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Red Sea Run - Two Sailors in a Sea of Trouble
Cap'n Fatty and Carolyn take Wild Card from Thailand to the Mediterranean via the Red Sea. They must sail past the dreaded Somali pirates before dealing with the land pirates of the Suez Canal.
232 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 20, 2010
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January 9, 2014
So here is a dilemma: you and your lovely, charming wife are leading an adventurous and largely carefree life aboard a 38-foot sailboat, cruising with your whims from port to port, country to country. At the moment, you are in southeast asia. Then you find out that your daughter is pregnant. You both agree that you want to be closer to her and your soon-to-be grandchild, but the shortest and most direct route would take you through some of the world's most notoriously lawless waters. Going "the long way," on the other hand, would add thousands of sea miles and potentially many months — maybe a year — to the journey. You would miss the birth. What do you do?
It sounds like the premise of a novel, but Red Sea Run / Two Sailors in a Sea of Trouble is a true account of how the author, Gary "Cap'n Fatty" Goodlander, and his wife of many years, Carolyn, made this trip — a trip that carried them perilously close to the pirate haven of Somalia and included a convoy from Oman through the dreaded Gulf of Aden.
Roma Orion (loosely translated as "Wanderer With a Sense of Direction"), had left the floating nest and gone away to get her college degree at Brandeis on a full scholarship (followed by an MBA) and was now in Amsterdam with her husband Christian. As the narrative unfolds, Fatty and Carolyn make their way from Malaysia to Thailand to the Maldives and across the Arabian Sea into the teeth of the greatest jeopardy they've ever faced — human menace, not threats posed by King Neptune.
It's brutally funny, frequently quite gross, sometimes scary, surprisingly silly, usually outrageous and occasionally veers close to being softcore porn. (He really likes his wife.) It's partly about life at sea, but it's really more about seeing the world through the crooked lens of Cap'n Fatty's slightly unbalanced brain. Red Sea Run is brimming with side-stories of people Fatty and Carolyn encounter along the way, to the point that this book is almost as much about everybody else as it is about them.
I subscribe to all of the sailing magazines. All of them. We have a little ritual in our household: when the latest issue of Cruising World arrives, I always read Capn' Fatty's column, "On Watch," out loud to my wife, complete with full voice characterizations and often dramatic sound effects. "Let's see what Fatty and Carolyn are up to," I say, finding the page where his column begins as we both sit down with drinks.
One of the funny things about the glossy, advertiser-driven magazines is that since so much of their profit comes from print ads, it really drives their editorial agenda. I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing in and of itself, but it does certainly tend to favor stories that encourage people to buy stuff — more stuff, bigger stuff, better stuff, faster stuff, higher-tech stuff. It also favors stories that encourage people to get out there and go places and do things — assuming, of course, that "going places" and "doing things" means spending money on products and services, preferably the products and services advertised in the magazine that publishes those stories.
So it's an amusing paradox that Cap'n Fatty, a hero in our little world and consistently one of the best parts of Cruising World magazine every month, is a self-described Sea Gypsy. I have never seen anyone use the term "hippie cruising," but I am going to use it now to encapsulate a worldview that includes the following elements, all of them fully developed in Red Sea Run:
(1) Emphasis on having experiences versus spending money whenever possible.
(2) Emphasis on self-reliance. Buy it only if you can't build it yourself. Hire someone to repair it only if you can't fix it yourself.
(3) Emphasis on good Karma and the value of a wise trade. I probably have something you want; you probably have something I want. Let's barter and leave the world political-economic machine out of it.
(4) Emphasis on simplicity. Hippie cruising is anti-clutter and anti-materialism.
(5) A generally friendly, mostly nice, largely tolerant, basically open-minded, principally egalitarian, quietly anarchist attitude.
Hippie cruising appeals to me. If I ever founded a sailing magazine, that's what I would call it. It would have articles on things like how to build a freshwater still or a solar oven or a hydroponic deck garden out of spare parts you found lying around the boatyard. It would also explain why you don't really need an electric windlass, a bow thruster or a mainsail that you can furl by remote control.
