Lovely and energetic! Listening to this audiobook really took me to another world. I would recommend this to people who like lighthearted travel stories.

Ruff Row Ranch LLC
5.0 out of 5 stars A fun tale of travel around the world in a dinghy
Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2021
I listened to an advanced reader version of this book. The narrator was excellent as is the book.

I loved hearing about the author's adventures on the sea, experiences visiting different countries and their encounters with people around the globe.

The author found her second calling writing this book ( her first being a sailor adventurer).

Didn't find this interesting at all. The narrator's voice got on my nerves a lot. I didn't listen to much of it, couldn’t concentrate on the story 🤷‍♀️

I did not finish this one. I could not stand the narrator. so I can not give a full review..

what I read was ok, nothing that kept me entertained and probably helped me not finishing it but the narrator really did it for me. I just could not handle that voice

This year without traveling has been rough on me. So I’ve been enjoying books that take me to exotic locations, and whisk me off to far away places.

Which is what drew me to Tightwads on the Loose. This is the story of Wendy and Garth, and their seven years sailing the Pacific together.

When Wendy and Garth give up their land based life for a 31-square-foot sail boat - that Garth can’t stand up in - and set off from Seattle to Baja, the couple learns more about teamwork and how to compromise than I imagine any other couple ever would.

This was a fun listen! I loved the descriptions of the islands and the different cultures the couple encounters. Part of the thrill of traveling is experiencing new cultures.

I found myself laughing at the chaos, tensing up as the couple braved sailing through storms, and adding placed to my bucket list.

There was, however, a lot of boat and sailing minutiae that went right over my head. I’m are if you’re into sailing or sailboats, these parts would be more enjoyable.

I also loved the narrator, she really brought the story to life. I honestly felt like I was having a conversation with my friend who was telling me about their journey, not listening to an audiobook.

Wendy and Garth had an amazing adventure at sea aboard their sailboat. Journeying the pacific oceans. Visiting new places and making friends. This book tells of their tales on the secondhand boat. I listened to the audiobook which was narrated by the author herself.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to listen to this book.

I have been enjoying reading and listening to books about people who have lived a life on the high seas. This book was no exception. This one was different than others I have read though in that this couple spent more time on the seas than most than I have read about. This is a far fetched dream of mine that I know will never come true, so I'll continue to read and listen to others who have lived out my dream. While I enjoyed hearing their story, I didn't enjoy the narrator of this audiobook very much. I would have preferred that the author of the book read this, because I feel like we would have recieved a more genuine telling of the story. All in all, this was a good listen!

Tightwads on the Loose peaked my attention because I love adventure and traveling. In 2020, not being able to travel has been hard so I thought traveling vicariously with Wendy Hinman and her husband Garth would be a good way to suppress some of the travel bug.

Wendy and Garth spent close to seven years traveling around the world on their boat. Both have boating experience; in fact, Garth had traveled around the world in the 70's. Together they live out this dream that became much more grand than expected.

Wendy shares their many experiences, the people they meet, places they visit, the challenge of being in a small space with one person for a long time and what happens when your boat breaks down and you need to work to raise money to fix it.

What I enjoyed about this memoir was that Wendy captures the joys and trials travelling, basically on their own and with a limited budget. Traveling, if you allow it, is a learning experience. She talks about cultural differences, the kind strangers they encounter, and how you can sometimes feel like you are in a completely different world, cut off from what's going on with the rest of the globe. Wendy also shares the need for flexibility. In their case, flexibility for changes in weather, people arriving later than expected and having to wait in places longer than expected. There's also the need to help others and to take the time to fix their own boat when needed and they learned not to say, "how much worse can it get".

I think that if I had read this book, I may have enjoyed it more. The writing felt like it went from one thing to the other. First we did this, then we did this, then this and this and then this and oh by the way we did this. It wasn't told like a story with characters and a well developed plot. I get that it's a memoir, but something was missing. I could have probably gotten over this, but because I listened to the audio, the narrator's voice bugged me a bit and it felt like parts that were supposed to be funny lost their humour. That was disappointing. The Hinman's adventure though, is anything but disappointing.

Bookworm Rating: 🐛🐛🐛🌱

Thank you to Salsa Press and NetGalley for a free audiobook for an honest review.

I can’t even begin to imagine having lived through such an incredible adventure! It makes me want to seize every minute of my life and do something interesting!

I really enjoyed the first part of the book. There were so many great stories of the trials and tribulations of getting used to their new life on the water. Once it turned more toward boat maintenance (which I definitely realize is a very important and major part of living life on a boat), some of the sense of adventure true was lost for me a little. I still really enjoyed the stories about the different countries, towns, and cities they visited, and learning more about cultures I was unfamiliar with.

The author did an excellent job of portraying the differences between her personality and her husband’s while also making it very clear why their marriage worked.

The accented narration of people from other countries wasn’t my favorite, but aside from that, I thought the narration was spot on for this book.

Adventure travel and travel humour are popular with my library customers, so I was glad to spot this new title in an audio format. I enjoyed the fun stories about Wendy and Garth’s prolonged sailing adventures, and Robin Karno’s bubbly and carefree delivery as narrator compliments the text’s light tone.

