The Saga of Cimba (Paperback, New edition)

There is a spare, taut beauty, a stinging intensity, a fine exhilaration, in this saga of wind and wave.--New York Times

There have not been many [tales] like it, and none so brilliantly gleaming with such aspects of wind and sea.--Times Literary Supplement

In November 1933, 23-year-old Richard Maury set sail from Connecticut in Cimba, a 35-foot Nova Scotia schooner, leaving behind the icy grasp of a Depression-era New England winter. With one other crewman he shaped a course for the South Seas, where there were still islands so remote as to be reached only by perilous voyages across vast stretches of empty ocean. At that time such voyages were rarely undertaken in small boats, but Maury was determined to have the adventure while it could still be had.

Finely wrought, with elegant clarity, The Saga of Cimba is a magical book. In Jonathan Rabans words, It is precisely because the voyage was so fraught with difficulty and tragedy, and Maury had to work so hard to reconcile the disasters that befell him with his steadfast love of the sea, that the book rings true. The joy is real, but it is wrested from the teeth of experience by a writer of quite extraordinary skill, cunning, and determination. Maury found the South Seas of his dreams, but in doing so he had to weather three storms, serious illness, the deaths of two friends, and finally, the loss of his beloved Cimba on the reefs of Fiji.

First published in 1939 and out of print for nearly three decades, The Saga of Cimba has been compared with the works of Dana, Conrad, and Saint-Exupery. Maurys exquisite depictions of the seas almost unbearable beauty and annihilating fury are unforgettable. Truly, as Raban says, the startling brilliance of The Saga of Cimba qualifies it as one of the best books ever written about the sea.

The most eloquent prose hymn ever written to the exhilaration, the beauty, and the sheer joy of being at sea.--from the introduction by Jonathan Raban

Not at all the conventional small-boat yarn, for Mr. Maury can feel and he can write. . . . Superior adventure, whose spirit recalls that of the books of Anne Morrow Lindbergh.--The New Yorker

What comes back to you, overwhelmingly and beautifully, is [Maurys] enormously successful description of what its like to sail a small boat across the Pacific.--San Francisco Chronicle

One of the best sea yarns of all time.--Rudder