So it certainly wouldn't do to run an article called, "Ten Reasons Why This $650 'Sailing Jacket' Is No Better Than This Windbreaker and Wool Sweater I Got for $17 at the Thrift Store."
Nor would it be OK to print a feature story titled, "Thinking of Sailing to Hurkmucker Island and the Surrounding Fungiform Archipelago? Don't Waste Your Time."
Items like that do not excite advertisers.
And this is where books like Red Sea Run really shine out into the darkness like a beacon on a foggy coast. Cap'n Fatty flat-out rejects all that nonsense, and that's just refreshing.
That having been said, this is most assuredly NOT a book you would want to share with a friend or family member if you were trying to convince him or her that your desire to go to sea in a small sailboat is perfectly reasonable. Even less so if you are hoping he or she will come along and crew for you!
Red Sea Run includes not only tales of piracy, violence and theft, but also the innumerable headaches cruisers face -- such as crooked ship's agents (Mohammad, in Chapter VII, is a character you will want to strangle), corrupt police, rude locals, egocentric sailors, filthy harbors, inadequate supplies, high costs, "compassion fatigue," unnecessary paperwork and hostility to foreigners. Some of his social observations are almost shockingly insightful.
But despite all those hard lumps of brutal reality, Red Sea Run is ultimately about the joy and freedom of the cruising life. Most of the people are wonderful, most of the places are delightful, most days at sea are pleasant, and one cocktail party with great friends as the sun sets over the ocean is enough to remind anyone why you're all out here doing this.
The story reaches its exotic climax with a long, treacherous slog up the narrow body of water that gives the book its title. Fatty and Carolyn find themselves in an ancient world, "like walking through the Bible," as Fatty puts it, filled with camels and scimitars and muzzenin calling from minarets.
If you love to travel rough and you can handle some harsh honesty from a man with a goofball sense of humor — or you just want a break from the endless tropical rainbows of the glossy sailing magazines, read Red Sea Run / Two Sailors in a Sea of Trouble by Gary "Cap'n Fatty" Goodlander. Enjoy it in the same spirit you would read a long letter from an eccentric old buddy with a song in his heart and saltwater in his veins.
It sounds like the premise of a novel, but Red Sea Run / Two Sailors in a Sea of Trouble is a true account of how the author, Gary "Cap'n Fatty" Goodlander, and his wife of many years, Carolyn, made this trip — a trip that carried them perilously close to the pirate haven of Somalia and included a convoy from Oman through the dreaded Gulf of Aden.
Roma Orion (loosely translated as "Wanderer With a Sense of Direction"), had left the floating nest and gone away to get her college degree at Brandeis on a full scholarship (followed by an MBA) and was now in Amsterdam with her husband Christian. As the narrative unfolds, Fatty and Carolyn make their way from Malaysia to Thailand to the Maldives and across the Arabian Sea into the teeth of the greatest jeopardy they've ever faced — human menace, not threats posed by King Neptune.
It's brutally funny, frequently quite gross, sometimes scary, surprisingly silly, usually outrageous and occasionally veers close to being softcore porn. (He really likes his wife.) It's partly about life at sea, but it's really more about seeing the world through the crooked lens of Cap'n Fatty's slightly unbalanced brain. Red Sea Run is brimming with side-stories of people Fatty and Carolyn encounter along the way, to the point that this book is almost as much about everybody else as it is about them.
I subscribe to all of the sailing magazines. All of them. We have a little ritual in our household: when the latest issue of Cruising World arrives, I always read Capn' Fatty's column, "On Watch," out loud to my wife, complete with full voice characterizations and often dramatic sound effects. "Let's see what Fatty and Carolyn are up to," I say, finding the page where his column begins as we both sit down with drinks.
One of the funny things about the glossy, advertiser-driven magazines is that since so much of their profit comes from print ads, it really drives their editorial agenda. I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing in and of itself, but it does certainly tend to favor stories that encourage people to buy stuff — more stuff, bigger stuff, better stuff, faster stuff, higher-tech stuff. It also favors stories that encourage people to get out there and go places and do things — assuming, of course, that "going places" and "doing things" means spending money on products and services, preferably the products and services advertised in the magazine that publishes those stories.
