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Philip J. Shelton grew up on Long Island, New York where he apprenticed to his boat-building grandfather Stanley Grodeski. In 1975, he left the crowds and bought a 30-acre woodlot in Washington County, Maine where he built a log cabin miles from civilization. He supported his family through offshore fishing and boat building, including the design and launching of the ninety-foot schooner “Janet May” now sailing as the “Quninnipiack” in New Haven Connecticut. From 1985-94, he taught wooden boat building at the Maine Maritime Museum. In 1996, he designed and built the world’s largest rotating globe for DeLorme Mapping. In April 2000 he was finally able to realize his childhood dream of long distance sailing with the launch of Iwalani. He has been a Georgetown resident since 1986.

Armchair sailors love to read about other people's round-the-world sailing voyages. If they had to do it themselves, however, they would find such a journey to be a grueling test of patience, endurance, and self-reliance. Even experienced blue water sailors find a global circumnavigation to be a daunting challenge. World Voyagers is the marvelous true story of the round-the-world sailing voyage of Georgetown (Maine) residents Amy Wood and Phil Shelton, told with humor, excitement, and unvarnished honesty.
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Amy and Phil. are married and had long dreamed of a sailing circumnavigation. They took 10 years to build their own boat, a sturdy, wooden-hulled, 42-foot, gaff rigged cutter named Iwalani, The Wood-Shelton voyage began in Maine in 2000, and took three long years, finally ending back ill Maine in 2003. Amy and Phil sacrificed a great deal to live their dream, perhaps even believing a bit of the romanticized notions of the pleasures of such a trip. They quickly realized that a sailing circumnavigation is a lot of hard work, and an uneven mix of boredom, fatigue, frayed nerves, short tempers, unexpected calamity, and unmatched peace and beauty.
This book then is a chronicle of their sailing adventures, as well as an eye-opening travelogue, and an honest, sometimes embarrassing appraisal of their own personal strengths and weaknesses, and intimate details of married life at sea. Phil and Amy carefully prepared themselves and their boat for this trip, but still had to endure storms, rogue waves, seasickness, mechanical breakdowns, illness, and injury, all while living in a close-quarters world reduced to a small boat and three miles of visibility in any direction in good weather.
Despite their best efforts, there were times when the voyage seemed too much for them. Phil once declared, "You have to be crazy in order to sail around the world. No person in his right mind would do this!" Living at sea is not at all like living at home on land. Each person stands alternating watches, four hours on and four off, all day and night, every day. There is no privacy and a distinct lack of quality personal hygiene. Fatigue is a major problem.
They sailed from Maine south to the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal, across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, up the Atlantic and back to Maine. They tell of all their sailing experiences and ports, adding colorful insight to their ambitious itinerary. They tell of rampant government corruption in Jamaica, of the Panama Canal's rundown condition and incompetent operators, about the widespread crime in South Africa, and about being chased by Indonesian pirates. Amy even had to fend off the persistently unwelcome advances of a boatyard Lothario in Cape Town.
Still, there are pleasant and funny stories, too. They describe the beauty of Polynesia, the kindness of the Pacific islanders and other yachtsmen, the antics of Stewart the Cat, their lazy feline crewmember, and the irony of the lingerie model photo shoot aboard their boat. Learn how engine room profanity really helps when you need to make a difficult repair, why sailors never start a voyage on a Friday, how to get a crab out of your ear, about the medicinal uses of fish mucous, about the tasty dish called Goat's Head Soup, and how lawyers and missionaries have taken all the fun out of life.
Despite the hazards, risks, discomforts, and losses of friends at sea, Amy and Phil experience a fabulous journey of self-discovery, introspection, and renewal. They learned much about themselves, the sea, and the world around them. They also learned that they will probably not do this again. This book is supplemented nicely with maps and color photographs. --BY WILLIAM D. BUSHNELL The Associated Press Oct 2007

