I’m not sure what it was, but I really could not get into this book. I read a little bit set it down for a while picked back up again read some more, but still cannot get into it.

While this book was definitely interesting I gotta say I’m not sold on it.

It’s a true story, so keeping that in mind I understand that only so much editing can be done since it must remain authentic, but holy moly was this an incredibly long listen.

I was given the chance to enjoy the audiobook through NetGalley and the narration was great. It kept me interested enough that I didn’t have trouble continuing the book. This book definitely highlights some of the major differences between now and the 1970’s and that was the most interesting part for me.

So a neutral rating it is. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This narrative is a very interesting play by play account of the trials and tribulations the family faced while trying to circumnavigate the world. The author relates the events through background with the family as well as information gained from letters and conversations with family members.

I really enjoyed this voyage story. The narrator was especially great and will be looking out for more books narrated by him. The author did a great job at weaving all the adventures into one cohesive story

The Adventure of a Lifetime

They planned for it, they saved for it and the day finally came they were sailing around the world. The Wilcox family embarked on their great adventure onboard the Vela in 1973. Chuck, Dawn and their fourteen year old son Garth are all excited to start their adventure, but Linda their eleven year old daughter did not want to go.

As they prepare to make their dream come true they have no idea what the future challenges they will face. Not only do they have challenges from the elements such as shipwrecking on a coral reef and rebuilding on a remote Pacific Island but they are facing thieves, corrupt government officials, the IRS back home and catastrophes that plague them during the journey.

Shortage of food and money cause them headaches as does the postage service and getting the school work for the two children. They soon have two teenagers aboard a 40 foot craft.
They face challenges greater than they dreamed of and are at the point of giving up more than once, but they are determined to finish their journey.

They tell of the history of each place they visit and what they liked or disliked about it. The pleasurable part of the journey and the unpleasant as well. It was like actually traveling to all these places while listening to the story.

This was a great story, I enjoyed the story, and the narrator did a great job was easy to understand and made the story interesting. I would recommend this book.

Thanks to Wendy Hinman for telling the story, to Eric G. Dove for a great narration , to Salsa Press for publishing it and to NetGalley for allowing me to listen and review a copy.

While I received a copy of this audiobook in exchange for a review, all opinions remain my own.

I must admit, I have never read a book about a round the world journey on a boat, and most definitely not one done by a family! The beginning sounded just delightful but then it turned bad quickly and didn't ever get better. for them.... I appreciated how real and authentic the story was. You got to feel what they were really going through, what they were really feeling in those long days on the boat. Even with no knowledge of sailboats, I was able to understand the lingo and know what was going on. I really enjoyed that you got to know what happened to each family member after their journey. I often wonder about things like that.

This narrator was fantastic. You could feel how the family was feeling.

Wow this was an amazing read. I just couldn't get enough of this book. I was so engrossed from the very start. I listened to the audiobook and liked the narrators voice. Although I was surprised there was a male narrator when the author was female. The didn't take anything away from the book though. 

The author has obviously lived a very exciting, thrilling and rather shocking life. The author and family spent a few years travelling the world. So there was plenty of cultures to enjoy learning about. I loved how the voyage took place in the 70's, so it was easy to see the changes from today's world. Its unbelievable what the family had to go through on the journey. With plenty of boat troubles and very interesting boarder crossings it lead to some exciting reading. 

What shocked me the most was having to travel home with no engine but I definitely won't say any more on the subject you will need to read the book to find put what happened. 

I highly recommend reading this book if you love reading travel writings and are interested in different cultures. The book was that good that I had to read it all in one sitting and its a 12 hour audiobook. 

Only the highest of praise goes out to the author and publishers for bringing us this wonderful and exciting story of courage and strength to travel the world under extremely taxing adversities.

The above review has already been placed on goodreads, waterstones, Google books, Barnes&noble, kobo, amazon UK where found and my blog today https://ladyreading365.wixsite.com/website/post/sea-trials-by-wendy-hinman-ibpa-independent-author-5-stars either under my name or ladyreading365

Thank you NetGalley and Salsa Press for accepting my request to audibly read and review Sea Trials.

Author: Wendy Hinman
Published: 09/02/22
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs -- Outdoors & Nature -- Travel
Narrator: Eric G. Dove

I feel like I made it to Final Jeopardy and lost. What was the big clue that I might not relate to Sea Trials? Answer -- Duct tape and bailing wire. I almost DNFd at 95% (This is a 12+ hour audiobook.). Dawn felt she had failed her family. I was too drained to scream.

I was excited to read Sea Trials, and I noticed the duct tape and bailing wire. I imagined MacGuyver going around the world. I was disappointed and early on.

The narrator was good. He could only perform what was written. Thankfully he was not a hindrance.

