Falling

Thomas Tangvald's disastrous crash landing was not from space, but rather on the reefs off Bonaire at age 15 while being towed south from Puerto Rico on a ...

Now, Thomas, orphaned and in shock, was the one just getting started. The title brings to mind the 1976 science-fiction movie The Man Who Fell to Earth, in which David Bowie plays an alien who crash-lands on Earth and discovers unexpected success and debilitating despair in his new and strange surroundings. Hopefully without giving too much away, I can reveal that Thomas’ disastrous crash landing was not from space, but rather on the reefs off Bonaire at age 15 while being towed south from Puerto Rico on a leaky sailboat by his father on another compromised vessel—a ridiculous episode that was somehow even more bizarre and half-baked than it sounds. But in the mid-1960s, Tangvald was just getting started. Were Tangvald’s accounts of their disappearances truthful or—gulp—as it was often rumored, was the “former loner” the one responsible for their absence? Borden, a long-range voyager himself, produced a remarkable, highly researched work that somehow managed to combine the history of seagoing craft and the magic of bluewater sailing with intimate profiles of dozens of sailors and their boats.