The Long Way Paperback – January 1, 1995

I truly enjoy those books where a solitary person takes on the unknown and writes as they find it day by day. This is a classic example of a man that entered a world race and then enjoyed being alone on his boat with the ocean and nature so much he gave up a race to the finish where he could have won and carried on to go round again! Reading this you can feel how he became part of the oceanic world he sailed and knew its foibles and sudden changes but merely accepted that as part of the trip. Mesmerising stuff and so rare today. It was not written seeking fame or glory it was written as almost a personal log of a journey. This was a journey that changed the man and his life was never the same again.

It's occasionally difficult to remember that Moitessier's memoir of the first Golden Globe singlehanded sail circumnavigation back in 1968 even concerns a race. From the outset, Moitessier enraptures himself and enraptures the reader in a tale of man alone finding his own inner compass. Virtually all prose-poem, THE LONG WAY skitters off the edge of the mundane into a realm of sometimes numinous interior dialogue, but it holds the reader's attention throughout.Moitessier entered the Round The World Race presumably to win, but he spends far more time communing with the seabirds and listening to the wave patterns on his boat, JOSHUA's hull than in dedicated yacht racing. In the end, Moitessier decided not to sail back to his starting point, but went on to Tahiti on the next step of his inner voyage.THE LONG WAY is particularly interesting to read in juxtaposition with THE STRANGE LAST VOYAGE OF DONALD CROWHURST (Crowhurst went mad and simply stepped off his boat into the sea), and Robin Knox-Johnston's A WORLD OF MY OWN. Johnston prosaically suffered the miseries of a diet of canned bully beef, and a constant nervous but impeccably British Imperial xenophobic dread of how "The Frog" was doing. He wanted to be the winner, and was.It's clear that Moitessier could have cared less what Knox-Johnston or the others were doing. JOSHUA is his private garden, and he invites us in to sample its mysteries. His Zen-like approach is more understandable when one realizes that he was French in parentage but raised in Indochina. A calm, accepting Buddhist tone glows throughout this book. If indeed Moitessier went mad (as some say he did) his madness was a doorway to spiritual peace, and not, like Crowhurst's, to sorrow and death.Moitessier takes us THE LONG WAY toward beauty, value, and the validation of ourselves in what is, after all, a vast and playful universe.

Moitessier has received some less than positive reviews of this classic of sailing literature. A non sailor may ask what can be so absorbing about sitting for months in a boat rocking around to wind and sea.Bernard Moitessier conveys in a poetic manner just what that essence is of being at sea for months and the moment by moment intensity that can be experienced in a world that could seem rather dull and uninteresting to the uninitiated.Indeed it is his full immersion in the moment that comes across, his absorption in the complete world both superficial and at much greater depths.His heightened perception of life is drawn out through his experience and this is a journey into which we are drawn ourselves as we travel the long way.As a sometimes sailor myself i can perhaps appreciate all the more the little things that help us see the bigger picture and give us those moments of rapture and revelation.To the non-sailor who can let his/her imagination flow with the journey, comes the reward of insight into the beauty and majesty of the ocean world and the internal trials and joys of the lone sailor.For Moitessier, the feeling of connection to the spirit of nature leads him to forgo the more worldly pursuits which are represented for him by the machinations of the European world, and leads him towards the Pacific Islands, giving him more time to experience this connection and take him to a world less troubled by the ingress of modern civilization.Sadly he finds that the concrete is rapidly replacing the greenery in Tahiti too.Some may scoff at what may appear as naive ranting and green fanaticism, calling it dated and over simplistic, however the message is as valid today as it was in the 1960's, probably more so as environmental destruction continues at a pace unheard of before.His dream that a simple life can lead to greater happiness and fulfillment for all are just as apparent and important now.Moitessiers' books are still a great source of reference, inspiration education and enjoyment to the sailing community the world over and takes us into the magic and beauty that is the world when seen through the lens of a purified mind.The down side of this paperback edition is that it omits the great photographs to be found in the hard back edition, i would have paid more had i known, and bought a better copy.

Beautifully written, a must read for blue water sailors or those of us whose dreams take us away from our reality. An adventure and a spiritual quest, part travelogue, part pilgramage, The Long Way is a captivating read.

This is simply the best sailing book ever, and very dangerous for anyone who has a settled life, but wonders if there might not be more. Resist this, if you can:"My real log is written in the sea and sky; the sails talking with the rain and the stars amid the sounds of the sea, the silences full of secret things between my boat & me, like the times I spent as a child listening to the forest talk."It is also a story about a competitive man who had the prize in his hands (winning a non-stop, solo around the world race), thought about all the cameras, newsmen, Brigitte Bardot in attendance et al, and decided to just keep on sailing.Oh yes, and the book is chock-full of extremely good advice about blue-water sailing. I wish I had a below-decks steering station with a plexiglass dome to look through...