Author Amy P. Wood stated that she wanted to write a book that told the true story -- not one with fluff – and she indeed accomplishes this feat with World Voyagers, an all encompassing detailed account of a three year circumnavigation aboard Iwalani.
Although this book is lengthy, it reads like a daily log or blog, (which is where Amy and Phil originally posted the details of their trip online), and it allows the reader to ultimately become part of the crew, sailing right along with Phil, Amy and Stewart.
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It’s easy to forget you’re just “reading” about being places like the Bahamas, Jamaica, Panama, Marquesas, Australia and South Africa (Just to name a few) as Amy unequivocally “takes you there.” She shares all the joys, pitfalls, sights, smells, experiences and enough of herself with us to make us feel like we really are encountering the adventure firsthand. You’ll feel the seasickness she hides from her husband Phil, find yourself waking up every four hours to do your watch, and even crying along with them when they loose their beloved pet at sea.
But you’ll also feel the warm sun on your skin as you sail naked in the tropics, see waters in multiple amazing shades of blue, meet interesting people from all corners of the world and get up close and personal with lions and many other furred, feathered and finned wildlife. Then, once in home port again, you’ll feel a true sense of accomplishment.
Well, actually, it’s Amy and Phil who succeed in doing something they had a burning desire in their hearts to do.
“ It was a goal we could not abandon.” Author Amy P. Wood writes.
They see it through – and you are right there with them, and despite all the obstacles, from an ex-wife and family who needs them at home, to health issues, to uncooperative winds, weather and currents, Amy and Phil not only chase the wind to fulfill their dream, but succeed in catching it and telling the tale.
If you are expecting a lot of flowery language and poetic descriptions of this three year trek, you won’t get it. What you will get is a 100 percent, hands on, authentic account of blue water sailing.
Whether you are a coastal cruiser, blue water cruiser, sailing novice or just enjoy reading about a great adventure, you are guaranteed to enjoy sharing Amy, Phil and Stewart’s journey across the deep blue sea.

WOODENBOAT - September 2007
Reviewed by W.H. Bunting -

In the late 1990s an old red Yankee-class iceboat occasionally appeared on Maine lakes. Sailed by a bearded man and a blonde woman, it went much faster than it should have, considering its aged sail. Then, for several seasons, it was missed, to reappear a couple of winters later. Come to find out that in those intervening years its co-pilots, professional shipwright Phil Shelton and his wife, veterinarian Amy Wood, had finished building the 42' Buehler-designed ketch IWALANI and sailed her around the world.
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They then wrote (in Amy's voice) and published a 430-page book about it all. This three-against-the-sea saga (there was also a ship's cat) differs from others of its ilk in that the authors set out to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
World Voyagers is a must-read for anyone who dreams of sailing around the world, and also for anyone feeling guilty for not dreaming about sailing around the world. And for the rest of us, it is a witty travelogue with attitude-but doesn't ape the Paul Thoreaux/Jonathan Raban smarty-pants school of travel writing. It is surely quirky, and with travel books, quirky is good.
Phil and Amy trade places as captain every day. Both are in a second marriage, and overshadowing the story of the voyage are the worries about Phil's two boys, left in the care of their mother, who will not be sending any Christmas cards to Amy. Amy's devotion to Stewart, the ailing ship's cat, may strike even some cat lovers as slightly over the top, but her extraordinary candor saves the story from becoming a seagoing soap opera. Indeed, it would seem that nothing of a personal nature was off limits, including some disclosures which I cannot reveal, much less describe, given WoodenBoat's editorial prudery regarding matters of a sexual nature.
IWALANI, a traditional double-ended gaff-rigger on the outside, was stuffed with every manner of modern navigational device and appliance, including ice and ice cream makers, water maker, DVD player, computer, fax machine, vacuum cleaner, and so on. Of critical importance, Phil the wizard could fix almost all of them. But despite the comforts of home, and having prepared for all manner of peril, Phil and Amy still faced moments of real danger, as well as assorted nuisances and miseries, including Amy's chronic seasickness.
One cannot help but compare IWALANI's outfit with that of Joshua Slocum's SPRAY, whose cabin a century earlier boasted of little more than a stove and a onehanded tin alarm clock. A master at finding longitude by lunars, Slocum had a sextant but no chronometer. Presumably IWALANI had a sextant and at least a very good watch onboard, although I don't recall reading of them, what with the GPS, weather fax, ete.
GPS and dot.com money have created a population explosion of world-traveling yachts, although relatively few circumnavigate. Forty years ago when I sailed some of the same waters, and lay in some of the same anchorages, sighting a yacht was an event; now yachts are often an infestation. Sleepy little island villages have become crowded tourism destinations. Bureaucracy has exploded as well. And no island today is too remote not to have beaches littered with plastic rubbish; the tin and glass containers we once obliviously dumped overboard promptly sank from sight.
In his classic Sailing Alone Around the World, Slocum described an impromptu celebration in the Indian Ocean islands of Keeling Cocos, a tropical paradise of particular charm:

All that could get on their feet danced, while the babies lay in heaps in the corners of the room, content.to look on For music two fiddles screeched over and over again the good old tune, "We won't go home till morning." And we did not.

