from Mainsail to the Wind A Book of Sailing Quotations by William Galvani "We are in hopes of seeing land this morning, but cannot...we have run all this day at a great rate; and now night is come on we have no soundings. Sure the American continent is not all sunk under water since we left." —Benjamin Franklin "The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators." —Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire "But where, after all, would be the poetry of the sea were there no wild waves?" —Joshua Slocum "Believe me...there is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." —Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows "...the Gulf Stream and the other great ocean currents are the last wild country there is left." —Ernest Hemingway "My idea of getting off in a boat is to get as far away from telephones as possible." —Roderick Stephens "There is no opium so sweet as the unguarded sunny sleep on the deck of a boat when it's after lunch in summer and you don't know when you're going to arrive nor what port you will land at, when you've forgotten east and west and your name and address..." —John Dos Passos See Mainsail to the Wind in our catalog. Back to main Excerpts page.

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