Author Description

A late night breakfast in the small cabin of the 32 foot sailing vessel, Bag End, sitting securly at anchor in Manzanillo, Mexico in April 2012consisting of scrambled eggs and a glass of champagne for twocelebrated the completion of her 22 year circumnavigation of the world. And it was enough. Don and Nancy tell the story of a voyage around the world on Bag End. In the process of writing it, Don thought of the story as A Funny Thing Happened and Nancy always thought of the whole thing as a case of Watch Out What You Wish For..., but this story can only truly be called Bag End which is the name of Bilbo and Frodo Baggin's home in Tolkien's books, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Bag End signified home for them, and the safe finishing point of a long adventureas it does for Don and Nancy. While a lot of funny things did happen on their voyage and their discovery that what you wish for sometimes really does come true, the only proper name for this story is the name of its bona fide main character, the very little but very intrepid sailing vessel, Bag End. Read about Bag End's journey and find out what can happen when risk is taken, lives change, and things unheard of become realities. Sail along with Don and Nancy on Bag End to discover the elemental terror of a storm at sea, the frustration of windless days where boredom is a very real and significant enemy and the utter joy in encountering that incredibly rare phenomenon, the 'perfect sail.' Criss-cross the Equator with them and find the almost untouched Marquesas, lush Samoa, the southernmost windy point of New Zealand, primitive Vanuatu, the world's best kept secretenlightened and urbane south east Asia, the northernmost blustery tip of Borneo, the fearsome Malacca Straits, the remote and empty Chagos, magical Africa, isolated St. Helena, rainy and almost unpopulated Surinam, the contemporary Panama Canal and the United States' most unlikely neighborsthe impoverished and ill-treated third world countries of