Odyssey of a Great Lakes Sailor


Book Description

This odyssey is about my life experiences as a Chief Engineer on board Canadian Lakers , as they were called. It is also an expose into the inside workings of a Shipping company, namely Canada Steamship Lines inc. where I gave my blood, sweat and tears to make a living as a new immigrant in a so called first world country. This book is written to expose the inside workings of a Shipping company during the years that I toiled to make a living as a man seeking to make a livelihood in supposedly a great country. It is not the country that is to blame but people like Mr. Martin who are so twisted that they lose sight of the common man and use them and abuse them for their personal gain. The book gives a true account as to how one large corporation hounded one individual who spoke the truth and who sought justice and who wanted to make a change and to make the scenery better for future generations of Sea going personnel. The book also gives you page-by-page description of how a corporation self-destructs. Surely there must be a lesson in all this. Experiences included in the book are mind-boggling. They include Shipping accidents, shipboard assaults, battery, Companys BLACKLIST, which includes a list of so called undesirables, pollution, environmental and ecological damage. Mergers and acquisitions, dismissals and corporate lynching, witch hunt, Human Rights issues, illegal constitutional changes, changing pension laws and the Canada Shipping act illegally to suit the ship owner, Corporate Corruption and greed. There is one chapter solely on Shipboard assaults and a list of undesirables that sailed the Lakers. It gives me great satisfaction to know that I could share my experiences with a wide variety of Human Beings and I am sure people who read my book would be flabbergasted when they get to know as to what goes on behind the scenes of a Maritime Industry of a G-8 Country. How soon one forgets that we sailors help to build the wealth of a nation by carrying goods that helps to grow the nations economy and that we sailors have also helped fight the enemy during the first and second world wars and also make a major contribution in feeding an entire nation. It is also a book about vengeance and Revenge-an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.. Just like Edmond Dantes In the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas. To pray sometimes for a man, who like Satan thought himself for an instant equal to God, but who now acknowledges with Christian humility that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom. There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living. "Live then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words, - `Wait and hope. Your friend, "Edmond Dantes, Count of Monte Cristo." Above all it is one mans search for truth and justice, and a triumph of adversity--a true Sailors Odyssey.




Great Lakes and Midwest Catalog


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The Sailor's Weather Guide


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Jeff Markell is an expert on maritime weather.




Sailor Girl


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Summer, 1981. On the run from a violent boyfriend, nineteen-year-old art student Kate McLeod packs her camera and her vodka and signs on to an ancient Great Lakes grain boat. Kate finds profound solace in the rhythms of water and hard work. But as she navigates this closed world of old customs, new alliances bring joy and shocking tragedy into her life. Sailor Girl is a love poem to the elemental forces - wind, wild weather, desire and love - that drive a young woman's voyage of self-discovery.




The War of 1812 and the Rise of the U.S. Navy


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Explore historic documents, letters, ephemera, and artifacts, including fascinating finds from the Navy's most recent underwater excavation of the war's lost ships.




Second Wind


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Unexpected Odyssey


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Gib's Odyssey


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Gib's Odyssey is the true story of one extraordinary man, Gib Peters, and his solo odyssey along the Intracoastal Waterway from Key West to New York and back while suffering the ravages of Lou Gehrig’s disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS). On an astonishing six-month voyage, Gib and his boat, Ka-accidentally, encounter everything from an incompetent captain who dives into the water and accidently stabs himself with his knife after wrapping his ship's anchor around one of Ka Ching’s propellers, to the U.S. Coast Guard rushing to stop him from entering an active weapons test zone. At one point, Gib even commences an epic search for his two kittens, Faith and Hope, when they go AWOL at a marina in Atlantic City. All the while, Gib is forced to cope with increasing levels of paralysis, ultimately having to steer the boat home with his feet after losing all use of the muscles in his arms. The book is far from depressing, however. It is the story of Gib's indomitable spirit in the face of death--one that causes him to do acts such as pouring his invented alcoholic drink, the rum-ka-ching directly into his stomach via his feeding tube and getting incredibly drunk one night. Authored by Gib's neurologist, the book is told in Gib's own voice through his correspondence with friends and family as well as the articles he wrote for the Key West Citizen. Part travelogue, part soul-searching meditation, Gib’s Odyssey is the heart-rending story of a man who defiantly resisted the encroachments of a fatal degenerative disease. The odyssey of Gib Peters is a story of a man who left a lasting mark on his community by conquering despair and choosing a life of adventure with the precious time he had left.




Second Wind


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A charming memoir of midlife by the bestselling author of Mayflower and In the Hurricane's Eye, recounting his attempt to recapture a national sailing championship he'd won at twenty-two. “There had been something elemental and all consuming about a Sunfish. Nothing could compare to the exhilaration of a close race in a real blow—the wind howling and spray flying as my Sunfish and I punched through the waves to the finish.” In the spring of 1992, Nat Philbrick was in his late thirties, living with his family on Nantucket, feeling stranded and longing for that thrill of victory he once felt after winning a national sailing championship in his youth. Was it a midlife crisis? It was certainly a watershed for the journalist-turned-stay-at-home dad, who impulsively decided to throw his hat into the ring, or water, again. With the bemused approval of his wife and children, Philbrick used the off-season on the island as his solitary training ground, sailing his tiny Sunfish to its remotest corners, experiencing the haunting beauty of its tidal creeks, inlets, and wave-battered sandbars. On ponds, bays, rivers, and finally at the championship on a lake in the heartland of America, he sailed through storms and memories, racing for the prize, but finding something unexpected about himself instead.




Lake Tales


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Lake Tales deals with history, mystery and adventure in and around the Great Lakes. Ships of note and notable and colorful personalities are found here. Bravery and cowardice, generosity and greed all the facets of humanity are present. This is the stuff of Lake Tales




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