This is four people, two of which are teens, one boy, one girl and their parents going around the world on a shoe string budget. I love reading about people who have dreams and what they will do. This is not one of those stories. They were relatively doomed before they started. Poor planning, poor financing, and few skills are what they had. Besides the at 95% idiotic cry from the mother, I remember the discussion she had earlier in the book that her son could not help his dad once again attempt to repair the boat. He had school studies. It didn't take long before failing health amongst all of them, he was allowed to quit school. I'm still shaking my head. The father was at best inept. I am being kind.

Without spoiling, all I can say is this is a true story, and with a lump in my throat and sadness in my heart, I hope the children had someone in their lives that truly loved them and wanted the best for them. I want them to have few if any health residuals. I am not surprised by the epilogue discussing the family.

As always, the choice to read a book is yours. I would suggest this only to see what could go wrong and paperwork (passport/birth certificate) problems. This definitely is not a feel good book. It's not funny. I found it maddening.

The story is interesting. It's about a family of 4 sailing during the early 70s and their trails and tribulations along they way. The narrator of the story is someone who wasn't there so it reads like someone reciting family stories rather than some one living them.

In 1972, the Wilcox family set out in a yacht to sail around the world. They were learning the quirks of their boat and how to work together when the worst occurred: they shipwrecked on a deserted island in the South Pacific. Overall, this is a really entertaining story of living at sea, including all the ups and downs inherent in doing so. I appreciated the little details about what happens when one comes into a port before anyone can disembark further onto land. Those more mundane details helped me understand what the seafaring lifestyle might really be like. The downside is I feel there was a bit of unexamined prejudice present which could have been explored a bit. The events took place during a time that we were doing less of that kind of examination, but the book was written more recently, so I think that exploration would have been current and valuable.

What a fun book! I loved reading about the epic experience of a family sailing around the world. The story was beautifully told.

I was excited to listen to this book—I typically LOVE stories about hardship at sea / shipwreck / lost as sea etc. (not sure what that says about me). But Sea Trials didn't hit the right chord for me. Rather than inspirational, I found it to be a long drag, more "tell" rather than "show".

There is no doubt in my mind this family experienced an incredible, harrowing adventure, but the details didn't translate. Every book is not for every reader—I am very aware of this—and perhaps you will love it!

Thank you NetGalley for providing a copy of the audio version of this book. Opinions are entirely my own.

Audiobook Review: Sea Trials: Around the World with Duct Tape and Bailing Wire by Wendy Hinman, Narrated by Eric G. Dove
Published by Salsa Press, September 1, 2022

★★★★☆ (4.25 Stars)
Positive!

Audiobook narration:
Commendable effort by Eric G. Dove as he gives voice to dozens of characters and pumps out the excitement and emotion in this challenging read.

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"Sea Trials" (2017 /2022) featuring the Wilcox family (Chuck, Dawn, Garth and Linda) is a prequel to author Wendy Hinman's "Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven Year Pacific Odyssey" (2012) featuring Wendy herself and husband Garth Wilcox, the fourteen-year-old boy in "Sea Trials".

I've read and thoroughly enjoyed both books.

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KNKX Public Radio /KNKX.org
// The sailboat Vela with its shattered hull after it was salvaged from a barrier reef in Fiji in 1974 during Wilcox family's first leg across the Pacific. //

A picture says a thousand words! You'd shudder at the image, yet the wounded 40-foot sailboat, patched up (again and again) and spurred on by its undaunted captain and crew, would incredibly sail on for five more years and thousands of nautical miles to circumnavigate the globe, through the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Australia, Bali, South Asia, up the coast of Africa, through the Arabian Sea, the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Panama Canal, back to the Pacific, and finally back home to San Francisco.

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// The Wilcox family (left to right): Dawn, Linda, Chuck, Garth, when they returned to San Francisco in 1979, weather-beaten but relieved to be safe, five years after the shipwreck near Suva, Fiji. //

The family sailed under less than ideal, even barebones, conditions, navigating by sextant, the stars and a Timex with a broken rig, a faulty engine which died out mid-trip, and a constantly leaky hull; minimum navigational and safety equipment and sanitation facilities, no radio, no sonar, no GPS or cell service (both unavailable at that time), limited cash, and often out of food.

Some would say that the voyage was indeed an ultimate test of endurance, a tribute to the indomitable human spirit.

Some would say, on the other hand, that the trip was an altogether foolhardy endeavor, rash, reckless, moreso because of the presence of young children. Reading the book, you could feel the despair at times so palpable, particularly when the dad snaps and shuts down cowering below deck while his wife and children struggle, which happens in several intervals.

Big winner 14-year-old Garth Wilcox (the author's husband) forged to toughness by the voyage, who goes on the become a Seattle-based naval architect.

Overall, a fascinating read!

Bonus review:
Wendy Hinman's "Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven Year Pacific Odyssey" (2012) is a very well-produced audiobook to be relish if you can get it.

The first-person narration by Robin Karno is supplemented by a cornucopia of talented voice actors with authentic native accents - Polynesian French, Fijian /Indian English, Bislama, Pidgin English, Chamorro, Filipino and Nihongo, you'd feel you shall have been right on board with Wendy and Garth on the 32-foot "Velella", for the 7-year, 34,000-mile voyage, calling on 19 Pacific Rim countries - then back eastbound across the Pacific for the trip home to the US west coast.
(Link to my review in Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3509918252?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1)

Review based on advanced reading and listening copies courtesy of Salsa Press and NetGalley.

