A few days ago, I stuck my nose in our Little Library and discovered a collection of 10 Patrick O’Brian Aubrey/Maturin novels. I hadn’t read any of these books since leaving Coot twenty-five years ago. The three or four books I read in the 1980s and 90s were acquired haphazardly in trades with other boaters and read without order or coherence. I set the stack of books beside my chair, took a look at the top one, started reading, and finished it the next morning. I arranged the books in order, starting with Master and Commander, and I am now on the fifth one.
I delight in the sailing descriptions. O’Brian manages to bring the life and times of the British Navy in the 18th century to life better than any other author I know. I just finished reading his account of a stormy crossing of Biscay Bay in Desolation Island, and it rang true to my own 1984 experience of that body of water. Despite the difference between a 74-gun ship of the line and a 38-foot ketch, extensive repairs were required in both cases.
More from Jim Sollars
Like Kent, Jim is from Sheridan, Wyoming, and became a sailor and a writer. Unlike Kent, Jim is prolific, with books published on Amazon in both October and November this year. Here is his latest thriller:
Friends from the Past
We are following the adventures of Ned and Kate Phillips on Instagram, the same Ned and Kate Pam and Kent met more than thirty years ago in the Chesapeake (October 1994). (See Chapter 11, Going South, pp. 109-11.) They are now sailing from England to the Cape Verde Islands and beyond. Coincidently, if all goes to plan, Kent and Linnea will arrive via the ninety-eight-passenger Corinthian at Santiago Island in the Cape Verde Islands on Christmas morning (one month from today), but we will almost certainly miss Ned and Kate.
Kate at the Helm
Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!
“Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”
—E.B. White, author
Reflection, Tingley Pond, Albuquerque Bosque, November 24, 2025
Kent with a parrot in San Augustin, Colombia in 2019.
When Kent and I volunteered as hospitaleros at the pilgrim albergue in El Burgo Ranero on the Meseta in Spain in October 2016, we had a morning playlist that got the pilgrims up and out so we could clean before the next pilgrims arrived. The final song was “Hit the Road, Jack,” and “don’t come back, no more more, no more no more, no more!” After the last pilgrim boogied out the door, we listened to this and other songs on the playlist while we cleaned the bathrooms, wiped tomato sauce off the kitchen tiles, and swept and mopped the floors. You can listen, too:
We’ll be hitting the road, too in the next couple of weeks. First, we have three nights enjoying the opera in Santa Fe, catching up with old friends and some favorite operas, La Bohème, Rigoletto,and Die Walküre (click to listen)
Beginning on Monday, August 25, we’ll be on the road for almost two weeks, with stops in Denver and Fort Collins, CO; an overnight in Lander, WY; then on to Big Sky, MT; Sheridan, WY; and Frisco, CO. We’ll be catching up with friends and family in most of those places, too.
If any of you are along the way and would like to see us, just holler or reply to this email.
We’ll have a copies of We Ran Away to Sea with us.
Big Horn Mountains, near Sheridan, WY
Good news about the book!
Earlier this week, I researched Amazon’s categories and keywords, making a few adjustments. To my amazement, in the past week, our sales have increased from just under one per day to two per day, and moved into the top 10 (varies from day today) in the Sailing Narratives category. Since then, I’ve also adjusted the keywords. We’ll see if that makes a difference, too. There’s a lot to learn.
Book, booklet, and medal
Recommended Sailing Books
Desperate Voyage
Kent has been writing book reviews (under name Kent on Amazon). He recently returned to the classic Desperate Voyage (1949) by John Caldwell, who sailed across the Pacific from Panama to Australia singlehanded after World War II to unite with his bride. He was perhaps even more ignorant of sailing than Kent was, and the book is a sometimes hilarious, always compelling read.
Cape Horn: One Man’s Dream, One Woman’s Nightmare
Kent also finished Cape Horn, by Reanne Hemingway-Douglass. Its subtitle: One Man’s Dream: One Woman’s Nightmareintrigued me. Kent’s review is under the name Kent on Amazon. I thought that would have been a great subtitle for We Ran Away to Sea. Or, maybe we should have subtitled it A Love Story? We found these titles on the Money for Mangos sailing blog which has a nice short list of great sailing adventure books. I suggested they add We Ran Away to Sea to a future list. See Money for Mangos list below, and enjoy reading!
