The Sea Fever

Brad is twelve when his father seals him in a watertight compartment below the foredeck of a war-surplus tugboat, during a Pacific Ocean storm. Not wanting to be trapped below if the tug capsizes, Brad escapes through the engine room onto an exposed deck. A wave crashes across the deck, sweeping him off his feet. In a moment of panic he realizes that if he is swept into the sea, he would be lost without a trace off the California Coast. Six months earlier, Brad's father, Joe, purchased yard tug YTL 451 from the Navy's inactive ship facility in San Diego, California. Joe intended to use the tug for charter and family vacations. Brad recounts the ocean voyage from San Diego to Puget Sound. Then through the San Juan Islands and the British Columbia Inland Passage, all the way to Alaska. In this nostalgic memoir, the Meaghers ride the wave of family boating in the Pacific Northwest during the early 1970s, when cruising boats and fuel are affordable. It's a time when middle-income Puget Sound families enjoy adventure vacations unaffordable nowadays to all but the wealthy. But as the Meaghers and their three young children are about to find out, old tugboats can be dangerous.… (more)