Bungee stories strike a chord

By Nicholas Brown
Portsmouth Herald, January 22, 2005

When I first spoke with Sally Ford about her two children's books I wasn't at all sure the subject was appropriate for a waterfront column. But her voyaging stories have teeth - and paws - and their genesis is as deeply rooted in local waters as a family-tree in fertile earth.

Sally Ford began writing her first book, Bungee's Voyage, out of necessity. Her only child, Kate, having recently graduated from Harvard, had accepted an unusual job, sight-unseen, tutoring three children in math and English. The children lived with their parents aboard a sailboat - then in Ecuador. The Fords didn't know the boating family and Kate's new job was to tutor the three children as they all crossed the Pacific Ocean on their way to New Zealand. Also aboard was the sailing family's little mongrel dog, named Bungee.

"Writing the book was a way to stop worrying," said Sally recently, with a hot coffee in a steamy-windowed Portsmouth cafe, 14 years after Kate set sail. "I feel the books are true about sailing," she said, "these are not made-up adventures."

The two-part story told in Bungee's Voyage and Bungee Down Under of a dog who sets out to sail around the world aboard her boat, Gypsy Rover, is based loosely upon daughter Kate's trans-Pacific voyage. "We didn't have e-mail then," said Sally, "so we'd get these long-delayed letters."

In the first book, Bungee departs a land of "dark green firs," which might be the coast of Maine or even certain shores of Great Bay, and sails as far as Tahiti. Along the way, she encounters exactly the sorts of challenges blue-water cruising presents - periods of loneliness, moments of bliss, self-doubt, a frightening storm, and also renewed confidence and resolve. The second book, Bungee Down Under, picks up the voyage in the South Pacific and takes Gypsy Rover and her more seasoned skipper to Sydney, Australia.

Like Sally's scruffy protagonist, young readers will get a taste of many things in these stories. Rudimentary nautical terminology, geography and a sense of life aboard a boat are to be expected and the knowledgeable author delivers. Smatterings of Spanish and Tahitian language add flavor. Unexpected are the dashes of culture - stanzas of Masefield and Lord Tennyson (Ulysses, no less), a Gauguin painting and a Rossini opera - woven quickly and quietly into the sailing yarn. Illustrator Peter Dudley's pen-and-ink water-colors bring both stories to visual, organic life.

Sally's literary inspiration springs from both family and place. She is a third-generation writer and her husband, Daniel, is an author of both fiction and non-fiction books (Incident at Muc Wa, Flying Tigers).

"I did lots of editing of other people's books," Sally said, "and it is exciting now to have my own."

The Bungee stories emerged from the Ford family's collective lives on Great Bay as much as they did from Kate's sailing adventures. Noted Piscataqua boatbuilder and sailor for 60 years, Ned McIntosh, has been a dear friend to three generations of Fords and appears in Sally's books as "the Starcrest skipper."

Her parents sailed south to the Bahamas with Ned and his late wife, Alice, "a hundred years ago." Sally and Daniel discovered the land upon which they built their home on Durham Point while visiting Ned's island in Great Bay (McIntosh/Footman Island) They own a 14-foot Merry Mac sailboat designed and built by Ned. It was of some consolation that the family with whom Kate crossed the vast Pacific knew Ned McIntosh. "Yeah," said Daniel at the time, "but everybody knows Ned."

Will Bungee's voyage continue in further installments? Sally isn't saying but, personally, I hope so. If Kate Ford's sailing voyages continue to inspire Sally's muse, the author should have no shortage of material. As of this writing, Kate and her husband, Hamish Laird, are southbound in the Atlantic on their own just-completed high-latitude sailboat, Seal. Built of aluminum for charter work in polar waters, the state-of-the-art vessel is on her shakedown cruise. Aboard with Kate and Hamish are their two young daughters to whom grandmother Sally dedicated her second book.

Also aboard this ultra-modern greyhound designed for the planet's most challenging waters are an old vacuum cleaner, bundles of shingles, and two jars of biscotti. It is fitting that SEAL's first burden is a delivery for Ned McIntosh on his other island - in the Bahamas.

Bungee's Voyage won the John Southam Award from Sail America and Bungee Down Under is just published.

Both Bungee books are published by Peter E. Randall Publisher. Author Sally Ford may be contacted toll-free at (888) 250-4862.

Nicholas Brown is a freelance journalist, boatbuilder, and Navy veteran who lives in Eliot, Maine.