25 Awesome Books About Sailing Around The World

Torre isn’t looking for love when she meets a soulful Argentinian man in San Diego. But he’s about to set sail around the world on his small sailboat. Lovesick, she decides to join him on this terrifying and life-changing journey through deep waters. Somewhere mid-pacific, she’s finding it hard to keep everything afloat.

I read this one last year and it was definitely interesting! It’s not like, 10/10 for me but I did enjoy it, especially from the perspective of someone that just sort of decided to sail across the world on a whim.

This is another one I have and can’t wait to read! My South Pacific and sailing book list is quite long now.

This is the three-year journey across French Polynesia on a sailboat, from Bora Bora to the Tuamotus. We get to experience the ups and downs of life on a sailboat along with Jasna, meeting heavily tattooed men, sailing under the stars, and diving with sharks and dolphins.

This one landed on my TBR after reading Adrift: 76 Days at Sea (mentioned below) and it sounds so good!

Tania was eighteen, living in New York with no big plans. But then her father gave her a choice: a college education or a twenty-six-foot sloop. She chose the boat with the caveat of having to sail it around the world. Alone.

It was her home for the next two years and 27,000 miles with just her cat as a companion. What started as just an adventure became a spiritual quest.

This is Bernard’s own story of his experience in the first Golden Globe Race, a solo, non-stop circumnavigation rounding the Capes of Good Hope, Leeuwin, and Horn.

He battled storms, doldrums, fatigue, loneliness, and more over the next seven months. Near the end of the race, he pulled out and sailed on for three more months, ending in Tahiti 37,455 miles later, not touching land once.

When Glen and Julie followed their dream, they found reality could be bigger than imagined. Here, we get to hear about the terrors and pleasures of living on a sailboat from the North Atlantic to French Polynesia where even simple decisions can have major consequences.

This is perfect for anyone looking for a true-story sailing book, whether you want to sail or not.

It was the storm of the century with waves over 100 feet high formed by a combination of factors that deemed it the perfect storm.

This is the stories of the lives of people touched by the storm. This is non-fiction and it’s actually a movie, too!

I would like to read this one. I remember my mom watching the movie when I was little and she made me leave the room for one part of it because it was too scary, I guess.

In 1996, Pete Goss set off on the most grueling race in his sailing career, the Vendee Globe, a non-stop, single-handed yacht race around the world.

He met every challenge over the next seven weeks before everything started to go wrong. Then, on Christmas day, his radio picked up a Mayday of a sinking French competitor 160 miles away. He turned into the hurricane force winds to rescue a near-dead man on a life raft and this is the story of how that all came to be.

I wasn’t sure about this as I added it to the list but it sounds really interesting!

I watched this movie over the winter and now I really want to read the book. This is a crazy survival story (a true survival story) and while most of it isn’t actively sailing, it’s still definitely a sailing book.

Tami and her fiance Richard have their whole lives ahead of themselves when they set sail from Tahiti to San Diego.

Less than two weeks into their voyage, though, they sail directly into one of the worst hurricanes recorded in history. Richard ties himself to the boat and sends Tami to safety below. Hours later, all is quiet and she’s awakened to find the boat in ruins and Richard nowhere in sight.

This is the miraculous story of her forty-one days alone with no mast or sails and little hope of rescue.

This is Tristan Jones’s six-year voyage alone on his small boat, The Sea Dart ranging from the Dead Sea to Lake Titicaca, covering a distance more than twice the circumference of the globe.

He refuses to let any disasters he faced get in his way including hauling his boat over the Andes, facing the current of the mighty Amazon, and capsizing off the Cape of Good Hope.

This one sounds like a combination of a sailing adventure book and a trekking adventure book.

This is the story of two driven Canadians desperate for a break from their professional lives who quit their jobs and moved onto a 42-foot sailboat. They set sail for a two-year journey through the Caribbean where they dropped anchor in 16 countries, on 47 islands, exploring secluded beaches and local markets.

If you want a sailing book to have you dreaming of dropping everything to live on a boat, this is probably the one for you.

Renee and Michael had no boating experience and had to learn everything the hard way. They managed to make it from Miami to Grenada, dropping anchor at the island of their dreams.

If you’re curious about sailing around the world, or living on a sailboat at all, this is perfect for you! It’s part lessons learned, part adventure.