So it's an amusing paradox that Cap'n Fatty, a hero in our little world and consistently one of the best parts of Cruising World magazine every month, is a self-described Sea Gypsy. I have never seen anyone use the term "hippie cruising," but I am going to use it now to encapsulate a worldview that includes the following elements, all of them fully developed in Red Sea Run:
(1) Emphasis on having experiences versus spending money whenever possible.
(2) Emphasis on self-reliance. Buy it only if you can't build it yourself. Hire someone to repair it only if you can't fix it yourself.
(3) Emphasis on good Karma and the value of a wise trade. I probably have something you want; you probably have something I want. Let's barter and leave the world political-economic machine out of it.
(4) Emphasis on simplicity. Hippie cruising is anti-clutter and anti-materialism.
(5) A generally friendly, mostly nice, largely tolerant, basically open-minded, principally egalitarian, quietly anarchist attitude.
Hippie cruising appeals to me. If I ever founded a sailing magazine, that's what I would call it. It would have articles on things like how to build a freshwater still or a solar oven or a hydroponic deck garden out of spare parts you found lying around the boatyard. It would also explain why you don't really need an electric windlass, a bow thruster or a mainsail that you can furl by remote control.
So it certainly wouldn't do to run an article called, "Ten Reasons Why This $650 'Sailing Jacket' Is No Better Than This Windbreaker and Wool Sweater I Got for $17 at the Thrift Store."
Nor would it be OK to print a feature story titled, "Thinking of Sailing to Hurkmucker Island and the Surrounding Fungiform Archipelago? Don't Waste Your Time."
Items like that do not excite advertisers.
And this is where books like Red Sea Run really shine out into the darkness like a beacon on a foggy coast. Cap'n Fatty flat-out rejects all that nonsense, and that's just refreshing.
That having been said, this is most assuredly NOT a book you would want to share with a friend or family member if you were trying to convince him or her that your desire to go to sea in a small sailboat is perfectly reasonable. Even less so if you are hoping he or she will come along and crew for you!
Red Sea Run includes not only tales of piracy, violence and theft, but also the innumerable headaches cruisers face -- such as crooked ship's agents (Mohammad, in Chapter VII, is a character you will want to strangle), corrupt police, rude locals, egocentric sailors, filthy harbors, inadequate supplies, high costs, "compassion fatigue," unnecessary paperwork and hostility to foreigners. Some of his social observations are almost shockingly insightful.
But despite all those hard lumps of brutal reality, Red Sea Run is ultimately about the joy and freedom of the cruising life. Most of the people are wonderful, most of the places are delightful, most days at sea are pleasant, and one cocktail party with great friends as the sun sets over the ocean is enough to remind anyone why you're all out here doing this.
The story reaches its exotic climax with a long, treacherous slog up the narrow body of water that gives the book its title. Fatty and Carolyn find themselves in an ancient world, "like walking through the Bible," as Fatty puts it, filled with camels and scimitars and muzzenin calling from minarets.
If you love to travel rough and you can handle some harsh honesty from a man with a goofball sense of humor — or you just want a break from the endless tropical rainbows of the glossy sailing magazines, read Red Sea Run / Two Sailors in a Sea of Trouble by Gary "Cap'n Fatty" Goodlander. Enjoy it in the same spirit you would read a long letter from an eccentric old buddy with a song in his heart and saltwater in his veins.
January 30, 2022
Typical Fatty
A fun book to read. Only negative was the numerous typo and errors…a little more proof reading would have improved the tales.
A fun book to read. Only negative was the numerous typo and errors…a little more proof reading would have improved the tales.
March 5, 2014
Fatty Goodlander has a enjoyable and humorous writing style. Even though the basis for this book is about a less than humorous topic of dangerous pirate infested waters in the Red Sea and the constant bribes demanded by the Egyptians that run the Suez Canal. When I go around the world I will go around South Africa just to avoid this troubled area of the world. Well worth the read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews