CRP's Blog

Like many people, Amy McCullough and her “mate for life” Jimmie Buchanan craved an escape from the daily grind. Amy’s new memoir The Box Wine Sailors: Misadventures of a Broke Young Couple at Sea details how they made their dream come true—the couple bought a shabby 27-foot sailboat, quit their jobs, and sailed down the coast from Portland to the Sea of Cortez. Amy, a former music journalist and current grad student, is touring the West Coast (by land, this time) in support of her book. She took some time out to share her literary inspirations with us.

Before you started your trip, you’d read a few sailing books, rented two instructional VHS tapes and practiced sailing once a week for about a year. Were there any specific books or memoirs that inspired you to spend a year at sea?

Robin Lee Graham’s Dove and The Long Way by Bernard Moitessier were big influences before leaving. They’re both autobiographical accounts of men circumnavigating the earth alone, but they are completely different: Graham’s is a story of innocence, young love, and learning to live at sea, where Moitessier is so at home at sea that he ultimately blows off the rest of the world—including his life ashore (wife and children) and his chance at winning the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe race—to continue sailing.

Graham takes on a circumnavigation as a teenager, starting out fairly naïve as far as worldliness (though he’s an excellent sailor) and meets the love of his life on his voyage, making it harder for him to continue alone. He has to cope with the pressure of continuing to pursue a goal amid the media attention of National Geographic when all he really wants to do is be with Patti (his wife to this day). I absolutely loved Dove’s sweet spirit of adventure and the love story of Robin and Patti; before departing, I think Jimmie and I pictured ourselves living the lives of the characters in the movie adaptation, The Dove (produced by Gregory Peck!), coasting about from tropical anchorage to tropical anchorage, swimming and eating lobsters and enjoying each other’s company without a care in the world.

The love of Moitessier’s life was the sea, so the tone of The Long Way is very different; it’s his realization that he wants nothing from the “real” world and must continue sailing to truly be himself. It’s beautifully written and often profound; the chapter “Christmas and the Rat” is one for the ages, and I’ve returned to it often. While Jimmie and I felt we could relate to Graham on a very human level, empathizing with his motivations, joys, and struggles, Moitessier is more of an untouchable idol—perhaps the one true quintessential sailor.

Sensible Cruising: The Thoreau Approach by Don Casey and Lew Hackler was immensely encouraging in a more practical sense. The authors champion a less-is-more philosophy and offer down-to-earth advice on how to go cruising now—with little money and a small boat. Coming across Sensible Cruising at Powell’s back in Portland might have been the one big influence that made us think we could go ahead and do what we did: sail the Pacific for a year (aboard a cheap old sloop) with very little money and even less experience.

Finally, The Log from the Sea of Cortez by Steinbeck (and Travels with Charley, to some extent) built a fantasy in our minds around transient living, and The Log turned the Sea of Cortez, and particularly La Paz, our final destination, into mythological places. I talk in my book of Jimmie’s and my continuous, shared longing (for a variety of things, beginning with each other), and Steinbeck provided us with a geographical focus worthy of that longing.

The last book you’ve canceled plans for so you could keep reading:

I might have called in to work to finish Great Expectations. I then went on a binge watching every movie and made-for-TV movie version of it out there, even the really horrible ones. My obsession was comprehensive!

I experienced a happy time-out from life when reading Lonesome Dove, too. I remember accidentally locking my keys in my car and having to go on a pretty epic bus ride to get home and acquire my spare key, then taking the reverse epic ride back to my car, and I was just thrilled because my “unfortunate” situation forced a few more hours of reading that day.

Amy and her “mate for life,” Jimmie.

Your favorite album to listen to while reading (or writing):

It’s funny, because as a music journalist, writing with headphones on was an all-day modus operandi for me. I was constantly listening and writing: concert listings, album reviews, just trying to stay up on anything new that came my way. But, now (and outside of my music writing career), I generally don’t listen to music while reading or writing. I just want a comfortable place to sit and good lighting, which I often find outdoors.

If I do end up putting something on, it’s definitely jazz—instrumental is better (less distracting). I like KMHD (public radio out of Mount Hood Community College near Portland) and classics like Mingus, Coltrane, Miles, Clifford Brown; we have a lot of trumpeters’ LPs on deck because Jimmie’s played trumpet his whole life. There is something soothing and inherently artistic about jazz; it’s music to create to.

Literary confession time—what’s a book you’ve faked reading:

When I started out as a music journalist in Portland, I made a pact with myself not to be dishonest in this way, because I knew people were going to say, “What do you think of [insert band I’d never heard of]?” and I didn’t want to get caught up in pretending to be cool. I wanted to learn, so I decided to be honest at the cost of my cred, and I guess that’s translated into books, as well.

Prior to that, I did fake reading Vanity Fair in college (at Loyola Chicago)—it’s soooo long!—and ended up getting asked by the professor if she could use my essay on the book as an example for the class, which made me feel a little guilty. I did eventually finish it, but it was a few months after the semester had ended.

Your guilty pleasure/I-can’t-believe-I-read-that book:

Honestly, I don’t think I have one! I never got sucked in by Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey or anything like that. When reading The Thorn Birds—which I loved­—I knew it had a romance-novel sort of reputation (especially because of the ‘80s miniseries, which is also great!), but it’s wonderfully written and such an epic, intricately woven story. I will admit I intentionally sought out a copy with the more old-fashioned cover (rather than the one with Richard Chamberlain and Rachel Ward scandalously embracing on the front). But I guess I wouldn’t read something I didn’t feel OK holding in front of my face in any environment.

The closest thing I can come up with is feeling a little too old for the occasional young adult book (like I reread The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin a few years ago), but there’s really no shame in that game (no pun intended). Some of my favorite books—Abel’s Island, Bless the Beasts and Children (we named our boat Cotton after the main character in the latter)—are considered young adult, but there is a lot to gain from them in actual adulthood, as well.

The best book people have probably never read?

The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox

What five people—living, dead, fiction, nonfiction—would you have over for your dream dinner?

This would likely be totally different if I was focusing on music or film—or the grand pool of anyone ever—but on a literary slant: Holden Caulfield, John Steinbeck and Doc Ricketts, Carl Sagan, and Mary Carson (as played by Barbara Stanwyck). The menu would consist of cheese sandwiches, mutton chops, and seafood; scotch and sodas all around; and Applejack-spiked coffee served with scratch-made apple pie for desert (wink, wink).

What are you reading now and what’s next on your TBR pile?

I recently read Rhythmanalysis by Henri Lefebvre (for school; I’m a graduate student) and found it really insightful and interesting—a different take on experiencing the world. The last book I read for pleasure was The Hobbit (finally), which was even more charming than I expected. In TBR, I’ve never read Dracula and would love to—as a major fan of all things horror, I curse myself every Halloween for still letting that one sit, and I have a collection of Wilkie Collins shorts stories with these awesome woodcut engravings by Fritz Eichenberg that’s been on my shelf for way too long.

—compiled by Meaghan Miller

The Box Wine Sailors: Misadventures of a Broke Young Couple at Sea published November 1, 2015. It’s available wherever books and e-books are sold, including our website. Visit theboxwinesailors.com for tour information and an excerpt.