This is a firsthand account of Steven Callahan’s seventy-six days adrift in his inflatable raft when his sailboat capsized just six days in.

I read this one over the summer and it was pretty interesting! It had some slow moments, but it’s definitely worth reading.

This is a true story about 16-year old Robin sailing around the world alone on a 24-foot sloop over five years. 33,000 miles later, he returns home to California with a wife, a daughter, and enough stories to fill a book. This book.

Mark went from working 60 hours a week to living off the grid on a 39-foot sailboat, usually on the move or anchored in the water.

He was able to clear up debts and free his spirit while meeting a colorful cast of characters along the way. Now he is sharing the stories here along with how to make this happen for yourself.

Tom Neale was a New Zealander bushcraft and survival enthusiast who spent 16 years in three stints living along on the island of Anchorage in the Swarrow atoll in the Cook Islands and these are his stories.

When Lisebet trades the life she knows for living on a sailboat, she succumbs to seasickness and a growing desire to be alone.

She enjoys the impulsiveness and alternative lifestyle but must face personal storms, US immigration, adverse weather, and doubts about her newfound love.

Nick heard fellow bus passengers discussing the improbable plan to sail the 2,500 miles from Northern Chile to Easter Island in a boat made of reeds. They wanted to revive the pre-Incan boat building method while having an incredible adventure.

Nick talked his way on board to find himself plagued with uncertainty, especially when the crew was made of a tree surgeon, a jewelry salesman, and two ducks. Where’s the navigator? Does anyone here know how to sail? Where is the life raft?

This is perfect for fans of adventure and sailing books.

If you want a book about sailing, a book about murder, and a super long book, look no further.

Alone with her new husband on a tiny Pacific atoll, a young woman finds an aluminum container washed up on shore next to a gold tooth in a scorched human skull.

The rest of the story is a complex and puzzling true-crime mystery that only Vincent Bugliosi was able to draw together with hundreds of conflicting details of what happened when four people found hell in a tropical paradise.

I don’t love long books but I might have to give this one a shot someday!

Farley left Toronto for Newfoundland where he heard boats looking for buyers are as common as cod. He doesn’t realize the ship he purchased half-drunk in the middle of the night requires every nautical repair known to man.

The Happy Adventure sank regularly, leaked like a sieve, and had a working engine only on occasion. These are their stories from the Newfoundland coast to Lake Ontario and everything they encountered along the way.

John is a practical sailing philosopher with hundreds of thousands of nautical miles under his belt. The narrative of his adventures around the world, from Belize to Yemen, are interwoven with practical tips and hard-earned insights of how to make the most of our lives.

Here is another sailing survival story but in 1864. Captain Thomas Musgrave wrecked on a forbidding piece of land 285 miles south of New Zealand.

On the opposite side of the island, at the same time, another ship ran aground in a storm. The two crews face the same fate with twenty miles of treacherous and impassable cliffs between them.

One crew turns on itself and to cannibalism while the other bands together to build a cabin and find a way to escape.

I don’t usually like this-far-back historical survival/exploration stories but this one sounds really interesting. It was pieced together with historical records and survivor’s journals.

This is the story of Robin’s sailing journey, the first-ever non-stop, single-handed sail around the world.

This one is probably interesting and sounds like a classic sailing book, but I just can’t with the description on Amazon. It’s a lot of words but really doesn’t tell me what this is about.

On November 3, 1996, sixteen sailors set out from the Bay of Biscay on the Vendee Globe Race (mentioned above) through some of the most treacherous and isolated waters on Earth.

Six completed the course, six withdrew or were disqualified, three were pulled from sinking boats, and one disappeared without a trace.

Joshua Slocum was the first person to sail single-handedly around the world (I feel like I’ve written that like, ten times in this post). Along the way he was introduced to many dignitaries.

Honestly, this description is like, ten miles long and tells me even less about the book than the one above, but if you like books about sailing around the world and historical accounts, this could be good for you.

Here we have another first, this is the youngest sailor to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe. Not only did she face the seas on her own, but also doubts and hostile resistance from officials.

This is her story of what it was like sailing around the world alone. This one sounds pretty good and it’s only $0.99 on Kindle so I think I’ll give it a shot!