Product Description
Sailing Alone
Author(s): Richard J. King
Format: Paperback
A History
**Shortlisted for the Maritime Foundation Award for Best Book 2024**
'An exceptional book. Sailing Alone belongs on the very small shelf of the true classics of the sea' Peter Nichols, author of Sea Change and A Voyage for Madmen
'Colourful and inventive' The Times
Sailing on a boat by yourself out at sea and out of sight of land can be exhilarating or terrifying, compelling or tedious - sometimes it can be all of these things just in one morning. It is an adventure at odds with our normal, sociable lives, carried out floating on a medium wholly inimical to our existence. But the deep ocean is also a remarkable place on which to think.
Richard King's enormously engaging and curious new book is about the debt we owe to solo sailors: women and men, young and old, who have set out alone. Spending weeks and months alone, slowly, quietly and close to the ocean surface is to create the world's largest laboratory: an endlessly changing, capricious and startling place in which to observe oneself, the weather, the stars and myriad sea creatures, from the tiniest to the most massive and threatening.
This is a book for anyone who is fascinated by sailing, solitude and the vast seas that cover so much of our planet.
About the Author
Richard J. King is a visiting associate professor in Maritime History and Literature with the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He has been sailing on ships throughout the Atlantic and Pacific for twenty-five years and in 2007 sailed across the Atlantic alone in a 28-foot sailboat. He is the author of Ahab's Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby-Dick, The Devil's Cormorant: A Natural History, Lobster, Meeting Tom Brady and co-editor of the anthology Audubon at Sea: The Coastal and Trans-Atlantic Writings of John James Audubon.
For custom orders and quotes: shop@schoolspace.co.za
© 2026 Schoolspace. This product description is the exclusive intellectual property of the publisher, protected under copyright law. Unauthorized use, adaption, or copying is strictly prohibited.