One review of the audio book (available through Amazon Audible). We don’t know who CHS is, but thank you! 5.0 out of 5 stars, Great adventure. Impressed with AI narrator. As soon as the audiobook was available, I purchased it. Enjoyed going on this adventure with the authors. I learned sailing can be a lot of work. I was very impressed with AI narrator. — CHS
We’ve got more news … maybe some new books …but this is already long, so check back in September.
l-r: Jake, Pam, Andy, Kent on trial sail on Lake Superior in 1984, just before they left for England
In 1984, fed up with teaching philosophy to disinterested students, unhappy with American consumerism and politics, and dismayed at the values his children were picking up at school and from their friends, Kent and his wife Pam abandoned their comfortable life in a South Dakota college town for life on a sailboat with their two children. Life would never be the same again, as this father seeking a better life for his family made a bold decision that would change the lives of all of them forever. Happy Father’s Day, Kent!
Read all about in We Ran Away to Sea: A Memoir and Letters, available through your local bookstore (try Bookshop.org), Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Now also available as an audiobook.
One of my favorite passages of Pam’s writing is the “The Dinghy Under the Bed.” Unlike her letters which were sometimes hastily written on a rocking boat, this was a polished piece, probably intended for publication. It is now included in Part 2: Between the Boats.
After listing the sailing paraphernalia stored in their South Dakota guest room closet Pam describes the inflatable dinghy that lives under the bed and is their most important purchase next to the “mother ship.”
My startled guests tell me it looks like the pale, flabby remains of some unidentifiable monster.
Although many readers feel that Pam reluctantly went along with Kent’s dream of returning to a life at sea, this passage expresses her longing, too. She was writing on a cold rainy day in October, not so different from early March, when winter seems to drag on forever, and we long to cast off on a new adventure as spring approaches.
After the mother ship herself, the dinghy, a lovely new roll-up, is our largest purchase and represents much more than a dollar value. Our future home, a 31-foot steel sloop pulled ignominiously out of the water in Duluth, Minnesota, is wrapped now in her winter cover. It would be a long seven-hour drive through uncertain midwestern weather to assure ourselves that our dream has some substance. But the dinghy is here, living quietly like a friendly, elderly dog beneath the bed. I sometimes think I can hear it sigh a little wistfully, just as I do, for the time we’ll both be at sea.
* * *
It’s a long and frustrating process to move from a landlocked South Dakota job and home to the sea. It’s also a lonely process, for none of our friends share or even understand our dream. But the dinghy, peacefully resting beneath the bed, silently encourages us to keep dreaming.
Shortcuts can save time and effort, but sometimes there are unexpected complications.
Sailing to the Atlantic side of Florida from Ft. Myers on the Gulf Coast requires a long trip south to the Florida Keys, then east and north around Miami, but if a boat is small enough there is a shortcut via the Okeechobee Waterway that runs between Ft. Myers and St. Lucie. The limitation is that mast of the boat has to fit under a railway lift bridge that crosses the waterway.
Coot’s mast was short enough to fit under the open bridge, but with little room to spare. We approached the open un-attended bridge with a strong current in the narrow channel pushing us forward. Just before we were going to pass under it, suddenly, without warning, horns blared, lights flashed and instantly the bridge began to descend.
Too late to stop or turn around, I hit the throttle, envisioning our mast caught between the rails and shaved off by the oncoming train like a whisker in a Norelco razor. We made it with inches to spare—I heard the ting, ting, ting of the masthead antenna as it scraped beneath the descending bridge.
We were heading home, and although we didn’t know it then, this would be one of our last narrow escapes on Coot.
The goat has gone back to its original owner. As was evident to our neighbor and all the neighbors, the fencing around his property was inadequate. I admired his independent streak and was charmed by his fixation on our front door. Goodbye, goat! I hope you will find a more suitable new home. Anybody want a goat?
Our friend Jim decided his health wasn’t up to heading across the Pacific in a sailboat one more time. He was right, and shortly afterward ended up hospitalized in intensive care.
If you’d like to support Jim, look for three books: Windswept by his late wife Ginny Sollars, A Bachelor’s Paradise, and the Yamamoto Affair. The first is an account of the family’s years sailing the Pacific; the second is about Jim’s adventures in the Pacific as a bachelor; and the third is a gripping novel of suspense and intrigue inspired by his own diving experiences and the historical World War II Japanese admiral, Yamamoto.
As far as we know, the boat is still in San Carlos and for sale. Anybody want a boat?
