Through the Land of Fire: Fifty-Six South

By Ben Pester

At the climax of a 9-month Millennium cruise in a 16-foot classic wooden yacht lay Cape Horn, the most challenging cape to round for generations of sailors. The author complements the drama of his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1574092022
• ISBN13: 9781574092028
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: Sheridan House
• Length: 286 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

18,000 mile Millennium Voyage

Rebeccasreads highly recommends THROUGH THE LAND OF FIRE as an engrossing & delightful read about Ben Pester's cruise from Falmouth, Cornwall on the south coast of England in his 36 foot classic wooden yacht Marelle, to the mysterious, dangerous & unfrequented waters of Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, & around Cape Horn. Following in the wake of such legendary mariners as Drake, Raleigh, Cavendish, Davis, Darwin, & of course, Magellan for whom the strait is named, Ben Pester salts his nautical log of weather, ships, messages home & the seas they encounter with tales of mutinies & survivals, settlements & penal colonies & the possible source for Coleridge's THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. Included are appendices by his crew member, Jeremy Burnett re: onboard recipes & observations about the creatures who call that magnificent part of the world home, as well as Adrie Burnett's account of how she provisioned the crew with victuals for their nine month voyage.

a dangerous read if you have a dream....

If you have an un-fulfilled dream, a personal Everest which has beckoned you to its base-camp throughout your life and then taunted you with its cloud-capped peak, and you have ever wondered `When will I get there?' then this has to be the book for you. The author, an accomplished long distance sailor, had always had a yen for sailing round Cape Horn and since he hadn't done it by his 75th year he decided it would make a nice birthday present for himself and so he set off in his 36 ft. wooden sloop `Marelle' with two friends (aggregate age 193 years for those interested in statistics) to achieve his personal dream. `Through the Land of Fire' is a beautifully written and unostentatious account of this remarkable voyage with passages of detail which make you feel part of the crew. Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego are still little-known areas and to keep the interest level high and introduce the regions with their colour the author adds vignettes from the path-finding voyages of Magellan and Anson. A remarkable book and one that kept me hooked from beginning to end - not to be churlish but only one criticism, or maybe a request for a subsequent edition. The book has several appendices and I would really have liked to have seen one from the author's wife. There is a picture of the three wives watching the home-coming at Falmouth and I would really have liked to share what was going through her mind as she waved her husband off on his 18,000 mile voyage.