ARA Review by ajwootton of Bluewater Walkabout

[ajwootton]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, Bluewater Walkabout.]

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4 out of 5 stars

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Blue Water Walk About: Into Africa by Tina Dreffin is an autobiographical account of Dreffin’s catamaran journey with her family from Africa to the Caribbean. In an early scene we meet a young, post-graduate Tina struggling to make ends meet by selling commercial real estate. When her car breaks down en route to her first closing she literally walks away and leaves it on the side of the highway, hiking in her pumps to the office lest she miss the sale and miss the commission that it would earn her.

Later we are introduced to Tina’s husband, Peter, and her two teenage sons, Adam and Warren. We learn how Tina and Peter met and how they are bound by a deeply rooted desire to explore the world. Tina and Peter have already spent a great deal of time living on boats and home-schooling their two boys when the tragic events of 9/11 hammer home the realities of life’s uncertainties. Tina is filled with a irrepressible desire to make a final, mother-of-all-trips, family sojourn before her teenage boys leave the nest to begin lives of their own. Peter readily aligns with the idea and suddenly plans are in the making for the voyage of a lifetime. An order is placed for a 44-foot catamaran and the family is off to Africa to take possession.

Before embarking on their sea voyage, Tina and her family go on a safari at Kruger National Park in South Africa. Here they encounter one after another near-miss as they push themselves to experience this once-in-a-lifetime adventure to its fullest. Soon after the safari they take possession of their craft and set sail only to encounter more harrowing, life threatening events as they make their way across the Atlantic.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. While I loved the description that this story promised - part travel diary and part memoir - the two pieces do not integrate fluidly. The ever-present dangers that begin about a third of the way into the story and continue until the end become a bit exhausting. The pacing of these scenes has the effect of desensitizing the reader to events that must have felt truly dangerous to Dreffin and her family at the time. We learn a great deal about Dreffin in the course of this read but in the end are denied the reconciliation between the events of her past and the journey she has just laid out for us. The ending seems to leave the door open for another installment, so perhaps she will tie this up for us in a future work.

I very much enjoyed reading Dreffin’s travel accounts. She has a knack for descriptive prose and does a good job of describing the scenes. I also enjoyed her more personal autobiographical vignets. These ranged from her early encounters with perverted old men seeking to take advantage of her need for work, to her descriptions of her meeting and falling in love with Peter, to the tender accounts of being a mother. You can’t help but like Tina. She is determined, human, and has a great sense of humor. I would recommend this book to travel enthusiasts and to those who like memoirs.

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