All at Sea

The true story of how a family brought a wooden cargo ship back into the age of sail. Cecilia bought the first ship, a Thames barge, for family vacations—there were six children. Dominick bought the successor, a Baltic Trader, and then found this would be his career. Twenty years elapsed between the first days of the barge and the last day of the Baltic. From knowing virtually nothing about sailing ships, the author traces getting to grips with the problems of making sails on board, skipping between sandbanks, dragging anchor, losing a mast, crossing the Atlantic, fixing self-steering, avoiding hurricanes, hauling out for repairs, and his major preoccupation: failing to sink. For 13 years, the author had no other home, and for half that period never spent a night ashore.

Dominick Jones lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Dominick Jones
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 276
Bibliographic Info: 57 photos, 22 maps, index
Copyright Date: 2013
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7580-3
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0343-8
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments ix

Preface—Some Facts 1

Introduction 3

1. Buying the barge 7

2. And now a Baltic trader 26

3. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth—Matthew 6:3 38

4. The Minsener Rinne 49

5. The first winter in England 59

6. Battle hardening 72

7. From pillar to post 83

8. Who says France faces west? 96

9. The Royal Albert Dock 110

10. The Lappel Bank 121

11. A daft decision 139

12. Le dock flottant 151

13. A flying Dutchman? 165

14. Back to England 179

15. Emigration

How to do it 193

The Wrigley’s Chewing Gum charter 196

We leave France 205

Sailmaking 207

16. Traveling again

The Balearics 214

Leaving the Mediterranean 218

Atlantic crossing 219

The Caribbean 223

17. Life in America

Skidding to a stop 226

Hogging 228

A mast by the board 231

Hurricane Gloria 232

The keel shoe 234

The auxiliary rudder 238

Afterword 241

Glossary 245

Index 259

“An autobiography that begins with the author learning to sail on a Thames barge that he and his wife bought for vacation use with their six children. They eventually bought a three-masted schooner, which they sailed and lived aboard for more than a decade.”—Woodenboat Review; “With no previous knowledge of ships and sailing, a scientist and his wife buy a large sailing barge, beginning a 20-year adventure sailing large ships with their six children. This narrative describes close calls with dry humor and charts the family’s growing confidence as they eventually live on the ship full-time. The book includes b&w photos and maps.”—Reference & Research Book News.