Description
Lin Pardey and her husband Larry are internationally famous for their sailing adventures. In Bull Canyon Lin’s multiple award-winning retelling of Larry’s careful coaxing of rough-sawn timber into the beautiful boat, Taleisin, is a funny, tender, and an engrossing tale. Now available for the first time in paperback.
Fresh from an eleven years-long sailing journey, where they forged the early years of their marriage on high seas and in exotic locales — they came to California looking for a good spot to build a boat, test Lin’s skills as a writer and taste the apparent security life ashore could offer.
Nestled in a rocky outcropping of winding, sparsely populated dirt roads, 60 miles from the sea and 50 miles from Los Angeles, Bull Canyon would seem an unlikely place for boat-building. But when Lin and Larry set eyes on the abandoned stone cottage at the top of a rutted, dusty lane, it was love at first sight. The house was certainly a fixer-upper, but there was plenty of room to build a boat, not to mention peace, quiet, and an abundance of natural beauty. They knew they’d come home.
Bull Canyon would bring them joy, victories and failures but also packrats in the pantries, flooding rains, the occasional cougar, and an oddball collection of neighbors as ready to assist these hapless newcomers as they were to occasionally cause trouble. It would be a life lived close to the land. Life in the canyon would prove daunting, gritty, and dangerous, and a tougher bargain in the end than what they’d signed up for. But as tough as life could be there, Bull Canyon was, indeed, the place where dreams could come true.
It was here that Lin and Larry tapped into the affirming core of their marriage, accomplished back-breaking physical feats, and grew to love the magical environment. In the tradition of Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in Provence, and more recently A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home and My Twenty-Five Years In Provence Pardey takes readers on a voyage landlocked, but a voyage nonetheless of the heart, sharing candidly and with great humor the four years she and her determined husband spent in Bull Canyon.
Finalist, 2012 WILLA Literary Awards, Creative non-fiction Finalist 2012 IPBA Next Generation Literary Awards, Non-Fiction Finalist 2012 IPBA Next Generation Literary Award – Memoir
About the Author
Lin Pardey was born in Detroit, Michigan, and Larry in Victoria, British Columbia. They met in California in 1965 and were married in 1968. Lin and Larry Pardey lived the life many sailors aspire to. They circumnavigated the globe two times, more than 200,000 miles, on boats that they built with their own hands. Both boats were made of wood and were less than 30 feet in length. Neither boat had an engine or GPS. It is a remarkable story, which saw them both accepted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame in Newport, RI in 2022. Lin has written 12 books, and countless articles, while giving hundreds of lectures and producing instructional films. Sadley Larry died on July 27, 2020. Since that time Lin has remained an active sailor. She is a regular at US & Canadian boat shows and will announce the coming release of her new book at the 2024 Annapolis Sailboat Show in Annapolis, MD.
