a more recent edition than 2003.