"The tale of Carl Wake and the hurricane that was waiting for him goes straight to the heart of the greatest sea stories: they are not about man against the sea, but man against himself. John Kretschmer's book is as perfectly shaped and flawlessly written as such a story can be. In addition to being[...]

This is the story of college-dropout John Kretschmer's quixotic voyage to retrace the route of the clipper ships, from New York to San Francisco by way of Cape Horn. This 'doubling the Horn', as it was called, was a formidable challenge to ships exceeding two hundred feet in length, as they routinel[...]