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Sailing Away from Winter: A Cruise From Nova Scotia to Florida and Beyond
The perfect armchair sailing guide, with enough detail to set a person dreaming . . .
On July 21, 2004, Silver Donald Cameron and his wife, Marjorie Simmins, set sail from D’Escousse, in Cape Breton Island, toward the white sand beaches and palm trees of the nearest tropical islands. They were sailing an old Norwegian-built ketch named Magnus . Accompanying them was their dog, Leo the Wonder Whippet.
Leo was thirteen. The skipper was an old-age pensioner. His youthful mate was new to the cruising life. Yet 236 days later, with more than 3,000 nautical miles behind them, this distinctly trepid crew rowed ashore in Little Harbour, in the Bahamas, heading for Pete’s Pub, a palm-thatched tiki bar on the beach.
It had been quite a trip. All three had lost fat and gained muscle. They were not in debt. Friends had remarked that the skipper and mate looked ten years younger, and the ancient Leo was capering about like a puppy.
Mind you, there had been bad moments, as in Jonesport, Maine, when the skipper smashed the boat into a wharf and punched a hole in the bow, or the black night off the deadly coast of New Jersey, in a screeching gale with the boat rolling her side decks under.
But there had been plenty of thrills, fireworks over the Tall Ships in Halifax Harbour; careening down the East River at ten knots with Manhattan whizzing past to starboard; feasting on hush puppies and grits with chicken gravy in Georgia; enjoying the ancient streets of St. Augustine, and the dazzling opulence of Fort Lauderdale. And then, after crossing the Gulf Stream, the Bahamas, complete with coral reefs crowded with tropical fish, yellow and scarlet and black.
A long way from the snow and ice back home.
On July 21, 2004, Silver Donald Cameron and his wife, Marjorie Simmins, set sail from D’Escousse, in Cape Breton Island, toward the white sand beaches and palm trees of the nearest tropical islands. They were sailing an old Norwegian-built ketch named Magnus . Accompanying them was their dog, Leo the Wonder Whippet.
Leo was thirteen. The skipper was an old-age pensioner. His youthful mate was new to the cruising life. Yet 236 days later, with more than 3,000 nautical miles behind them, this distinctly trepid crew rowed ashore in Little Harbour, in the Bahamas, heading for Pete’s Pub, a palm-thatched tiki bar on the beach.
It had been quite a trip. All three had lost fat and gained muscle. They were not in debt. Friends had remarked that the skipper and mate looked ten years younger, and the ancient Leo was capering about like a puppy.
Mind you, there had been bad moments, as in Jonesport, Maine, when the skipper smashed the boat into a wharf and punched a hole in the bow, or the black night off the deadly coast of New Jersey, in a screeching gale with the boat rolling her side decks under.
But there had been plenty of thrills, fireworks over the Tall Ships in Halifax Harbour; careening down the East River at ten knots with Manhattan whizzing past to starboard; feasting on hush puppies and grits with chicken gravy in Georgia; enjoying the ancient streets of St. Augustine, and the dazzling opulence of Fort Lauderdale. And then, after crossing the Gulf Stream, the Bahamas, complete with coral reefs crowded with tropical fish, yellow and scarlet and black.
A long way from the snow and ice back home.
376 pages, Hardcover
First published December 12, 2006
2 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Silver Donald Cameron
22 books24 followersOne of Canada's most accomplished authors, Silver Donald Cameron currently devotes most of his time to his work as host and executive producer of TheGreenInterview.com, an environmental website devoted to intense, in-depth conversations with the brilliant thinkers and activists who are leading the way to a green, sustainable future. He is the author of Warrior Lawyers: From Manila to Manhattan, Attorneys for the Earth, the first Green Interview Book. Dr. Cameron also wrote and narrated The Green Interview's five documentary films: Bhutan: The Pursuit of Gross National Happiness (2010), The Celtic Mass for the Sea (2012), Salmon Wars: Salmon Farms, Wild Fish and the Future of Communities (2012), Defenders of the Dawn: Green Rights in the Maritimes (broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2015) and Green Rights: The Human Right to a Healthy World (2016).
“Since TheGreenInterview.com was launched in 2010, we've amassed more than 100 interviews with green giants from 18 countries,” he says. “I've climbed to the Tiger's Nest, a Buddhist monastery that clings to a Himalayan cliff-side in Bhutan, and with my buddy Chris Beckett – our master videographer – I've lived on a houseboat in an Amsterdam canal and stayed in a mediaeval inn in Sussex and at the ultra-posh University Club in New York. We've bounced around in an inflatable speedboat in a Pacific gale off Tofino, BC, to welcome the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior. We've travelled a filthy urban river in Buenos Aires on a garbage barge, crossed the Andes in a taxi from Quito to reach the Ecuadorian oil town of Lago Agrio, and interviewed a wounded Andean aboriginal leader in a rectory in Lima, Peru. We've had a wonderful time. It's been an education, a privilege and an inspiration.”