The Book
I keep adjusting the ads on Amazon, and the book continues to sell an average of 20 books a month, not (yet) more than the cost of the ads. We’d like more readers to discover the book. It’s gotten more ratings on Good Reads and Amazon, but we haven’t had a new review in several months. Hint, hint! You don’t have to be a great writer; just share your honest reaction. Even star ratings help, but a few words are much more meaningful to us and readers trying to decide whether to read or buy the book.
The three copies at the Albuquerque Public Library continue to circulate.
Events
If you’re within hailing distance of Albuquerque, Kent will read at Books on the Bosque this coming Saturday, October 5. We hope to see some of you there. Books on the Bosque is a lovely, relatively new independent bookstore with many activities worth checking out.
Kent will also speak at the Tony Hillerman Branch of the Albuquerque Public Library on Saturday, October 26, at 1 pm., a shorter version of his illustrated January presentation at Oasis.
Book Awards
We Ran Away to Sea is a New Mexico-Arizona Book Award finalist. Winners will be announced sometime in October. We’ve also submitted the book for a few other awards
The most unusual is The Wishing Shelf. Based in England, the award is chosen by reading groups in London and Stockholm, Sweden. Unlike most awards, where you send in your application fee and wait for award announcements, this one asks for a book description before allowing you to submit a book for consideration. The invitation from the award administrator felt like a mini award.
He wrote: “Thanks very much for contacting us. I had a look at your book on Amazon, and I thought it looked very interesting. I very much liked the look of the cover and the blurb, and the Look Inside seems to flow well. I see you also have a number of reviews, which I read with interest. So, yes,please send me a PDF of the book plus a JPEG or PDF of the covers.”
Other Stuff
Since I didn’t get a newsletter out in August, I’m doing a lot of catching up here.
Kent and I are editing stories we left out of WeRan Away to Sea, but work is going slowly because …
I’m finally working on my book, working title “Once a Pilgrim,” about the first half and maybe the second half of my first Camino.
Picture of Vézelay Courtesy of luctheo on Pixabay
We’re planning travels after being home all summer: next week to San Francisco to see family, and on October 28 to France, where we intend to walk the less traveled Voie de Vézelay, which begins at the Basilica of Mary Magdalene in Vézelay and eventually meets the Camino Frances in St. Jean Pied-de-Port at the Spanish border. We won’t manage more than one-third of the 900 kilometers in just over three weeks of walking. Weather will be unpredictable but probably not hot, and many pilgrim lodgings will have closed for the season. I’ll try to post on my blog, Caminobleu.com, or at least on Facebook because writing blogs on a cell phone after a day of walking is not easy. And there may be days with no internet.
Two old sailors. Will they know when it’s time to quit?
In late July, Kent and I (Linnea) drove from Albuquerque to San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico, to see a 1977 Chung Hwa thirty-six-foot ketch listed at a bargain price.
It was a hot trip, with stops for green chile cheeseburgers at the Owl Bar in San Antonio, NM, and an overnight at the historic Palace Hotel in funky, picturesque Silver City, where Kent got a haircut and we watched karaoke at the friendly Little Toad Creek Brewery. Everybody was friendly in Silver City, including the guy who must have slept somewhere on the street.
Silver City haircut.
Palace Hotel in downtown Silver City. And we sold a book to the bookshop next door!
We bumped along bumper to bumper through downtown Nogales to cross the border into Mexico on Saturday morning. After three or four hours and a few wrong turns, we found our way to Hermosillo and San Carlos.
We had an hour to look at the boat, still filled with the belongings of the deceased owner. When Kent saw the storage fees for the Marina Seca and the amount of work the boat would probably require, he decided to forget it.
Checking out the dreamboat
We spent two days exploring what San Carlos has to offer, visiting a scenic overlook, a couple of beaches, and some funky places beyond the paved road. Our modest motel had good air conditioning and wifi and was within a fifteen-minute walk of the restaurants, shops, and bars along the marina’s waterfront.
Beached sailor Kent in San Carlos, Sonora
But, when we got back to Green Valley, Arizona, after an almost two-hour wait to cross the border into the USA, Jim Sollars, another sailor and native of Sheridan, Wyoming, was excited about the boat. We’d first met Jim in February through his brother Sheldon, Kent’s high school classmate.
Jim had sailed the Pacific twice, once alone and once with his wife and two daughters. His late wife, Ginny, published Windswept, the story of the family’s three years aboard their boat, Holokiki. Jim more recently published A Bachelor’s Paradise, filled with wild tales of his years as a young, single sailor.
After pizza for dinner, Jim and Kent stayed up late, drinking homemade rum, telling stories, and convincing themselves that two old men could take off into the Pacific on an almost fifty-year-old boat that may need considerable work.
