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All in the same boat

Chapter 2: INTRODUCTION
By Earle L. Reynolds
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About This Book

An American family recounts designing, building, and sailing their ketch on a circumnavigation, combining practical seamanship with travel memoir. Sequential chapters detail preparations, passages across the Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Atlantic, and stops at islands and ports where repairs, provisioning, and cultural encounters occur. The narrative mixes technical descriptions of navigation and boat work with personal journals and illustrations, recording challenging weather, mechanical improvisation, and daily life aboard while showing how cruising teaches seamanship, resourcefulness, and family adaptation during a prolonged voyage.

INTRODUCTION

At a party, celebrating the passage of the Phoenix through the Panama Canal, the master of ceremonies introduced our group as follows:

This is the crew of the yacht Phoenix, now on a voyage around the world.

First we have Jessica Reynolds, who is the first little girl, to my knowledge, to have attempted this feat.

Then there is Ted Reynolds, probably the first teen-age navigator of a globe-circling sailing yacht.

The third member of the crew is Nick Mikami, from Hiroshima—the first Japanese yachtsman to sail around the world.

Beside me is Barbara Reynolds, surely the most charming circumnavigating yachtswoman I have yet had the pleasure of meeting.

Finally—here is Dr. Earle Reynolds, whose sole claim to distinction is that he is the first, and only, skipper ever to sail around the world with all these wonderful people.

Fellow yachtsmen, both deep sea and dry land, both cockpit and armchair, here we are—all in the same boat.

DEDICATED TO
“All those men who want to go to sea and never do—” (Jessica’s Journal) and to their long-suffering wives.
AUTHORS’ NOTE
For simplicity, this collaboration is presented from the point of view of the Skipper