Silver Donald's literary work includes plays, films, radio and TV scripts, an extensive body of corporate and governmental writing, hundreds of magazine articles and 18 books, including two novels. He has won awards in all these forms of writing. His non-fiction subjects include history, travel, literature, politics, nature and the environment, ships and the sea, and community development as well as education and public affairs. He has been a columnist for The Globe and Mail, and from 1998 to 2011 he wrote an influential weekly column for the Halifax Sunday Herald. His classic book on shorelines, The Living Beach (1998), was re-released in 2014, and Warrior Lawyers appeared in 2016. The Education of Everett Richardson, his 1977 book on the 1970-71 Nova Scotia fishermen's strike, was re-issued in 2019, and his true crime book, Blood in the Water, will be published in August, 2020.
Silver Donald Cameron has built his own cruising sailboat, cruised extensively on the east coast of Canada and as far south as the Bahamas, and restored four heritage homes in rural Nova Scotia. He has also been a professor or writer-in-residence at seven universities and Dean of Community Studies at Cape Breton University. He holds two honorary doctorates as well as a Ph.D., and in 2012 he was appointed to both the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia.
Dr. Cameron is married to Marjorie Simmins, also an award-winning writer. They divide their time between Nova Scotia and British Columbia.
“Since TheGreenInterview.com was launched in 2010, we've amassed more than 100 interviews with green giants from 18 countries,” he says. “I've climbed to the Tiger's Nest, a Buddhist monastery that clings to a Himalayan cliff-side in Bhutan, and with my buddy Chris Beckett – our master videographer – I've lived on a houseboat in an Amsterdam canal and stayed in a mediaeval inn in Sussex and at the ultra-posh University Club in New York. We've bounced around in an inflatable speedboat in a Pacific gale off Tofino, BC, to welcome the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior. We've travelled a filthy urban river in Buenos Aires on a garbage barge, crossed the Andes in a taxi from Quito to reach the Ecuadorian oil town of Lago Agrio, and interviewed a wounded Andean aboriginal leader in a rectory in Lima, Peru. We've had a wonderful time. It's been an education, a privilege and an inspiration.”
Silver Donald's literary work includes plays, films, radio and TV scripts, an extensive body of corporate and governmental writing, hundreds of magazine articles and 18 books, including two novels. He has won awards in all these forms of writing. His non-fiction subjects include history, travel, literature, politics, nature and the environment, ships and the sea, and community development as well as education and public affairs. He has been a columnist for The Globe and Mail, and from 1998 to 2011 he wrote an influential weekly column for the Halifax Sunday Herald. His classic book on shorelines, The Living Beach (1998), was re-released in 2014, and Warrior Lawyers appeared in 2016. The Education of Everett Richardson, his 1977 book on the 1970-71 Nova Scotia fishermen's strike, was re-issued in 2019, and his true crime book, Blood in the Water, will be published in August, 2020.
Silver Donald Cameron has built his own cruising sailboat, cruised extensively on the east coast of Canada and as far south as the Bahamas, and restored four heritage homes in rural Nova Scotia. He has also been a professor or writer-in-residence at seven universities and Dean of Community Studies at Cape Breton University. He holds two honorary doctorates as well as a Ph.D., and in 2012 he was appointed to both the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia.
Dr. Cameron is married to Marjorie Simmins, also an award-winning writer. They divide their time between Nova Scotia and British Columbia.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 10, 2013
This is about as exciting as listening to your relative tell you about his latest shopping trip to the next town. I was looking for a sailing adventure. Didn't happen.
February 16, 2024
Not as exciting or as entertaining as I had been hoping, but interesting enough to easily read through to the end. It has made me think more about the necessary details for making such a voyage, as I hope to do in the near future, though not through The Intracoastal Waterway.
March 4, 2020
Reading this book reminded me of the many stories that my parents shared of a similar experience. I am in awe of the kind of determination that results in such an amazing voyage.
May 25, 2007
This is a fun first hand account of a journey from Cape Breton through all of the small towns it takes between old dog-bladder distance to get to the east coast of the U.S. and eventually to the Bahamas.
Historical details are combined with the modern day adventure stories of finding a place to tie up your boat and take your anxious dog ashore - often in bad weather.
The people met en-route are a treat when seen through the eyes of veteran sailor and Cape Breton writer Silver Donald.
This book is like a holiday full of the unexpected... welcome aboard from the first page to the last...
Historical details are combined with the modern day adventure stories of finding a place to tie up your boat and take your anxious dog ashore - often in bad weather.
The people met en-route are a treat when seen through the eyes of veteran sailor and Cape Breton writer Silver Donald.
This book is like a holiday full of the unexpected... welcome aboard from the first page to the last...
November 11, 2015
Nice account of his trip. Hopefully we can sail from Nova Scotia to the Bahams sometime as well. This book would be a goood companion for anyone trying this trip. If you go, do not bring an old dog that needs to go ashore twice a day, it really bogs you down.
Quite entertaining.
Quite entertaining.
April 28, 2014
Silver Donald Cameron is my favourite Canadian author, and second favourite activist & environmentalist (second only to David Suzuki). This book is the real-life story of a winter's sailing journey down the east coast of North America. Pleasant and interesting.
February 5, 2013
I recommend this highly, for my sailing friends, especially Kim and for all my east coaster friends. Well written, wish I was there!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews