Boat Survival

With Nazis bombing London every night, it's time for 13-year-old Ken to escape. He suspects his stepmother is glad to see him go, but his dad says he's one of the lucky ones - one of 90 boys and girls to ship out aboard the SS City of Benares to safety in Canada. Life aboard the luxury ship is grand-nine-course meals, new friends, and a life far from the bombs, rations, and his stepmum's glare. And after five days at sea, the ship's officers announce that they're out of danger. They're wrong.

This is the first-person account of Herbert W. Stone, the second-mate of the Earnmoor, a tramp steamer which sank during a hurricane in the Atlantic on September 5, 1889. Stone and a handful of his surviving shipmates drifted in an open lifeboat for three weeks in the Gulf Stream before being rescued off of Cape Hatteras on September 26, 1889. Owned by the Earn Line Shipping Company of Philadelphia, the Earnmoor was built by Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company in Tyne, England. She was approximately 2,000 tons with a length of 280 feet and a beam of 36 feet. During her short life between ...

Ten-year-old George Calder can't believe his luck - he and his little sister, Phoebe, are on the famous Titanic, crossing the ocean with their aunt Daisy. The ship is full of exciting places to explore, but when George ventures into the first-class storage cabin, a terrible boom shakes the entire boat. Suddenly water is everywhere, and George's life changes forever.

In The Circus Ship, a very special craft is carrying all manner of circus animals. But when it nearly sinks, out spill all the animals. Luckily, they make it to a nearby island. And there they happily settle in - until the mean old circus owner tries to round them up.

Richard Henry Dana, a law student turned sailor for health reasons, sailed in 1834 aboard the brig Pilgrim on a voyage from Boston around Cape Horn to California. Drawing from his journals, Two Years Before the Mast gives a vivid and detailed account, shrewdly observed and beautifully described, of a common sailor's wretched treatment at sea, and of a way of life virtually unknown at that time.

From down the Choctawhatchee River in Alabama to the Gulf of Mexico in Florida, listen and follow our survivors as they flee the chaos and mayhem of the city on the safest alternate route they can find. All their gear, all their hopes, and dreams of survival are packed in a compact technologically- advanced trailer that can turn into a boat. Join Sam and Lori as they use all their survival skills and prepper wits to try to prosper and thrive in this grid down apocalypse and avoid the creeping extinction that follows them as modern society collapses.

In the spring of 1983, massive flooding along the length of the Colorado River confronted a team of engineers at the Glen Canyon Dam with an unprecedented emergency that may have resulted in the most catastrophic dam failure in history. In the midst of this crisis, the decision to launch a small wooden dory named “The Emerald Mile” at the head of the Grand Canyon, just fifteen miles downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam, seemed not just odd, but downright suicidal.

In July 1973, Bob Tininenko, his wife Linda, and his brother in-law Jim Fisher set sail from Tacoma, Washington, on a 31-foot trimaran, down the West Coast to Costa Rica. The journey was expected to take a matter of weeks, but 10 days into the cruise, the party encountered a freak storm off the coast of Northern California. When gale-force winds and 50-foot waves capsized their boat, the voyage became a nightmare. For 72 days, the trio was lost at sea. Challenged by nature and compromised by a bitter rivalry, their courage and will to live was put to the ultimate test.

When you read about someone sailing around the world, it’s usually a dotcom millionaire or a professional adventurer. Brave or Stupid? tells a very different story. It’s an everyman tale about a middle-aged, seasick electrician with no money who suddenly and for no reason decides to sail around the world. It’s the story of Yanne Larsson, a man with a dream born not out of a passion for sailing or a search for identity or the need for a challenge. This is the story of a simple handshake. One of the old-fashioned, ironclad ones.

Set in the remote arctic region of Northern Canada, this book takes listeners on a harrowing canoe voyage that results in tragedy, redemption, and, ultimately, transformation. George Grinnell was one of six young men who set off on the 1955 expedition led by experienced wilderness canoeist Art Moffatt. Poorly planned and executed, the journey seemed doomed from the start. Ignoring the approaching winter, the men became entranced with the peace and beauty of the arctic in autumn.

