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Join James and Jill Iverson on a year-long journey of discovery as they joyously experience the challenges and
rewards of America's Great Loop. Full color, and illustrated with pages from Jill's sketch journal, it is a fun
enlightening read for anyone interested in the magic of traveling by water.
About the author
Ever since I was a little boy I wanted a boat and to have adventureson the water. Even though my family had no nautical history andvery little money to invest in anything as frivolous as a boat, thedream persisted. In adulthood I read everything I could about small boatvoyaging. I read many 'how-to' manuals explaining the physics of sailing.I became fl uent in the arcane technical language of sailors. Yet my liferemained land bound and I began to doubt if I ever would sail over thatmysterious horizon. We lived in the Florida Keys for eight years. One yearI bought a 12-foot aluminum fi shing boat with a 5 HP outboard for twohundred dollars. It was a boat that was made for small inland lakes and wasabsolutely unsuitable for the open water of the Keys. After scaring myselfand putting my young family in jeopardy I traded the boat to a local fi shermanfor some lobster tails.In the early nineties after being sideswiped by Hurricane Andrew, wemoved north to Milwaukee and our financial situation improved. In 1998, Ibought a small sailboat offered by a business acquaintance. Jill and I took sailingcourses at the Milwaukee Community Sailing Center and our sailing life began.Retirement allowed us to expand our sailing horizons; sailing with friendsin the Caribbean and spending months at a time sailing the Great Lakes. I amby nature a rather introverted, cerebral guy and while not a man of faith, myconnection to the natural world is as close to a religious experience as I will everhave. For me traveling on the water is the most real interaction I can have withnature including its peacefulness, sublime beauty, and sometimes its terror.
