Publisher's Synopsis
Ignorance is Bliss Sailing with Dadis for everyone who has ever dreamed of traveling under canvas, driven solely by a gentle breeze and with the cheerful chuckle of water under the bow. These are not harrowing tales of blizzards on far-away oceans but rather the experiences of an ordinary family as it steers an erratic course from an English Midlands lake to the Caribbean Sea and from naivet to a state of near-competence.
We are carried from the nostalgia of the post-WW2 scene and the gleam of varnished mahogany to the utilitarian glass-fiber boats of the present; through three generations of sailors, each of whom learns a little from his forebears.
Though at times improbable, these tales are all completely true. It will be a flinty reader indeed who does not let loose the occasional Gordon Bennett or stone the crows on learning of some of the predicaments awaiting innocents-afloat. This book does not belong in the how to do it section of the bookstore; indeed it probably belongs in a how not to do it section still to be devised. Yet there is wisdom here, if you will dig for it.
Richard Hansford is the author of The Doctor Factory, a book about the life of professors at a fictional offshore medical school named the Freedom University of the Caribbean (FUe, which has been well-received.