Sailing by yourself, out of sight of land, can be invigorating and terrifying, compelling and tedious—and sometimes all of the above in one morning. But it is also a wide expanse of time in which to think. Sailing Alone tells the story of some of the remarkable people who, over the last four centuries, have spent weeks and months, moving slowly over the world's largest laboratory: a capricious and startling place in which to observe oneself, the weather, the stars, and countless sea creatures, from the tiniest to the most massive and threatening.

Unrelenting winds, carnivorous polar bears, snake nests, sweltering heat, and constant hunger. Paddling from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay, following the 2,000-mile route made famous by Eric Sevareid in his 1935 classic Canoeing with the Cree, Natalie Warren and Ann Raiho faced unexpected trials, some harrowing, some simply odd. Warren's spellbinding account retraces the women's journey from inspiration to Arctic waters, giving listeners an insider view of planning a three-month canoe expedition to the successful accomplishment of the adventure of a lifetime.

On May 15, 2010, after 210 days at sea and more than 22,000 nautical miles, 16-year-old Jessica Watson sailed her 33-foot boat triumphantly back to land. She had done it. She was the youngest person to sail solo, unassisted, and nonstop around the world. Jessica spent years preparing for this moment, years focused on achieving her dream. Yet only eight months before, she collided with a 63,000-ton freighter. It seemed to many that she’d failed before she’d even begun, but Jessica brushed herself off, held her head high, and kept going.

Fatal Forecast chronicles a dramatic fight for survival aboard two small fishing boats that were ambushed by a horrific surprise storm just southeast of Cape Cod. Soon after the Fair Wind and the Sea Fever reached the fishing ground at Georges Bank, they were hit with hurricane-force winds and massive 90-foot waves that battered the boats for hours. The direction of the wind made it impossible to turn back.

In a memoir remarkable for its quiet confidence and acute natural observation, the author of Paddling Hawaii and Paddling My Own Canoe begins with her decision, at age 60, to undertake a solo, summer-long voyage along the southeast coast of Alaska in an inflatable kayak. Paddling North is a compilation of Sutherland's first two (of more than 20) such annual trips and her day-by-day travels through the Inside Passage from Ketchikan to Skagway. In 22 years, she encountered more than 30 bears, four wolves, and hundreds of whales.

The true account of the 2017-2018 solo nonstop circumnavigation by Jerome Rand aboard the Westsail 32 Mighty Sparrow. A testament to endurance and adventure, this memoir recounts what life is like aboard a small sailboat during a 271-day voyage around the globe, alone, and without stopping. One of the greatest challenges of both body and mind, the author will take you onboard during the good times and the bad. As one of only a handful of people to have ever succeed in such a small boat, this story is truly the adventure of a lifetime.

Erik Weihenmayer is the first and only blind person to summit Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. Descending carefully, he and his team picked their way across deep crevasses and through the deadly Khumbu Icefall; when the mountain was finally behind him, Erik knew he was going to live. His expedition leader slapped him on the back and said something that would affect the course of Erik’s life: “Don’t make Everest the greatest thing you ever do.” No Barriers is Erik’s response to that challenge.

Two Years Before the Mast is a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834 and published in 1840. While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles that affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway), and being something of a nonconformist, left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor.

Across Islands and Oceans is the memoir of 25 year-old James Baldwin and his epic two-year, solo circumnavigation in Atom, his trusty but aging 28-foot sailboat.

On May 19, 1942, during World War II, a German submarine, a U-boat, in the Gulf of Mexico stalked its prey 50 miles from New Orleans. The submarine set its sights on the freighter Heredia. Most onboard were merchant seamen, but there were also civilians, including the Downs family: Ray and Ina and their two children. Fast asleep in their berths, the Downs family had no idea that two torpedoes were heading their way. When the ship exploded, chaos ensued - and each family member had to find their own path to survival.