Fiction: A Novel of the Sea
. . . a completely extraordinary piece of classic coming-of-age literature.
Foreword Magazine
excerpts from The Cruise of the Jest
Behind the Story
The Cruise of the Jest is based on the world cruise of the schooner Fairweather. Bill Adams bought Fairweather in 1959. In March 1961 he sailed with his family from San Francisco for the South Seas. A year later, in Auckland, New Zealand, Bill left the Fairweather and Suttie Adams became skipper. She sailed the Fairweather, with her four children, the rest of the way around the world, arriving back in San Francisco in May 1965.
The Cruise of the Jest is a novel, but it is based on the experience of the world cruise of the Fairweather, plus the journal that Suttie kept. In a sense, everything in the novel happened, or something very much like it happened. The focus of the novel, however, is not on the facts of what happened, but rather on how it felt to sail around the world.
Fairweather
Gaff schooner
Designed by Murray Peterson
Build 1951, Grand Cayman Is.
LOA 57ft
LWL 47ft
Beam 15ft
Draft 6ft 7in