In 2020 I had the pleasure of reviewing Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven Year Pacific Odyssey by award-winning author Wendy Hinman which for me was extremely amusing, written brilliantly with a sense of humor and from the author’s heart.
Now, two years later, Wendy has returned with Sea Trials: Around the World with Duct Tape and Bailing Wire, a 2017 book that’s now available also in audiobook format.
I’m convinced that this riveting story will appeal to readers of all ages: adults, young adults, and even kids, especially since the audiobook is performed by multiple award-winning narrator Eric G. Dove. The audio production has a runtime of exactly 12 and a half hours, and the publishing has been done by Salsa Press Publishing and Wendy Hinman.
Sea Trials: Around the World with Duct Tape and Bailing Wire has been awarded Kirkus Best Book of 2017 by Kirkus Reviews, the elite reviewing agency. Fewer than 2% of all books earn a starred review. Even fewer are selected Best Book of the Month and, fewer still, Best Book of the Year. Wendy Hinman’s second book, Sea Trials, can claim all three.
It has also been named a Foreward Reviews best book of the year and a Readers Favorite. It has earned glowing reviews from Cruising World Magazine, Sailing Magazine, Wooden Boat Magazine, Good Old Boat and others, andhas been featured in various gift guides. An excerpt from it was featured in Sail Magazine.
With rave reviews from nearly every national sailing publication plus best-selling authors and readers, it’s clear that this book has popular appeal. I think that even more fascinating is that the story generated big press coverage at the time of the shipwreck (September 1974) and again upon the family’s return after completing their voyage around the world (in July 1978). The story went out over the AP and UPI news wire services and was picked up in various publications around the world, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and newspapers in Toronto and Geneva, among many others, and a television interview with Maury Povich.
You can imagine that I am very excited to listen to it, but first let’s take a look at the Publisher’s Summary so that everyone knows what the story is about and after that, I will tell you more about our award-winning author and narrator.
About the book:
A shipwreck might end a dream of circumnavigating the globe. Not for the Wilcox family. In 1973, the Wilcox family sets off to sail around the world aboard the 40-foot sailboat, Vela. Thirteen months later, they are shipwrecked on a coral reef, with surf tearing a huge hole into the side of their boat. With years invested in saving money, preparing the boat, and learning to navigate by the stars, parents Chuck and Dawn refuse to give up.
Fourteen-year-old Garth is determined to continue, while 11-year-old Linda never wanted to go in the first place. Can they overcome the emotional, physical, and financial challenges to transform from castaways into circumnavigators?
To triumph, they must rebuild their boat on a remote Pacific island. Damage sustained on the reef and a lack of resources haunt them the rest of the way around the world as they face daunting obstacles, including wild weather, pirates, gun boats, mines, and thieves, plus pesky bureaucrats and cockroaches as stubborn as the family.
Without a working engine and no way to communicate with the outside world, they struggle to reach home before their broken rig comes crashing down and they run out of food in a trial that tests them to their limits.
About the author:
Wendy Hinman is an adventurer, speaker, and the award-winning author of two books: Tightwads on the Loose and Sea Trials: Around the World with Duct Tape and Bailing Wire. Tightwads on the Loose tells the story of her 34,000-mile voyage aboard a 31-foot sailboat with her husband. It has been called a “cult classic,” admired for its unaffected style and refreshing humor, and named a Readers Favorite.
Sea Trials details the harrowing round-the-world voyage of a family who must overcome a shipwreck, gun boats, mines, thieves, scurvy and hunger to achieve their dream.
Wendy is a sought-after speaker who gives entertaining presentations throughout the country at libraries, community centers, and private clubs (as well as online). She writes articles for a variety of publications and reviews books for Foreword Reviews Magazine. She is currently at work on a historical novel. For more information about Wendy, please visit her website by clicking here.
About the narrator:
Eric G. Dove is an award-winning narrator whose career spans over 12 years and 450 titles encompassing numerous genres including thrillers, military fiction, romance, sci-fi, classics, westerns, fantasy, non-fiction, and more. He consistently works with the best publishers in the business, voicing the works of a vast array of authors; Stephen Hunter to Herman Melville, J.R. Ward to Mark Twain.
He is known for his varied and believable characterizations and is adept at virtually any U.S. or international dialect, enabling him to fully distinguish each character, breathing the life into them that the author intended without crossing the hard-to-define line that can turn characters into caricatures.
Eric’s performances become an immersive experience, transporting the listener into the author’s world and ushering the author’s characters into the world of the listener. Among many industry accolades, he was an Audie Award Nominee in 2017 in the crowded “Thriller/Suspense” category and is a multiple Audiofile Earphones Award Winner.
An established singer/songwriter, fiction author, and avid cruising sailor, he enjoys adventuring around the world with wife, Loren and son, Rivers Danger aboard their sloop, Cecilia. Years of sailing on big boats led Eric to the realization that a sailboat stateroom is an ideal acoustic environment for voice recording. Now, he completes numerous projects in his on-board studio while also co-producing, with Loren, their family travel YouTube series, “SailAway”.
I can’t wait to start this new adventure and to take an imaginary epic trip Around the World with Duct Tape and Bailing Wire, I already know that Wendy is a terrific writer and Eric a fabulous narrator, so I’m sure that I will have a wonderful time. I will see you very soon here with a full review for Sea Trials but until then, take care, stay safe, and don’t forget, always listen with your heart!
Read more at:
https://theaudiobookblog.com/sea-trials-spotlight/
