As Long as It's Fun, the Epic Voyages and Extraordinary Times of Lin and Larry Pardey

To anyone interested in small-boat cruising and voyaging, the names Lin and Larry Pardey need no introduction. As world-girdling sailors who roamed the planet on a pair of small, engineless boats that they built themselves, the Pardeys established their hard-earned reputations by eloquently (and sometimes controversially) telling their stories through a series of best-selling books and manuals, and countless seminars and boat shows. They have been called the first couple of cruising and have remained true to their mantra: Go simple, go small, go now. And after 200,000 miles of cruising under sail, they ve demonstrated that the dream of voyaging over the horizon is not only attainable, it s affordable. The children of modest, middle-class families, their message of accessibility into the world of cruising of taking your own floating home anywhere has proved irresistible to tens of thousands of sailors. Lin and Larry Pardey became cruising royalty not solely due to their impressive deeds but also through their rare ability to share what they d learned across multiple media. Seemingly every offshore cruiser knows who they are and what they represent. Or do they? In As Long as It s Fun, the biography of Lin and Larry Pardey, Herb McCormick recounts their remarkable sailing career from their early days in Southern California to their two circumnavigations to their current life in a quiet cove in New Zealand. Through interviews with their families, friends, and critics, McCormick delves deeply into the couple s often-controversial opinions, sometimes-tenuous marriage, and amazing list of accomplishments. As Long as It s Fun is as much a love story as it is a sea yarn, and, like all such stories, it s not without complications . . . which makes it not only a sailing tale but also a human one.

A sixth-generation native of Newport, Rhode Island, author Herb McCormick has been racing and cruising from above the Arctic Circle to Antarctica and chronicling his adventures and travels in magazines, newspapers, and online for more than three decades. The former editor-in-chief of Cruising World magazine and yachting correspondent for The New York Times, McCormick has notched more than 75,000 offshore miles in his sailing career. As an award-winning journalist, he s been honored with the National Marine Manufacturers Association s prestigious Directors Award and the BoatUS Monk Farnham Award for Excellence in Editorial Commentary. His stories and articles have earned numerous first-place prizes in Boating Writers International s annual writing contest. He is also the author of Out There (with George Day), an account of the first BOC Challenge solo around-the-world race; Gone to the Sea, an anthology of his best profiles and sea tales; and One Island, One Ocean, his first-person account of the historic 2009 2010 Around the Americas expedition via the Northwest Passage and Cape Horn.