Seamanship

<p>From Land's End to Cape Clear past Roaringwater Bay and Cod's Head on past Inishvickillane and Inishtooskert up through the Hebrides to Orkney and on to the Faeroes stretches the richest and wildest coastline in Europe. Adam Nicolson decided to sail this coast in the <em>Auk</em> a 42-foot wooden ketch embarking on a 1500-mile voyage through what he hoped would be a sequence of revelatory landscapes. He was not disappointed.</p><p><em>Seamanship</em> is more than a travel journal. It describes an inner journey as much as an outer one--disasters and discoveries powerful landscapes and modern visionaries and encounters with the animals living on the wild edge of the Atlantic. Above all it is about the gaps that open up between those who go and those who stay at home.</p><p><em>Seamanship</em> in the end is not about the sea. It's about being alive.</p>