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The author has also illustrated the book with a number of hand drawn maps and illustrations of his boat and various events and scenes. We bought 4 copies to give to friends on the next suitable occasion, and are contemplating buying more.
He's a very funny guy, and I laughed frequently as I read the book. His story is full of misadventures and mishaps, courage and determination, flexibility and improvisation, challenges and overcoming of obstacles.
Mackinnon's odyssey, traveling in an 11 foot sailing dinghy from Wales through rivers, streams, locks, canals, across the English Channel, and ultimately all the way to the Black Sea, is an unforgettable read. As soon as I finished it, my wife started it, with the same reaction.
The author has wonderful encounters with people all along the way, most of them incredibly helpful, a few of them extraordinarily the opposite. It's a page turner, and I stayed up several nights till 2 or 3 in the morning, unable to put the book down.
I've read a lot of travel adventures, and this book is one of the best. Totally delightful.
I read this book while on a multi day fishing trip in my small boat. It was a fun read and I enjoyed it. The reason I only gave it 3 stars was that the author struck me as kind of a mooch. Not a good thing to reward a lazy, cheap, government employee with sticky fingers.
But what it left me with was a restored faith in human nature. I loved this book. The author has a dry delivery that had me laughing out loud. Every time Sandy was in a muddle, someone was there with kindness and (usually) a good meal. I admire his guts to take on the journey but I also admire all those people he encountered along the way who, instead of dismissing him as some crazy Brit, reached out with a lifeline and we are all the better for it.
A very good record of an amazing trip, especially the part where he crosses the English Channel. The book is helped by maps but moreso by the author's gift for description. I would definitely recommend it to friends.
He rested his forehead for a moment against the cool glass. I did not want to put it down, and I was sorry when I turned the last page and realised there would be no more. Hardly ever out of sight of land he nevertheless encounters a succession of obstacles including obstructive lock keepers, stifling bureaucracy, drunken revellers, a burgeoning Balkan war and Danube River pirates. Details of birds in flight, the plants and animals of the riverbank work their way into his narrative, often with appropriate extracts from the great nature poets, Masefield, Keats, Wordsworth and so on. Desperately dodging party boats and giant barges which had no hope of seeing him in the darkness he still has time to observe the Houses of Parliament, towering above him."As I passed, one youngish-looking man came to the window and stood staring out beyond the glass into the darkness over the Thames. (Sandy) Mackinnon, born in Australia, but with strong links to Britain, is teaching at a school in Shropshire, close to the Welsh border, when he decides that it is time to move on "not by the Inter-City 10.15 to Birmingham with a suitcase in each hand, not by a lift to the airport checking the whereabouts of my passport every three minutes.but like dear Doctor Doolittle, by sailing away in a jolly little galleon and seeing what I bumped into on the way."The "jolly little galleon" was in fact a Mirror dinghy called Jack de Crow after a pet jackdaw, long since departed, which had in turn taken its name from the school's headmaster. A.J.
Initially planning to take Jack down various canals and minor rivers to Gloucester near the mouth of the River Severn, Mackinnon just decides to keep going, cutting back across Britain to the Thames, then across the English Channel to France, Germany and through the heart of Europe and eventually to the Black Sea - 4900 kilometres in a tiny vessel more suited to a sunny afternoon on Lake Burley Griffin. And what an adventure it was. This veteran reader has come across many books in his time - books that deal with important subjects; books about important people; books that have increased his knowledge and understanding of the world, a few that have been plain dreadful and a penance to plough through, but every so often books that are unadulterated entertainment and an absolute pleasure.The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow sits firmly in the final category. Many times, wet, miserable, and in Serbia penniless and starving, he admits he is on the point of quitting, yet the new day somehow recharges his enthusiasm often simply by finding a warm, dry Laundromat where he can wash his clothes and write letters."An astonishing question kept insisting: why wasn't everyone doing exactly as I was. For there was no doubt about it: this was the most perfect occupation known to humankind."The story is aided by its author being not just an adventurer, but an artist, philosopher and keen observer of the world around him. Anyone with an education that predates the computer age will delight in the classical references and there are moments in the journey painted so vividly one is almost inside the writer's head, sharing his experience completely.One of my favourite passages among many comes as he is struggling to take Jack through London on the Thames at night and (illegally) without lights. His students are fortunate to have such a teacher. Sandy Mackinnon is now on the staff of Geelong Grammar at its Timbertop campus in Australia.
End of story.But what a story. He looked tired and a little glum, I thought, as though he longed to be away from that lit room, its secretes and its linenfold panelling. Forced to strip off and swim out to a wayward Jack swept downstream by floodwater on the River Vyrnwy in Shropshire he inevitably encounters a party of female canoeists as he is rowing back to his camp site with nothing but a trusty pith helmet (an essential part of his equipment until it is stolen somewhere in Germany) to cover his modesty.Mackinnon is without doubt an eccentric and while the British are known for their love of them, the Europeans also embrace him. He is fortified by a throng of friends and acquaintances along the way, but several times damage which could easily have ended his voyage is repaired, usually without cost, by kindly strangers bemused and intrigued by this intrepid adventurer. Perhaps he longed to be in a small sailing dinghy off to foreign parts on an outgoing tide under the stars."Finally, I will commend this book for its illustrations, drawn by the author, which add greatly to the gentle humour of the narrative.
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