Stephen G. Ladd’s 3 Years in a 12-foot Boat is an epic tale. In the spirit of Slocum and Tristan Jones, Ladd whisks readers off to distant lands on an unforgettable adventure, sailing and hitching rides more than 15,000 miles from North America to South America and back through the Caribbean. That all this travel is done in a 12-foot boat only adds to the appeal.

3 Years is far more than a book about sailing or sailboats, however. The Introspective Ladd is himself something of an open book, sharing with readers his hopes, expectations and fears.

Contemplating the foreboding Pacific coast of Columbia that lies before him: “Nor was piracy the only mysterious hazard. The chart showed a geography totally foreign to me. Could I land through the surf on the exposed beaches? What’s it like to sail along a hundred miles of mangrove swamp with a tidal range of up to twenty feet? Could I obtain food and water? ...I had barely opened a door onto a long, twilit corridor through which I must pass.”

This true, modern adventure has all the elements of good fiction: romance, pirates, deserted islands and drama spawned by turbulent seas. Ladd’s candid prose captures a postcard-quality image of each foreign port, tired discotheque and ne’er-do-well encountered. “The BYC bar was a meeting ground for people of all stripes. Graham was a painfully shy Englishman with glasses and long brown hair. On rare occasion he skippered a charter boat. Otherwise he sat at the bar, wasting a fine intelligence. I once ask him how he ate. He gave me an apathetic, faintly humorous look. ‘Frankly, Steve, I don’t eat unless someone feeds me.’”

3 Years in a 12-foot Boat is the real deal—a book you will savor, and Stephen Ladd is an author readers will be eager to hear from again.