SetSail note: This week we're running the review that appears in the June 2002 issue of Cruising World magazine. For some interesting background info on the Martin family, read on!

Exploring the Outer Boundaries
by Bob Muggleston, Cruising World magazine, June 2002

	To order your copy of Dave and Jaja's new book, Into the Light: A Family's Epic Journey, click here. To read more about the book, click here.

In 1995, Cruising World awarded its Medal for Outstanding Seamanship to Dave and Jaja Martin, two sailors with big dreams and a penchant for small things. At the time, the Martins were crossing oceans aboard their modified Cal 25, Direction, wth a crew that consisted of their 4 1/2-year-old son, Chris and their 3-year-old daughter, Holly. The Martin saga had begun seven years earlier, in England, when the still-single Dave wrote Jaja, who'd taught sailing and windsurfing with him in the US Virgin Islands, that "sailing alone was no fun" and together they "could make a great sailing team." Jaja flew to England from Japan, where she was teaching English, moved aboard Direction, and Dave proposed to her as they were sailing down the Solent in a gale.

Two years later, in April, 1990, Chris was born. Holly soon followed. An ostensibly solo circumnavigation had gone wonderfully wrong, and the resulting family not only endured at sea but thrived. It wasn't until that voyage was completed, in 1995, and Jaja was pregnant again, that the Martins seriously considered a larger home. Shortly after Teiga, their second daughter, was born, thy restored a 33-foot steel boat, Driver, moved aboard and began hatching a new, even more ambitious plan.

Into the Light: a Family's Epic Journey (2002; $29.95: Beowulf Press, 800-421-3819, www.setsail.com), Dave and jaja Martin's first book, is the result of that ambition, the story of their high-latitude adventures between 1997 and 2000, in which the family explores Iceland, Scotland, Denmark's Faroe Islands, Norway, and the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. Because the Martins have always been adept at preparing small boats for heavy weather, it's perhaps fitting that when they nearly lose Driver, it's in an encounter with obstinate government officials, not with a storm at sea. Boat and crew survive, but the ordeal is nerve-racking stuff, and the Martins capture both the tension of this incident and the beauty of their subsequent discoveries with vivid writing honed over the years as frequent contributors to Cruising World. More than merely telling a good story, however, the Martins hope to inspire others to follow their dreams big or small.

"Into the Light started out as a semi-technical sailing journal," Dave says. "Our objective was to provide information and insights on how to prepare a small boat for a long voyage. Just the hard facts. At first, things went smoothly. But a metamrphosis occurred as a new element seeped slowly into our writing. It became clear that our real message was how to prepare yourself for change and adventure- not the boat. We threw away the first 100 pages and started over. We thought, if we can go cruising on a rudimentary 33-foot sailboat with an 18-month-old, a 5-year-old, and a 6-year-old, anybody can do it. As we explored our minds, as well as the places we visited, we found the answer. Into the Light is the story of our experience seeking the outer boundaries of personal potential. We hope people will read the book and discover the potential in themselves."

That said, some people are happy to live vicariously, especially in high latitudes, and Into the Light is written so compellingly and with such intimacy that the reader is brought aboard Driver as a sixth crewmemeber. From this privileged position (we don't have to clean up when Teiga gets seasick, for instance), we experience everything with the Martins: their trepidation heading north from Bermuda, their building confidence after wintering in iceland and Norway, and their heady euphoria as they creep toward the penultimate goal; 80 degrees north. But more than just adventure on a grand scale, which it undoubtedly is, Into the Light is testament to the power of a family that believes in itself.

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