There’s also something about the narration that rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t know if it’s my place as a white person to comment on the narrator’s attempts at reproducing a variety of accents in this audiobook, so please forgive me if I’m overstepping. As Wendy and Garth encounter new locals and fellow travelers with every new country they visit, the narrator’s interpretation of the English dialogue sometimes feels uncomfortably like racist caricatures of accents as heard by white Anglo ears.

One of the things that struck me most was just how little Wendy and Garth were able to live on, in terms of both their daily budget and their material possessions. Their sailing life was simple and relatively minimalist—when you don’t have space to accumulate the junk of modern life, you are forced to prioritize the use of that space very carefully. If Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” speaks to your inner minimalist, or if Anna Newell Jones’s “The Spender’s Guide to Debt-Free Living” speaks to your inner spendthrift, then you might find as much to enjoy here as any fan of sailing adventures and travel stories.

A wonderful entertaining listen. I have walked my dog for miles listening to the adventures of Wendy and Garth at sea. A great narrater telling a fantastic reminiscence of their journey around the word in a small boat. Great fun.

It was a great adventure by the author and her husband. It’s fun to know the ups and downs as well as the funny things little things along the way. Great story telling as well

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Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven Year Pacific Odyssey by Wendy Hinman is a memoir of the author, after she went on a boat trip around the world with her husband. Mrs. Hinman is a professional writer and, of course, a sailor and boating enthusiast.

Traveling around the world seems like a far-off dream to most people. For Wendy Hinman and her husband, Garth, this dream became reality when they set off on a one-in-a-lifetime (maybe) adventure which took around seven years to complete.

In Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven Year Pacific Odyssey, Mrs. Hinman chronicles the highs, and lows, of their trip around the world. While it does sound enticing, the Hinman’s traveled on a very low budget, and as many people know, boats aren’t a cheap vehicle to maintain. Luckily Mr. Hinman is boat engineer, and a very good mechanic.

The author does not shy away from writing about the hardships the couple has endured. From being on in close quarters for weeks at a time, corrupt officials, weather ruining plans (which seemed to be a running theme), and different ideas on what to do where. All that with the fact that the couple were on a very tight budget, as the title suggest, which makes every port fee a burden, and haggling for fresh food a must.

I have traveled much as well, besides the fact that in many places I was looked upon as a cash machine, with the Hinman’s also discovered, the best part was about the people I met and experiences I had – even though I know admit that I was too young to appreciate them. The people the couple met keep reappearing throughout the book, as it is in real life when traveling for even a few months. Boating, as mentioned over and over again, is an expensive hobby, and if something breaks it has to be fixed. For several months the Hinman’s even had to work in an American military base in the Pacific to save enough money to fix their boat.

The writing captures life at sea, on a small boat, and worse. on a budget. The ports the couple stopped at are very lively and interesting. The author chose wisely to concentrate on people and experiences instead of trying to capture the magic of every waterfall they hiked to.

The audiobook, narrated by Robin Karno, was very engaging and enjoyable. Ms. Karno did an admirable job trying to bring to life not only the Hinman’s but also the people they met along the way.

An enjoyable audiobook, the narrator was good and kept me engaged.
The story was ok with some humorous accounts and adventures of the high seas.
#TightwadsontheLoose #NetGalley

This started out so interesting, but the narrator’s irritating way of ‘doing voices’, putting on a deep voice to indicate her husband and using strange accents (often in an insulting way) to portray ‘foreigners’ grated on me so much I had to give up half way through.
The story could’ve done with more editing - long stretches of detailed descriptions of technical details are probably interesting to other long distance sailors, but not for general readers.
Not for me, sorry.

I enjoyed this audiobook and found the narrating and subject matter very easy to listen to. A very open and honest account of sailing travels that had some funny moments but showed a true passion for sailing.

Thank you Netgalley.

This narrator was great! She is expressive, has a good cadence and can even do the accents and dialects well.

The story itself is very interesting. It covers the Wendy and Garth's entire relationship, their fondness of sailing and increasing abilities and knowledge while living in Seattle and then during their 7 year circumnavigation.

I loved the insights into foreign lands and peoples that I will never have a chance to visit myself. Some of the anecdotes were very humorous while others were thought-provoking.

I will admit that occasionally the "sailing speak" , which regularly went over my head, would cause my eyes to gloss over, and I was glad that I was running and could still feel like I was being productive.

My only real complaints were the frequent political statements and jabs at the western world, in particular the US and its leaders.

What a delightful story.

I loved every second of it. The narrator was wonderful. She made the book come alive so much so that I went and purchased the e-book of this story just so I could relive the adventure again (and get the spellings of the places to look them up on Google Earth.)

I would recommend this to any armchair traveler who needs a break and an adventure.

I really enjoyed this book, it did not seem to cover years and years the time just flew by. I look forward to hearing about more adventures, sailing or otherwise from this couple.

This is a nonfiction book about a wonderful yet tough travel in boat though the Pacific Ocean. Wendy and her husband shared a dream and fought for it. It became real and, though inspiring and fulfilling, it was also challenging, hard and dangerous sometimes. A trip through the Pacific Ocean! In Boat! The two of them! Through 7 years! I loved it! All the cultures and wonderful places the got to meet, see and live, the hard experiences that made them grew stronger and better people. The way their relationship developed and resisted despite tough times. It has been awonderful read. All I want/like in a book. Wonderful. Can't wait for more adventures of them!