The World’s my Oyster Trilogy

Daz Tait

Fortis Publishing

£9.99 (each)

These three books make up the overall story of Daz Tait’s circumnavigation. As with many personal sailing stories there’s time spent early realising the dream and finding ways to make it reality – the time, the money, the boat, the relationships. Volume one finds South African-born Tait living in England, dissatisfied with life as teacher and deciding to seize the moment and explore the world by sea. Crewing on the ARC helps him gain experience. Then he buys a yacht in the Mediterranean with a friend. They enjoy partying and diving as much as sailing. Tait goes solo and this period comes to a disastrous end.

Volume two is where the actual circumnavigation account begins: crewing once again for various owners but this time as part of the World ARC. Through the Panama Canal, exploring extraordinary islands in the Pacific and finally reaching Australia. Tait spends two months in land travel, surfing and in the Snowy mountains as he waits to join his final yacht Aliena, to complete the trip.

This last, most recently published, volume records the Indian Ocean crossing, time in Tait’s native South Africa and then the Atlantic crossing to South America. When a family crisis calls Aliena’s owners home, Tait spends several adventurous months in land-based exploration. Finally the voyage is completed with an emotional return to St Lucia.

Fewer than a thousand sailors achieve their dream of circumnavigation each year and for most it remains a private achievement, perhaps recorded in logbooks and video diaries. There’s a judgement call to be made which aspects of the personal triumph will interest others. Tait’s trilogy is a Lad’s journal written in an energetic slang where there are more synonyms for drunken behaviour than descriptors of the Beaufort Scale. Enthusiasts for extreme sport – surfing, free-diving, big-fishing and partying may love this book. For others it might prove a ‘Marmite’.