Voyage of the Maiatla with the Naked Canadian

Imagine swimming, surrounded by hundreds of giant Manta Rays in the Sea of Cortez, or riding the tail of a hurricane towards Hawaii while a second storm threatens to overtake your small sailboat from behind. The Voyage of the Maiatla with the Naked Canadian, candidly chronicles the true-life adventures of a family of four that set forth on a 52 foot sailboat to circumnavigate the world. The life-long dream of the head of the household seizes the family's imagination and together they sail off on a voyage of discovery and often humorous misadventure, allowing the reader to experience what it is truly like on a daily basis to live the life of a 'Sea Gypsy' with a pair of precocious children and an initially apprehensive spouse as crew. The book covers the first year of the voyage, traversing the coast from Canada to Mexico; including being anchored in San Francisco during the assault on the World Trade Center -- experiencing the Golden Gate City gripped in fear, as well as tales of scuba diving the 'Great White Shark' infested waters of the Farallon Islands off the coast of California. Life on the water includes cruiser's music festivals, exploring tropical desert islands, and a road trip through the Baja desert, which entails staring down the barrel of a loaded machine gun on more than one occasion. Despite our apparent carefree existence, the tragic destruction of several vessels and the loss of some friends, soberly remind us of the potentially dangerous life we were leading upon the sea. The other crazy cruisers that we meet along the way; the rich and famous, the poets, paupers and musicians whose own stories and lust for life, often bordering on the bizarre, unexpectedly injected spice and color into our lives as we wander under sail. The author is a storyteller with the heart of an adventurer; he has the ability to infect others with his zeal for life and his love of the sea.