“It would make a good story, anyway,” I said as I headed to bed with a good book, leaving the octogenarians to their plans and dreams.
“Maybe I’ll meet you in Puerto Vallarta, Hawaii, or Fiji.”
Kent has an appointment with the Neptune Society this week.
“Ask them,” I said. “If your body is lost at sea, will you get your money back?”
Rio Grande from Central Avenue Bridge, Albuquerque
If you have read We Ran Away to Sea, you know that Pam and Kent ran away partly because they were concerned about the environmental impact of America’s consumer-driven lifestyle.
Elder Activist Readers (EAR)
More recently, Kent and I have participated in book discussions in a small group we call EAR (Elder Activist Readers), spearheaded by Esther Jantzen, the author of the children’s novel Walk: Jamie Bacon’s Secret Mission on the Camino de Santiago. Esther, like me, was inspired by her experiences as a pilgrim. Over the past three years, our little reading group has read eighteen books and become more knowledgeable about the environmental threats to our planet. We’ve also studied the history of our current crisis and have taken small steps to support people and organizations working on solutions.
Geoff Boerne
Pam and Kent encountered Geoff Boerne’s Lo Entropy in Mexico in the 1990s. Sailed by two young Brits, Ian and Alan, the ship seemed to be in dire straits the last time Pam and Kent saw her. Kent concluded his Lo Entropy story, “I would like to think Alan made a go of his venture in the end, but it certainly looked like Lo Entropy had run out of energy.”
So, what did happen to her? I discovered a film on YouTube, The Cuba Connection by Claudio von Planta, telling the story of the ship before Pam and Kent met her. Lo Entropy was constructed mainly of recycled materials, although most of the steel had to be purchased new. Her first mission was a partly successful attempt to deliver donated supplies to Cuba, where people were suffering from the impact of the United States boycotts.
I discovered a website authored by Geoff Boerne, the majority shareholder and Managing Director of Celtic Cruises Ltd., whose only asset is Lo Entropy. Geoff and another unpaid director, Nick Rodgers, are endeavoring to keep Lo Entropy afloat as a wind and hydrogen-powered transport vessel.
According to the Transport Environment website, shipping produces at least three percent of the transport industry’s carbon. Googling “sailing and hydrogen” reveals numerous websites and articles about recent efforts to create “zero energy” shipping. In 2022, Geoff Boerne published “A Milestone for Sail Cargo Pilot Project: Goal and Hydrogen Concept.” Cruise and transport companies such as Norway’s Hurtigruten (which plans to launch an energy-efficient cruise ship by 2030) are looking into zero-energy transport. A return to sailing ships, assisted by green technology, is a promising alternative to diesel fuels. Maybe in the future, we will all, like Greta Thunberg, be crossing the oceans under wind power.
Geoff wrote to me, “Lo Entropy’s sails are currently assisted by an electric motor that doubles as a powerful generator when the propeller is free-spinning or driven by the diesel engine. We hope to replace the diesel engine with a hydrogen-fueled (ICE) internal combustion engine. Times are changing. Toyota has now produced a hydrogen combustion engine, so we are considering eliminating the expensive fuel cell and using hydrogen to fuel a hydrogen combustion engine.”
A hydrogen system combined with wind and solar will produce energy for a two-hour capacity battery bank that will convert the excess energy to hydrogen and store it for propulsion when needed. Geoff is seeking investors to help refit the vessel. He now lives in Denmark and can be contacted through his website https://www.greenseatransport.com/ or his email address, Loentropy@gmail.com)
Lo Entropy, 2024
Peter Roberts
Peter met with EAR on February 29, 2024, to tell us about his work and its place in the future of green building. Peter has two web pages, and some wonderful videos have been made about his work. He recently completed his model masonry house, which is now available to rent through VRBO and Airbnb. Peter also holds several patents.
Peter Roberts’ house in Alfred, New York
He gave a fascinating overview of what he sees as problems and possible solutions to the considerable amount of carbon produced by the construction industry. He told us that cement is one of the most commonly used materials on earth. Second only to water. The construction industry, which amounts to about four trillion dollars worldwide, is conservative and slow to change. However, there are new ways of making cement, using materials other than the traditional limestone and clay that are mined, ground to a fine powder, and then heated at very high temperatures. Peter explained many of the new techniques, including using volcanic material as the ancient Romans did to make constructions that are still standing after two thousand years. I confess that until I listened to Peter, I didn’t know that cement and concrete were two different things, even though we often use them interchangeably in everyday language. Cement is the binding ingredient that is essential in making concrete. There is much information available on all of this. A good starting place might be:
Learning about the work of Geoff Boerne and Peter Roberts gives me hope for a more sustainable future for our planet. Please contact either of them if you would like more information or are interested in helping with their endeavors. Perhaps one day we’ll have zero carbon emission and create concrete boats propelled by wind and hydrogen?
