POTO PADDU

By Dick Allan, published by SilverWood at £10.99 paperback, £4.99 Kindle. The author visited Poto Paddu, a cove on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia, during his post-retirement circumnavigation and chose it as the setting for this story of the husband-and-wife crews of three yachts cruising in company.

One couple is attacked by pirates (one Welsh, one English, both villainous) and the husband is killed, while the wife, after suffering at the hands of the English pirate, manages to escape.

With the aid of a local girl and her brother, the surviving woman plots extreme revenge. It’s a generally believable story and it’s easy to read, holding your attention right to the end. Recommended. The era of the military junta was traumatic for Greece and her people. In the aftermath, Golden Dawn emerged as a political party aiming to re-establish military rule. Like all ‘neoNazi’ groups, it is not to be messed with, as this novel’s characters discover.

Estranged brothers reunite briefly and try to outsail men who want to prevent the publication of one brother’s book about the junta. It’s plausible with plenty of sailing.

The text is confusing though, with no punctuation to separate speech from narrative. You get used to it, but it’s odd. Otherwise, it’s an easy read with a serious underlying thread, and suited to those who know and enjoy sailing in Greek waters. Navigation used to be instinctive, particularly in the Pacific. Only in the 16th Century did western navigators begin to use instruments.

These included refinements of the compass, the leadline, the quadrant and sextant, the chronometer, and so on, until we reach today’s GPS and chart plotters.

It’s an amazing tale of invention and refinement that has made our own sailing exploits so much more assured than the early explorations of merchant seamen. The author has produced a really enjoyable guide to the development of navigational instruments and the book includes a lot of lovely illustrations to draw the reader in.