After seven years ashore and after having his left leg amputated, Tristan Jones decided to return to the sea. In October 1983, Jones and his only crew member, Wally Rediske, set out in Outward Leg, a 36-ft trimaran from San Diego, intending to circumnavigate the world from west to east by sail. Less than a year after his left leg was amputated, Jones set sail aboard a 36-foot trimaran, Outward Leg , in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Jones wanted to prove to himself and to other handicapped people that disability need not mean the end of adventures. Jones successfully sailed 14,800 miles and encountered a variety of ne'er-do-wells and drug smugglers in the process. This account of his experiences is fast-paced and exciting, much in the tradition of his The Incredible Voyage and Adrift. Jones begins with a brief account of how he lost his leg and the experiences that drove him to make the voyage. Financial difficulties and need for a crew delayed him, but Outward Leg finally set sail from San Diego. At ports all over the world the fraternity of sailors cheered him on. Jones made his point, and his account is well worth reading. ― Library Journal Few yachtsmen are unfamiliar with the name Tristan Jones. Having published 16 books on his world voyages, Outward Leg follows the late (sailor) on a voyage from San Diego to London. Jones was an old-style adventurer: a maritime free-thinker with a stainless steel backbone. His quirky sense of humor, honest (and oddly timeless) prose style is spliced with the kind of mad-yet-accurate insight which comes when a man spends too much time alone. Try this one on for size: There are no people on the face of the earth so adept at transforming a dream into a reality as Americans... No people anywhere are so capable of absorbing a dream so thoroughly that it becomes a part of them, and they champion it, devote an amazing amount of energy to it and transform it and, if you are not every careful, destroy it. ― Yachts & Yachting After having his leg amputated and spending seven years ashore, Tristan Jones decided to return to sea. In October 1983, Jones and his only crew member, Wally Rediske, set out from San Diego in OUTWARD LEG, a 36-foot trimaran, intending to circumnavigate the world from west to east by sail. ― Sailing Inland & Offshore Tristan Jones is one of the best-known authors of sailing stories. A Welshman, he left school at age 14 to work on sailing barges and spent the rest of his life at sea. The author of 16 books, Jones lived in Phuket, Thailand, until he died at the age of 71 in June 1995. All his books have been reissued by Sheridan House. I had only one lecturing appointment, in mid-1983, in San Diego. Normally I would not have crossed the continent for one engagement - the expenses are only just covered. But this time something told me that I ought to go. I had warm memories of my previous visit in 1977. I recalled its good, dry, warm climate and its friendly people, among other things. Besides, it was another port, a place to look for a trimaran. By that time I'd already been to some ports in the eastern states, but had seen no multihull that impressed me as being what I thought she should be. The agent in San Diego arranged for a telephoned radio interview the week before I went there, and in it I mentioned my intention to make a voyage, as an example, for Operation Star, and that I was on the lookout for a suitable trimaran. I had about a thousand dollars at the time, but when destiny decrees, then money is of least importance - the will's the thing. I had been in correspondence with Eric Le Rouge, one of France's leading multihull designers, for some months. Eric had told me that he could probably find sponsors for me to build a trimaran for the Star voyage - but it would take a year or two. Now a year or two at twenty or thirty or forty years of age is a fairly short time, but when you are approaching sixty years of age, it is a very long time indeed - it is perhaps a quarter of your remaining lifetime. Nevertheless, if no other solution to my problem of finding a suitable craft turned up - and I had a strange feeling, as I flew across America yet again, that synchronistic destiny was at work, bringing unknown strands together into the weft and warp of a certain design. . . . She was at anchor off a golf clubhouse. She was low, and fast-looking, and of the right sort of line; there was an indefinable air of longing about her and when my eyes fell upon her, all the other yachts around her dissolved into a blur. As I drew near her in a borrowed dinghy, she seemed to me to be imbued with the spirit of a song, a carefree, never- ending rhythm that was part of the rhythm of the sea, perhaps of the universe itself. She was, as I stepped, stumbled and clawed my one-legged way up her stern, an engine, pure and unadorned. A sailing engine and a hard nut if I ever saw one. My whole being was overcome by the feeling: This one's for me. On board,