18) Thomas Hübl, Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World, pub 2023 (read Feb-Mar 2024)
17) Deb Chachra: How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World, pub 2023 (read Jan 2024)
16) Edward Struzik, Swamplands: Tundra Beavers, Quaking Bogs, and the Improbable World of Peat, pub 2021 (read Oct 2023)
15) Joy Harjo, Poet Warrior: A Memoir(poet laureate) read ???
14) Sarah Augustine, The Land Is Not Empty, pub 2021 (read Jun 2023)
13) Amitav Ghosh, The Nutmeg’s Curse, pub 2022 (read Mar 2023)
12) E.F. Schumaker, Small Is Beautiful, pub 1973 (read Dec 2022)
11) Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, pub 2021 (read Oct 22)
10) Imbolo Mbue, How Beautiful We Were, pub 2021 (read Aug 2022)
9) Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass,pub 2013 (June 2022)
8) Kristen Olsen, The Soil Will Save Us, pub 2014 (read Apr/May 2022)
7) Paul Hawken, Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation,pub 2021 (read Feb/Mar 2022)
6) Lydia Millet, A Children’s Bible, pub 2020—a novel (read Jan 2022)
5) asknature.org website —created by Janine Benyus, Biomimicry Institute (studied Oct 2021)
4) Kate Haworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist, pub 2017 (read Jul/Aug 2021)
3) Arlie Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, pub 2016 (read June 2021)
2) Shalanda H. Baker’s Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transition,pub 2021 (read Mar-Apr 2021)
1) Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K Wilkerson (eds), All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, pub 2020 (read Jan 2021)
Also, we’ve reviewed some articles and digital resources, including:
Jeremy Lent—Patterns of Meaning (Mar 2022) blog piece on climate change and capitalism NMHealthySoil.org New York Times article on chicken Kiss the Ground (video)
Near the beginning of We Ran Away to Sea, Pam leaves Kent and the boat, taking the two boys and fleeing back to familiar Brookings, South Dakota. He is not sure whether she will ever come back. She does, but not for the long-term that he envisions. The tension between Kent’s dreams and Pam’s, between their love for each other and their different goals and perspectives is the essence of We Ran Away to Sea. Uniquely written in two voices, the reader experiences the struggles and the rewards of their love for each other and their determination to stay together despite their differences.
As Thomas Hübl writes in Attuned, “We could think of marriage as a process of learning and becoming aware of everything we missed about our spouse when we first fell in love.” (84)
I attempted to capture the essence of this struggle in the very short video, Pamela or Panama?
Reading, Book Signing, Exhibit of Pam’s Art and Maybe a Slide Show
Please share your thoughts about the book if you liked it (and even if you didn’t). Every review helps. It doesn’t have to more than a heading and a few words. Post on Amazon
The Story Behind the Book Cover
Pam’s Rough Draft of a Collage was the basis for the cover design
We spent months working with cover designer Sara deHaan, who patiently made cover after cover for us. Somehow, none of them seemed quite right. Even when we decided on the final cover, we had our doubts. In our Christmas letter we asked for votes on two cover choices, and only two people chose our final cover as their favorite.
Kent and I wavered in our choice, but Sara urged us to go with the blue cover we finally decided on. Pam’s collage expresses what is perhaps the main theme of the book: the relationship between Pam, Kent, the boat, and their boys, and Pam’s struggle to reconcile those loves, and her ever-present longing for home, as represented by the cats snuggled together on the lower right, and her love of art (in the upper left and right corners), for which there was no room on their small sailboat. Pam was practicing moving heads in Photoshop, so a photograph of her head is attached to the the figure slumped in the chair to the right of the boat, while Kent is given the be-wigged head of the dogmatic Puritan, Cotton Mather, both of whom, fairly or not, were characterized as stubborn and fanatically dedicated to what they believed to be right. Sons Jake and Andy sit on a log, their backs to us, and the curving lines connect all the elements of the picture with each other and with the boat, Coot that is the central and dominant image.
Pam and two artworks from the collage that represent her love of art, home, and her boys.
Jacana Press 
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