Of Keeling Cocos in 2002, we read in World Voyagers:

The following day we take the dinghy over to Home Island and find the local Internet cafe, a small hut with a huge satellite hookup. Several Malay teenaged girls are inside enjoying the air conditioning and listening to music. A few playing solitaire on the computer.

America, too, changed during the voyage; when IWALANI arrived back on the New England coast, post 9/11, she faced a $15,000 fine for not having been reported promptly.
Joshua Slocum's Martha's Vineyard neighbors claimed that he sailed alone around the world to escape his second wife. One can only wonder how the literature of the sea might have been changed had he met and married an irrepressible and adventuresome woman like Amy.
For that matter, Phil and Josh Slocum share many similar traits-lean, compact physiques; clipped beards; great skill as shipwrights and sailors; and methodical yet sardonically playful miens.
Hmmmm.
Bill Bunting is a regular WoodenBoat contributor

Their book "World Voyagers" ($29.95, Book Orchard Press, April 2007) began as a series of weekly blogs on www.worldvoyagers.com about the journey before being collected into a 432-page hardcover version.
Wood outfitted the boat as a small animal hospital, neutering and spaying animals in areas without vets as well as caring for injured wildlife encountered along the way.Eschewing the typical travel guide style of describing "destination hot spots" in favor of dialogue with locals and her travel companions. Wood engages the reader in her personal accounts through such locations as the Bahamas, Galapagos, Fiji and Capetown. In Port Antonio, she describes a dish typically served at Jamaican weddings: "Apparently a real head was removed from a real goat, smashed up with a lead pipe and then all the parts were put in a big pot along with some other choice tidbits, including the cloven hooves and intestines."
The book is illustrated with some of Wood's paintings and 32 color pages of photos along with original cartoons, maps and poems. At the end is Wood's glossary of terms found in the book, although she cautions: "Some old salts may dissagree with my definitions -- tough toerails, I'm not changing anything!"

222Ipsum lorum whatever. Ipsum lorum whatever. Ipsum lorum whatever. Ipsum lorum whatever. Ipsum lorum whatever. Ipsum lorum whatever.Ipsum lorum whatever.

I enjoyed this incredible epic journey. I could hardly put it down, and revelled in all the photos,the delightful poems and the daily, arduous efforts and adventures. What an amazing experience, and the dialogue reads like a play - it is surely a continuous drama, laden with humor and wit and vivid description. I have now loaned it to my daughter-in-law who cruised around the world working on a square-rigger back in 1970. She could hardly wait to read it.
Congratulations on the huge achievement - first of all, surviving the amazing trip, and then having the talent and perseverence to tell the story with such style and skill.

NDH

I just loved your book, I could not put it down! I just wanted to go on and on and was bumming when I read the last page. Thank you for the fine reading. Sincerely,
LB, ME.

I just got through reading World Yoyagers, and have to tell you I couldn’t put it down. I purchased it after seeing it recommended in the Waterville Morning Sentinel.

We have had to put down 3 of our precious pets over the years and I have to tell you I had tears in my eyes when Stew died.
PR ME.

Dear Amy, I have just finished your book. I cannot start another til the glow from yours wears off. I am a sometime sailor and understand the moments of boredom and terror that go with a long trip. You painted for me a wonderful word picture of the places you saw and the adventures you had. Thank you for publishing it for people like me who are shore-bound to share. A very "good read" ..!
AM B ME.


Your World Voyagers is amazing. The only problem is that it is keeping me up till 2 and 3 a.m. reading! More later.
LK ME.

