Nonfiction
Suttie Adams
Paperback
204 pages
38 b/w photographs
August 2013
ISBN 978-0-9797613-5-5
The Cruise of the Fairweather is an account of a circumnavigation, from San Francisco to San Francisco, that began by sailing down the west coast of Mexico, and then by sailing west: across the South Seas, the East Indies, the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean, and then back up the west coast of Mexico. The cruise lasted four years, from March 1961 to April 1965. This account is based on the journal that Suttie Adams kept during the cruise, supplemented with details from Fairweather’s logbook and 38 original photos. During the four years of the cruise, the schooner Fairweather sailed 35,566 miles, spent 349 days at sea, and visited 103 ports. Was it a successful cruise? Well, many of the original crew were still aboard when the Fairweather sailed back under the Golden Gate and into San Francisco Bay. Those few who left the schooner during the cruise never left willingly, with the possible exception of Bill Adams, the original captain, but let Suttie tell that story.
Fiction
Jon Adams
Paperback
215 pages
May 2024
ISBN 978-0-9797613-8-6
From the back cover: Jamie has to retrieve the schooner, Stella Maris. It’s a condition in his father’s will. He has to sail to the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean to recover the schooner from the Outer Islands and then sail home to San Francisco. It’s a voyage around the world.
Jon Adams
Paperback
200 pages
October 2023
ISBN 978-0-9797613-7-9
From the back cover: Otis starts from Manila on a short cruise that turns into a voyage of weeks and months as his sloop sails farther and farther into the Pacific Ocean. He is somewhere east of Fiji when he passes through the barrier reef of an island he doesn’t know the name of because he doesn’t have a chart. He has left a lot behind and now he thinks only of sailing home. But the island he has arrived at won’t let him leave, not until he finds out what happened on the Far Atoll.
Jon Adams
Paperback
266 pages
January 2008
ISBN 978-0-9797613-0-0
From the back cover: His father told him to sail Jest, a 35-foot boat, from San Francisco to Hawaii. No, he thought. No, he couldn’t imagine himself doing that. He couldn’t imagine spending days at sea and sailing thousands of miles with nothing but an empty horizon before him. But he knew his father would be after him. So he took Jest out of her slip in Sausalito and tried to hide in a small, out-of-the-way harbor. When that didn’t work, he tried to run away by sailing down the coast to Mexico. But that wasn’t enough either. He had to keep running by sailing across the ocean to the South Seas. He sailed farther than he planned, farther than he even thought possible, until eventually, after thousands of miles, he sailed alone around the world.
. . . a completely extraordinary piece of classic coming-of-age literature.
Foreword Magazine