I fell in love with the idea of sailing around the world after seeing it on Dawson's Creek (YEARS ago). I've come to realize, after listening to this fascinating story, that I love CRUISING, not sailing. Not once was there mention of the breakfast buffet and that's where the idea of sailing lost me. This story grabbed me from the beginning despite the fact that I didn't really feel like I got to know any of the characters. There adventures, good and bad, were plentiful and definitely run the gamut of experiences possible to have. I loved learning how they managed this without our modern GPS navigation and remote schooling options. I still want to see the world by sea but I think I'll stick to my larger boats with staff.

What an adventure! The true story of the Willcox family who sailed around the world in the 70s. No GPS or modern devices to help them, they survived ship wrecks, storms and each other. Told in a way that you could see it from their eyes, honest about the toll it took on themselves, and refreshingly different

Great read! I don’t normally like memoirs but this book was amazing. It follows the Wilcox family on their voyage around the world via their 40 foot sailboat, named Vela, in the 1970’s. It will put to rest any romantic notions you may have about such a voyage. I love that it is honest and gives a detailed account of all things that can and will go wrong on a trip like this. No amount of preparing will make a trip like this go entirely smooth and it’s nice to let people know that. This family had a great adventure and saw many countries and experienced many cultures along the way. But they also encountered illness, scammers, military in various countries, financial woes, bug infestation, extremely hard work, near death experiences, trouble with the IRS, food shortages and being shipwrecked. This book is a great read that is hard to put down as you wait for their next adventure. Beautifully written! I listened to the audiobook and I love the narrator that was chosen. He has narrated a LOT of books so he is very experienced. He speaks clear and concise and distinguish each character by changing his voice. You will not be disappointed by this book.

Eric G. Dove did an excellent job narrating Sea Trials. There are 4 characters in the book, and he had a distinct voice for each.

My very first book to review for NetGalley was Tightwads on the Loose by Wendy Hinman, so I have a special fondness in my heart for her. I have since reviewed over 260 books for NetGalley in less than two years. I really preferred Tightwads, because Wendy was a character in Tightwads and a real spitfire (in my opinion). The book was so colorful and came alive to me with the beauty of her adventure.

Instead of being part of the adventure (the feeling I had in Tightwads), Sea Trials gave me the impression that I was watching/reading footage of someone's vacation slides. I almost wish that she would have chosen a character and written the book from their perspective.

Another thought that kept running through my brain was all the challenges that the teenagers had doing their schoolwork remotely. I kept wondering how Garth and Linda feel after watching children doing schoolwork remotely during covid.

Rounding up to 4 stars, mostly because the families journey was incredible and also because the narrator was stellar.

Thank you to NetGalley for approving my request for the advance read copy of Sea Trials. I wanted to read the book so badly that I requested both the ebook version and the audio version. I listened to only the audio version. Thank you to Wendy Hinman the author and to Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Audiobooks the publisher. Publication date is 1 Sept 2022.

Thanks to NetGalley for the audiobook ARC!

Sea Trials chronicles the long and arduous trip around the world undertaken by the Wilcox family on their yacht, the Vela. The account of their shipwreck on a coral reef and their subsequent determination to repair their boat and continue was fascinating, as were the descriptions of the yachting community and the education of their children while yachting. I would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys nonfiction.

In Sea Trials by Wendy Hinman I thought was a book about a family who sailed around the world and it Kinda sorta was, but it was mostly them having boat problems then they crashed into a coral reef by a desolate island close to Fuji and then there harrowing sail back to California with more boat problems. First of all I didn’t feel like I got to know any of these characters with the exception that Chuck was a brooding man who left most of the work to his son Garth and wife Dawn. As far as little sister Linda goes we got the hear from her every once in a while but it was just a line here or there. I just feel like I didn’t root for them because I wasn’t invested and who these people were. I also took Umpridge to her saying that the family said sale what she calls the dark ages I feel like the door gauges of sailing were the Vikings and not people who were doing it because they’ve read so many books on people who have done it before but that’s just me. Also I didn’t like how at the end of the book when they were almost home she said Chuck was trying hard to get home because his dad was trying to hang on to see him. If he was so worried about his dad‘s health which wasn’t good when he left then why did he go? I’m just saying and having said all that I want to thank NetGalley and the author went to Hinman and I want to say I thought the narrator Mr. dove did a great great job. I love this narration and hope to hear more books by him in the future. Please forgive any errors as I am blind and dictate my review but all opinions are definitely my own.

I enjoyed the audiobook narration. I did, however, feel like I wasn't engaged enough with the story. At first I was..but then my interest fizzled out. I think for a before-bed listen, this would be good. Not a listen-while-you-work kind of deal Interesting topic. I had never heard of the family before this.