Hi-

I just finished reading _World Voyagers_. It was great. I started groping around worldvoyagers.com and stumbled on the Tundra bush plane project. If you have a book on that, I'll buy it sight unseen. Meanwhile, I'll check that site occasionally to look for later reports.
Please pass along my greetings and my appreciation to Amy.
Thanks again for a great vicarious adventure.
Shoo!
CS GA

This weekend your book kept passing back and forth between B and me--he tends to start reading nonfiction books from the back, I start at the beginning, but pretty soon we were overlapping and talking about it a lot. We have both enjoyed it tremendously. You really have a gift for writing good dialogue, there's plenty of humor, the reader feels that he/she is getting the true story--and it's fascinating. The pacing was dynamic. You're right--it's about as far from standard travel writing as it can be. I hope you get some really good reviews soon--so that people will know about it. Congratulations!!

Holy crap I've been enjoying your book.
I don't email on weekends or after work hours but this was worth it.
More later.
B NC

Copy and Paste Descriptions:

The World Voyagers Book:
Version 1: 104 words
“World Voyagers the true story of a Veterinarian, a Renaissance man and Stewart the Cat”, by Shelton & Wood, is unlike all other travel narratives. This full-bodied and humorous book, about building a boat in Maine and sailing it on a three-year global circumnavigation, is intended not only for sailors and animal lovers—but all armchair adventurers and gift-givers. With over thirty pages of color photos and maps, the look and feel of this quirky tome, bounded by a padded casewrap, further enlivens this vicarious voyaging. Personal, provocative, and fun, “World Voyagers” is not only a page-turning read, but a coffee table display piece.

Version 2: 81 words
Got a life's goal? Lie in bed dreaming at night what would it be like to build a boat and sail off to a deserted tropical isle? Discover one couples adventures building a boat and circumnavigating with their cat, limited finances, and a forty four thousand pound suitcase. With prose rich dialogue and plentiful photos, the beautifully bound hardcover edition of "World Voyagers" describes all the realities of entering countries from the back door in an intimate, humorous, and riveting fashion. 

Version 3: 214 words

“World Voyagers” is the true story of a three-year circumnavigation written by Dr. Amy P. Wood, Philip Shelton, and Stewart the cat and published by Book Orchard Press in 2007.  From designing and building a forty-two foot wooden cutter “Iwalani,” outfitting it a floating pet hospital, to their return to Maine— this is not a watered down, sugar coated tale, but a “no holds barred” account of just what it’s like to follow a dream.

With over fifty thousand loyal readers on their regularly updated website worldvoyagers.com, this book stands to capitalize on the growing market of  “Blooks”―books written with accompanying weblogs. Rich in symbolism and metaphor, “World Voyagers” goes beyond the typical books of the cruising genre, to a new level never before seen in today’s nonfiction travel books. On par with Mowatt, Steinbeck and London, the voyage itself becomes the canvas on which three years of personal life are painted.  Not just a travel book, World Voyagers is a treatise on marriage, family loss, politics, international relations and the human-animal bond.
 
This book will appeal to all readers that love the outdoors, feel committed to saving the environment, think of pets as family members and who want to experience all that the world has to offer- from the comfort of an armchair!

The World Voyagers Slide Show:
Ad for newspaper:
Authors Philip Shelton and Dr. Amy Wood will be at (X) for a book signing and multi media presentation, (Fill in date and time) Their book “World Voyagers” the true story of a Veterinarian, a Renaissance man and Stewart the cat,” gives a unique and humorous look at building a boat in Maine and sailing around the world.

Ad for mailing
For ten years, Philip Shelton worked part time building Iwalani, a wooden, forty-two foot gaff rigged cutter, from his salt-water farm in Georgetown, Maine. Ruggedly constructed, Iwalani safely took Phil, his wife Dr. Amy P. Wood and Stewart the cat on a three-year global circumnavigation. They recorded their worldly observations and musings in a weekly updated webpage—http://www.worldvoyagers.com/ After returning in 2003, they sold Iwalani and built the book “World Voyagers,” published in 2007 by Book Orchard Press. This unique travelogue offers an unbridled account of visiting countries through the back door. Amassing over 22,000 photographs, slides, paintings, cartoons and video, Phil and Amy have selected their favorites and are presenting them as well as stories of their experiences (FILL IN BLANK)