Authors: Tristan Jones
ISBN-13: 9781574090628, ISBN-10: 1574090623
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Sheridan House, Incorporated
Date Published: October 1998
Edition: (Non-applicable)
The Improbable Voyage is the astonishing account of TRistan Jones' 2,307 mile voyage across Europe in Outward Leg. Continuing his round-the-world journey, Tristan traveled from the North Sea to the Black Sea via the rivers Rhine and Danube. Tristan welcomed each difficulty as a challenge to be met and overcome. Battling ice and cold, life-threatening rapids and narrow defiles, German bureaucrats and Romanian frontier police, Tristan made his way through eight countries and emerged triumphant, if battered, bruised and penniless, at the Black Sea. Tristan gives us a vivid glimpse of the quality of life along Europe's oldest water routes and behind the Iron Curtain.
In this sequel to Outward Leg we find Jones preparing to take his ocean-going trimaran from London to Amsterdam and then through the heartland of Europe, via the Rhine, Main and Danube rivers to the Black Sea. Navigation will be more difficult than on the open sea, he tells us, because of heavy commerical traffic on the Rhine, the 62 locks on the Main between Frankfurt and Nurnberg (Nuremburg), submerged rocks and shifting sand bars. At the Nurnberg docks, ship and crew reach a dead end, trapped in ice and a web of bureaucracy. There is no water route to the Danube, and Jones needs a special permit to haul Outward Leg overland. His involuntary 10-week delay garnered publicity and sympathy for his cause (aiding the handicapped); his original two-man crew (from New York) departed, to be replaced by an engaging young German, Thomas. At the end of March they set out from Ingoldstadt on ``Father Danube,'' accompanied by the blare of bagpipes from a tape deck. It is Jones's boast that his trip marked the first time that a sea-going yacht has traversed the uncharted lower DanubeAustria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, to the port of Varna in Bulgaria and into the Black Sea. There are hostile border guards, gunboats, hazardous defiles and rapids; a few glorious days in Vienna and Budapest; relief at journey's end. Good adventure, vintage Tristan Jones. (May 18)
Foreword | 9 | |
Part 1 | Into | |
1. | On Pioneering | 13 |
2. | Some Boot, Some Lace | 21 |
3. | More Haste--Less Speed | 27 |
4. | The Pause That Refreshed | 35 |
5. | Deutschland uber Ales | 41 |
6. | The Lilt of the Lorelei | 49 |
7. | Bounding on the Main and Rebounding | 55 |
8. | 'Mid Pleasures and Palaces | 61 |
9. | Blocked and Beset | 71 |
Part 2 | Through | |
10. | Out of the Trap and Over the Gap | 91 |
11. | Docks, Rocks, Stocks, Old Jocks and Shocks | 101 |
12. | Death Trap | 111 |
13. | Gorgeous Gorges | 119 |
14. | Aspiring Spires | 129 |
15. | Inquiring Choirs | 135 |
16. | From the Sublime to the Gorblime | 143 |
17. | The Bear's Paw | 151 |
18. | The Setup | 161 |
19. | Running the Gauntlet | 171 |
20. | The Green Fields Beyond | 183 |
21. | A Tale of Two Cities | 195 |
22. | The Naked Truth | 207 |
23. | When You Go, You Go Yugoslavia | 219 |
24. | Beautiful and Bad; Charming and Repulsive | 227 |
25. | Last Outposts | 235 |
Part 3 | Out | |
26. | Through the Iron Gates | 247 |
27. | The Lost Planet and the Void | 259 |
28. | Learning About Rumania | 271 |
29. | Captains and Capitalists | 283 |
30. | Hulls, Hells and Highwater | 299 |
31. | Thalassa! | 309 |
32. | Victorious, Happy and Half-Knackered | 319 |
List of Ports of Call | 331 |