Tristan Jones – författare

Ancient Chinese legends tell of heroic attempts to navigate the waterways of the Kra peninsula which divides the Andaman Sea from the Gulf of Thailand. Yet despite efforts over the last century by expeditions from several Western navies, there was no record of a successful crossing—none, that is, until renowned sailor Tristan Jones took on the challenge.

To Venture Further is the inspiring story of this memorable exploit by one of the finest sailing adventure writers of our time. Accompanied by his German mate, Thomas, and three disabled Thai youths, Jones makes the short but exceedingly difficult passage across the Kra in a small seagoing fishing boat. Facing floating debris, homemade dams, mechanical failure, and precariously low funds, Jones—whose left leg was amputated several years before—remains determined to win out against all obstacles, no matter how insurmountable they seem.

With characteristically acerbic wit, Jones offers shrewd commentary on the Westernization of modern Thailand, bemoaning the destruction of a once-idyllic land. And whether confronting a band of raucous teenage monks, outwitting pirates in the Gulf of Thailand, or cruising a dry riverbed by hitching his boat onto an elephant, he continues to exhibit the awesome stubbornness and implacable courage of a man willing to sacrifice all comforts for the unknown and seemingly impossible.

In a salty, slashing style, Tristan Jones unfolds his extraordinary saga—a six-year voyage during which he covered a distance equal to twice the circumference of the world—revealing both a rich sense of history and an insuppressible Welsh wit.With a singleness of purpose as ferocious as any hazard he encountered, Tristan Jones would not give up—even after dodging snipers on the Red Sea, capsizing off the Cape of Good Hope, starving in the Amazon, struggling for 3,000 miles against the mightiest sea current in the world, and hauling his boat over the rugged Andes three miles above sea level to find at last the legendary Island of the Sun. And beyond lay the most awesome challenge of all: the tortuous trek through 6,000 miles of uncharted rivers to find his way back to the ocean.

The sailor-author navigates his famous yacht, Outward Leg, across the rivers of Europe in this travel memoir that’s “vintage Tristan Jones” (Publishers Weekly). The Improbable Voyage is the account of master sailor and storyteller Tristan Jones' 2,307-mile voyage across Europe in an oceangoing trimaran, Outward Leg. Continuing his round-the-world journey, Jones traveled from the North Sea to the Black Sea via the rivers Rhine and Danube. Battling ice and cold, life-threatening rapids and narrow defiles, German bureaucrats and Romanian frontier police, the indomitable Jones made his way through eight countries and emerged triumphant, if battered, bruised and penniless, at the Black Sea.Tristan Jones is one of the best-known authors of sailing stories. A Welshman, he left school at age 14 to work on sailing barges and spent the rest of his life at sea.

A Welshman’s witty and gritty sailing adventure memoir with “the bite of fine sea salt and a whiplike delivery” (Kirkus Reviews). Follow the supreme adventurer, Tristan Jones, as he takes a solitary and intrepid six-year voyage on his small craft, The Sea Dart. Covering a distance twice the circumference of the globe, from the lowest body of water in the world—the Dead Sea—to the highest—Lake Titicaca in the Andes—Jones finds himself "a thousand times beyond the limit of endurance." With tenacity stronger than any obstacle, Jones refuses to give up his adventure, even after falling prey to several disasters that could have killed him. Struggling against the mighty current of the Amazon, hauling his boat over the Andes Mountains and capsizing off the Cape of Good Hope do not discourage him. This gripping story is a testament to his indomitable spirit and thirst for danger.

Join Tristan Jones as he tells tales of the humorous and fascinating adventures that his Saga of a Wayward Sailor began. Discover more anecdotes and unexpected adventures aboard a converted lifeboat ketch cruising the coasts of the Balearic region with Tristan, his one-eyed, three-legged dog, Nelson and the prim Bishop's sister, Sissie St. John. It's a prolific prose journey of surprising arrivals, machine gun-thwarting and ship-saving escapades of a wayward sailor and his motley crew.

After seven years ashore and after having his left leg amputated, Tristan Jones decided to return to the sea. He began to piece together Operation Star and found the perfect vessel in a 36-foot trimaran. In October 1983, Jones and his only crew member, Wally Rediske, set out in Outward Leg from San Diego, intending to circumnavigate the world from west to east by sail.The book is the exciting story of Tristan's preparation for this major seagoing event and the chronicle of half of it. Tristan sailed down the western coast of Central America through the Panama Canal to a small Colombian town. There he had to fight for survival among hostile natives, drug dealers, and uncooperative port officers. He went on to Venezuela, Aruba, and the Dominican Republic during its 1984 revolution. Finally he reached New York and crossed the Atlantic to return to St. Katharine's Dock in London where he began his seagoing life thirty years before.