In 1969 the Coon family of Ketchikan, Alaska built a forty eight foot trimaran called Trilogy and sailed it down the coast of North and South America, across to the Galapagos Islands, and from there to the Marquesas and Hawaii. On the course of that twelve thousand mile voyage they forged a family destiny and pursued it to its unpredictable conclusion. In Jeannette Coon's candid story of this family odyssey, You'll meet unforgettable characters: Skipper Eldon Coon, a Christian and rugged individualist who chases his dream with the dedication of an Old Testament prophet; the rebellious sons caught up in a lark, not realizing that it would set the course of their lives; the teenage daughter swept reluctantly into life-transforming experiences; the runaway cousin who flees the chaos of her life to discover herself on this family journey. Trilogy takes them into worlds startlingly different from any they've known--scenes of stunning natural beauty; encounters with castaways and drifter, idealists and peasants, human predators and gun-waving authorities; moments of family upheaval and miraculous discovery. Over time, the sea itself becomes their shelter, a place where the family can live by its own resources, moved forward by the winds of destiny and navigating by faith as they search for a secure harbor and a new home. Part traveler's tale, part family chronicle, part a record of spiritual awakening, this true story will remind you that everyone's life is an adventure--and that unexpected rewards come to those who act on their dreams. I'm on page 401 of Trilogy and I don't want it to end! What a compact and wonderful story...and how gracefully told. What a blessing that an American family, during such a difficult era, could bury so many kinds of hatchets and come to share so much. Trilogy is such a vivid celebration of family, it makes me more grateful, as I read and relish it, for my own. -- David Duncan, author of The River Why and The Brothers K The Coon family and their fleet of Trilogies (six at last count) are such a venerable Maui tourist institution it's hard to believe they were ever anywhere else. But as Lahaina resident Jeannette Saxton Coon reveals in Trilogy, the Coons have been just about everywhere else. Coon's journal opens in 1969 in Murder Cove, Alaska, where her husband Eldon has anchored the family's 62-foot charter yacht Manana in a seemingly safe harbor. During the night, a 30-foot tidal drop sets the yacht onto a long-hidden piling that gnaws through the hull, sends the Manana to the bottom , and pukas (puts a hole in) the family's future. What to do? If you're anybody else, you abandon the charter business and use the insurance money to pay off the note on your home. Not the Coons. They sell the house, add the proceeds to the #30,000 insurance settlement, and build a 50 foot trimaran. The result is the first Trilogy, a big, swift, seagoing school of life. For the next three years, Eldon and Jeannette Coon and their children Jim, Rand and Pattie, make a Pacific Odyssey worthy of Thor Heyerdahl. Trilogy is Jeannette Coon's account of that voyage. Combining the narrative rigor of a ship's log with the gentler insights of a wife and mother, Coon chronicles the blue-water bonding experience that forged a seagoing dynasty. As the Coons sail the Trilogy from Seattle to stormy Alaska, then down the West Coast to Peru, family members who had drifted apart during the "generation gap" of the 1960's rediscover spiritual values that make them more than the sum of their parts. "I had my own version of the dream while Trilogy was in the planning and building stage," Coon writes. "My mental image showed the family scattered artistically over the deck, singing and playing musical instruments, while our trim ship plowed its triple-jeweled furrow through phosphorescent waters. This vision wasn't totally false. There were actually times when it happened just like that." As a vanity book, Trilogy is not for everyone. But for blue-water sailors of a certain vintage, Coon's densely detailed account of cruising more than ten thousand miles through the eastern and southern Pacific will stir fond memories. Here are the unadorned coastal villages of Mexico, Central America, and Ecuador, before "Islands" Magazine discovered them. And here is the French Polynesia of Nordhoff and Hall, a pepper-shake of islands where comedy and tragedy meet at bureaucracy; where "Gaugain's monument" is erected over someone else's grave simply so the French tourists will have something to see. Written with wry humor and an unquenchable sense of destiny, Trilogy is one family's vision of how life can be when every port of call brings a new adventure. -- Tom Stephens, South Maui's Free Press When a freak sea accident sinks the prize charter yacht of Alaska skipper Eldon Coon, he faces the choice of a lifetime--give up the sea or, somehow, begin again. This is the late 1960's, and is three talented and headst