Few yachtsmen are unfamiliar with the name Tristan Jones. Having published 16 books on his world voyages, Outward Leg follows the late (sailor) on a voyage from San Diego to London. Jones was an old-style adventurer: a maritime free-thinker with a stainless steel backbone. His quirky sense of humor, honest (and oddly timeless) prose style is spliced with the kind of mad-yet-accurate insight which comes when a man spends too much time alone. Try this one on for size: There are no people on the face of the earth so adept at transforming a dream into a reality as Americans... No people anywhere are so capable of absorbing a dream so thoroughly that it becomes a part of them, and they champion it, devote an amazing amount of energy to it and transform it and, if you are not every careful, destroy it.