Dove - A Book Review

The Story of a Solo Circumnavigation in a 24-foot Sloop by a 16-Year-Old Boy

Dove is Robin Lee Graham’s story of his solo voyage around the globe in his small 24-foot sailboat of the same name. He was 16 years old when he sailed away from San Pedro, California. His journey ended five years later in Los Angeles, married, with a daughter.

I purchased the book because I like to think that that rambling free spirit of a 16 year old boy embarking on a journey with an unknowable outcome still lives within me. Every so often, I’ll daydream of my own circumnavigation. I will peruse the for-sale advertisements looking for boats that I think may be up to the task. An utter lack of any worthwhile sailing or boating knowledge is not nearly enough to stop these daydreams.

Indeed, I have a section of books in my library dedicated to this dream.

I own the real-life, non-fiction stories of similar feats like Linda Petrat’s A Great Big Adventure on a Good Little Boat and Bernard Moitessier’s La Longue Route, which I own in both French and English.

Then there are several technical manuals like Heavy Weather Sailing, The Voyager’s Handbook, and, of course, Enrico Sala’s instruction manual for all types of rigging, entitled simply, Rigging.

Last, but not least, the American Sailing Association’s textbooks for Bareboat Cruising, Coastal Cruising, general sailing, and Catamaran Cruising. My tiny, ASA logbook sits right next to these books. The logging is extensive, and shows a complete record of 2 days on board traveling roughly 30 miles.

Mr. Graham begins his book with a story about when dreams meet lack of experience and ill-preparation. He and two other friends rig up a tiny sailboat in order to skip school and sail to an isolated cove between the Hawaiian islands. They quickly run into trouble. The weather created large swells, which made the crew sea-sick, and the wind tore their only sails. A rescue party was sent out for the missing boys, but they were unable to find them. With water coming into the boat, they had to rig a makeshift jib and use that to sail back to land.

Only two years after this incident, Mr. Graham’s father agreed to let him sail around the world by himself, and the story of Dove begins.

The young Robin embarks on a journey he is sure will change his life. He feels different than the other boys in his High-School and can’t understand why they care so much for grades or colleges. It seems to the young Robin that those things will only trap those boys into a lifetime of servitude whereas there is so much beauty and freedom to experience in world.

It is on his journey across the Pacific ocean where he is accompanied only by two kittens that he experiences his first bout of a profound and crushing loneliness. On a small boat, in the middle of a vast ocean, there is no one to talk to. One is left alone with one’s own thoughts. He had an opportunity to reconsider the things that he had considered Home.

One of the first stops on his journey finds him in front of the author Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave in Samoa. He quotes a portion of the epitaph on his gravestone:

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Requiem

Later on, in the Fijian islands, he meets an old friend, and with his newfound freedom, is also introduced to entirely too much vodka. His friend awakes him the next afternoon, where he is as hungover as hungover can be, and introduces him to a pretty, young girl, Patti Ratterree. They lock eyes, and they become inseparable. The two young lovers find themselves with their own boat, able to explore isolated coves, snorkeling, spear-fishing, swimming, and exploring together.

At the same time, Robin’s story is being carried in installments by National Geographic magazine. It is the story of a solo circumnavigation made by a 16-year-old boy with only a tiny boat and a sextant. Patti cannot join him.

The rest of the book is their story. While she cannot join him on the boat for his voyage, she follows him around the world, and they meet up for extended stays at several ports of call. In South Africa, for instance, Robin takes a job as a carpenter, and they buy a small motorcycle to explore the country together. They eventually marry on the journey, and by the end of it, Patti is pregnant with Robin’s daughter.

At this point, the main themes of the book transition from a young man’s desire to find freedom and adventure to a yearning, at every step, to find his Patti and be near her again. The crushing loneliness he felt on the ship in the middle of the ocean becomes worse. The journey is now a distraction; an obligation. It is now separating him from his true desires.

At the end of his journey, the positive press coverage has gained him a scholarship to Stanford University. The pressure to attend such a prestigious university and the opportunities that graduating from it would provide led Robin to attend a single semester there. He writes:

I vaguely planned on an engineering degree with architecture as the goal. There were several reasons why we saw through only one semester at Stanford…

What surprised us most was how little we had in common with our peer group because most of them had grown up in a different world. I had the advantage of experiences most people don’t gain in a lifetime and I’d seen horizons far beyond the local ball park and movie theater.

It was sad to see how some students straight from high school were ready to believe anything and were so easily duped by cynical professors, especially by one Maoist who was passionate about his bloody revolution. The students who applauded the professor loudest were the ones who owned the Porsches and the Jags.

He and Patti stayed true to their desires and their principles. They bought a small plot of land in Montana. Robin became a carpenter using the skills he acquired on his journey.

On his land in Montana, the sailor found his home from the sea, and the hunter came back home from his hill. They raised a family and still live there.

Robin’s story ended, but what of the two cats he began the story with?

I wouldn’t want to be a cat on his boat. There were more than two cats over the course of the story, and the journey ended with cats that he acquired along the way, and not the ones he started with. At least one of them ran away on one of the islands, and a blind one disappeared at night somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

The total journey took 1,739 days, was 30,600 miles, and grew a boy into a family-man.