The Ark of the Marindor

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Summary: Mr Targan is inexpert on navigation and yachting terms.
Review: Inchon Landing September 15, 1950 - not 1953 Koto - Ri is in Korea, not Niet Nam

Where was his proof reader. On page 83 he gives a position of 33-30.25 West, 75-40.1 North. This is well above the Arctic Circle. By the way, you allways state Latitude first, then longitude. He has reversed it, a common error among those who are not navigators. Somewhere else he refors to "high longitudes". There are none! There are "high latitudes" such as 50 North or 50 South.

A sextant is used to measure the ALTITUDE of a body above the horizon, not its DECLINATION. A body's declination is its hight above the celestial equator, and declination is one of the coordinates to place the body on the celestial sphere. The other coordinate is its Greenwich Hour Angle (GHA).

He makes much of getting a fix from the sun. The sun can only give you one LOP. A running fix is only as good as the navigators estimate of distance and direction made good between two sights. How Catherine could possible get a reliable sun line "in the last of the light" is beyond me. Aries is not a star. I am an experienced Celestial navigator, with five passages to Bermuda, under sail, by celestial only. His book makes me cringe with the many , many errors he made writing this. He really should have gotten some expert input. A sailor like Catherine would never "adjust" her chronometer. She would keep a "Rate Book" thereby knowing the CE, and applying same to her time of sight.

He also confuses abaft and aft and uses them incorrectly. Also, he does not have the foggiest about the terms coming off or coming up.

There are many more errors, and I am forced to say that this book has been very poorly researched, and any sailor worth his salt would give it the deep six. Mr Targan should look in to books by Sterling Hayden and Allan Villiers if he wishes to spin a sea going yarn.

Rating:
Summary: A stunning adventure story
Review: The other reviewer criticizes errors in the nautical and navigational passages in this book, but I was so dazzled by the story that I easily overlooked them. I've read this book twice, 2 years apart, and loved it both times. The range of human experiences is wonderful, the writing is tight, the plot left my heart thumping. I've loaned the book to friends who felt the same. Read and enjoy.

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Summary: An inverted "Odyssey"
Review: This novel by Barry Targan (1932- ), who has published poetry and other prose, is his maiden voyage into the realm of maritime literature. The narrative is an inverted "Odyssey": a woman sails away from the memory of an unfaithful spouse and a dead son.

Incorporating flashbacks, Targan's book details the concluding leg of a picaresque journey by Katherine Dennison, from the steamy jungle of Southeast Asia to the foggy coastline of northeast America. Dennison is a seafarer's daughter born at sea, a wartime photojournalist turned children's writer, and, most importantly, a skilled sailor. She comes to realize that she has always believed in mythic creatures and sought mythic resolutions." In her a search for sunken treasure (in the modern-day form of a valuable computer disk), the all-too-human characters with whom her argosy crosses paths include a powerful magus, a witless satyr, a violated sea nymph, and an amoral demon.

Like Ulysses, Dennison survives the deadly fury of nature and the calculating treachery of man by her wits, demonstrating a mastery of ship and self, eventually finding an epiphanic release from the vessel which has served as the life-long incarnation of both her freedom and her restriction.