The Saga of Cimba

by Richard Maury

Overview

First published in 1939, this book is a vivid account of Richard Maury’s voyage from New York to Fiji in the small, 35-foot, Nova Scotia-built schooner Cimba. When a 23-year-old Maury and a likeminded sailor filled with wanderlust set off into the winter North Atlantic on November 30, 1933, it proved to be an expedition of high adventure, and one embarked upon at a time when such voyages were practically unheard of. The reader is taken on a fascinating journey to Bermuda and, from there, to Grand Turk, Jamaica, Panama and through the Canal, with the two young sailors finding their every dream come true at Galapagos, Marquesas, Tahiti, Samoa—culminating in a gripping finale at Fiji…

“If I were asked to pick the best book in recent years about deep water cruising in a small yacht, I would unhesitatingly choose The Saga of Cimba by Richard Maury.

“Maury went to sea because he loved being at sea and ports to him were interruptions rather than objectives. The story of his cruise is the story of the struggles and triumphs of his diminutive schooner in breasting thousands of miles of deep water. It is the sailing of the schooner that engrossed him. The yarn is the story of a boat rather than the story of her skipper. One can go on to the book’s last enthralling page and be left speculating on what sort of a man this Maury is. He never tells you. You have to sense it from his attitude toward his little vessel. But you are left in no doubt about Cimba herself. You know what manner of ship she is. You know every inch of her by the time you have seen her to the Fijis.”—Rudder Magazine“Told with such beauty that it will win the admiration not only of those who sail but of the whole reading public”—New York World Telegram.

“One of the finest sea yarns of all times”—Rudder.

“Bound to be the classic of this type”—Boston Transcript.

“Reality he most exciting small boat yarn I have read”—FELIX REISENBERG.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781787200302
Publisher:	Golden Springs Publishing
Publication date:	08/09/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	174
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Richard Maury (1910-1998) was born on St. David’s Island, Bermuda, in 1910, a descendant of Matthew Fontaine Maury, America’s famed pioneering oceanographer and hydrographer. At the age of eight he owned and sailed his first boat; but soon thereafter a childhood illness that was long to plague him ended for good his formal education. Even so, just as he taught himself to draw credibly enough to illustrate his own literary efforts, so too did he educate himself to the extent that reviewers have on occasion variously likened his prose to that of Richard Henry Dana, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, even to Conrad. When, at twenty-three, Maury sailed off in the Cimba, he was already something of a sea veteran, having served before the mast in the old full-rigged ship Tusitala (at sixteen and seventeen) as well as in several ocean tramps of that period. Nor was the sea ever to disenchant him: Maury continued to sail deep-water steamships, enjoying a long career as a professional master mariner. He died in 1998.

Read an Excerpt

The Saga of Cimba is an enchanting tale of adventure on the sea. Told in hauntingly beautiful prose, it recounts the journey of two young men in a 35-foot schooner sailing from Nova Scotia to New York to the Caribbean and through the Panama Canal to the islands of the South Pacific. The author clearly loves the sea and his ship, and any nautical enthusiast will appreciate the book's balance of romance with practical information. Along the way the pair encounters some thrilling moments at sea:

"It was half-past two. I was glancing at Act One of the very appropriate Tempest while drying out a last meagre ration of tobacco. Suddenly Dombey shouted from the port:

"'Look at this sea!'

"It must have been perpendicular! I felt the cabin lifting as though striving for some great altitude. A second later there was a thud, the deck slipped away beneath my feet, careened, and the craft dived to a trough, falling down, as though knocked beam-on along a great decline. The cabin revolved, and we were driven against the bulkheads as amid a deafening noise the hull went over, and we, together with a thousand articles, were flung through space to crash on the cabin-top, now upside-down. We fought our way out from under a heavy heap, to find the cabin in darkness, the ports under water. Looking up, I caught sight of the flooring over my head; one of the floorboards dropped as I did so. Although the companion and the hatch, now leading into the ocean, were closed, water came running in. Quite suddenly the cabin filled with smoke as the ship's stove, bolted to the floor and now overhead, emptied its coals and wood, to blaze on the cabin roof; a stream of water poured out of the stove from the submerged vent."

Intermingled with the adventure on the high seas and descriptions of life on board the Cimba are tales of the equally interesting time spent on land: adventures on Caribbean islands, an encounter with the last of a group of Norwegians who came to the Galapagos in search of Utopia, and charmed days in Tahiti and Fiji. The author is incredibly observant, and his descriptions reflect a continuous fascination with the places he travels to, as when he depicts nightlife in the Caribbean:

"Here were noise, happy confusion, wealth and dazed poverty, sought-after comforts and unsought-for dangers; here was civilization again, out for the evening, dressed in its best and blinded by its own lights. A crowd was passing and repassing the doorways, elegant, hopeful, assured, like the blind made happy, like the old made young, searching, searching once more. A neon sign flashed 'Atlantic Cabaret' over a street-corner. From the silence of a side-street came an exploding burst of laughter, passing off into echoes. American sailors, fruit-sellers, dark, birdlike Spaniards in white pongee, dance-hall girls, the firemen off some German merchantman, lottery-sellers, and young Panamanians, arrogant and smoking marihuana. Silks and satins, gay and flowered, dungaree, linen, and khaki swung past the streaming lights. The sound of jazz came from a balcony overhead. The sharp, animated noise of castanets. The slapping of coins on wood. A loud cough from behind a closed shutter. The clatter of billiard-balls; sharp cries and echoes of Latin laughter. And the sound rose towards the dark sky - a murmur - one moment a caress, the next vindictive and threatening. 'Let's have some fun!'"

But the narrative is at its best when the Cimba is at sea, for that is the author's real passion:

"What sights can be seen from the helm of a single craft guided by resourceful hands! The sighted green glitter of a southern island bearing over the bows; a foam of breakers heaving to some romantic coast; the heated shore-lines of jungles, calm, steaming; islands of coral, voluptuous islands of flowers, islands of rocks. And yet to the small-boat voyager it is the sea which comes first; it is the supreme consideration, stretching to every shore, wind-cut and passionate, greater in breadth and loneliness than all the deserts of the world together."

A beautiful, epic book!

Table of Contents

	Preface	1
1	Towards the Sea	3
2	The Gale and the Lee Shore	12
3	Departure	21
4	Winter, North Atlantic	25
5	The Capsizing	35
6	Under Bare Poles	41
7	On to Grand Turk	55
8	The Caribbean and Break-Up Port	65
9	Hacking to Windward	75
10	A Galapagan Mystery	85
11	A Rendezvous at the World's End	93
12	The Downhill Run	101
13	In French Oceania	120
14	Tahiti, Port of Refuge	131
15	An Ocean Race--The Islands Under the Wind	146
16	Ocean, Sunlight, and Shadow	163
17	Through the Koro Sea	181
18	The Wreck of the Cimba	188
19	In a Fijian Harbour	201