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David Schramm Adventurer and Author |
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One of my first childhood memories is set on the beach of the New Jersey shore. I was six. I had let a helium balloon go flying and watched as it went out to sea. I asked Mom where it would go. She said Europe if it stayed in the air long enough. I stared in wonder. I wondered what the journey would be like and what Europe was. It’s been a long time since then, and while I've been to Europe several times, that balloon is still pulling me out to sea. As I grew older, my spirit of adventure pulled me toward sailboats. I read every book that existed on voyaging. My heroes were Magellan, Cook, Darwin, Chichester, Larry and Lynn Pardee, Sterling Hayden, Joe Richards and so many others. I had a family by the time I graduated from College and started a career with IBM. Thoughts of cruising the world were put in the deep freeze. However I did manage to buy a sailboat along the way. It was a Herreshoff Eagle named Harmony, a reflection of Princess, a gaff rigged centerboard sloop. She was perfect for the Chesapeake Bay and I took my family for day sails with an occasional overnight thrown in. The dream remained alive, but still on submerged. Work and family life demanded my full attention and as far as I could tell, the kids found sailing boring. Decades passed. Midlife married a second time, I retired from a very successful professional career in information technology in 2007 and began a new life at sea. Jenny, a Nordhavn 46, is the modern Princess.
For decades, you have read and dreamed about voyaging to distant shores in small boats. The adventure, romance, natural wonders, foreign cultures, and call of the sea resonate with voices in your soul. You live in a safe and structured world with familiar rules, laws, regulations, comfortable home, automobile, toys, friends and risks. In spite of this you repeatedly ask yourself, “Can I do really do it?” “Is it too dangerous?” “Can I afford it?” “Is it rewarding and worth the substantial effort?” Let the author take you there, show you what it is really like and answer doubts nagging your mind.
The book Jenny's Journey is the author’s chronicle of exiting his familiar life, forsaking land and becoming a traveler on the sea. He shared your dreams, anxieties and questions. He had no ocean-going or large boat experience when he decided to make this change in his life. His adventure is testimony to the real possibility of living ‘The Dream’ and what you can expect along the way. It includes hundreds of stories about the challenges, magical moments in nature and wonderful people he embraced. It is also a cruising guide and unbiased account of his landfalls in the Pacific Northwest, California, west coast of Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos and Bahamas. It includes a web site address that has Jenny’s routes and tracks in downloadable form that you can import into several electronic chart plotters. They show exactly where Jenny went and anchored and can relieve you of some of the tedious charting work and worry.
Jenny's Journey can be purchased at www.Amazon.com or here.
Other adventure travel books can be found here.