The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss

the long version

Capt. John Voss was an amazing one-of-a-kind Canadian sailor, who, at the beginning of the last century made a series of transoceanic voyages in tiny sailing craft barely larger that a life boat. The Venturesome Voyages tells of three of them. His most famous and the longest tale in the book is the Tilikum voyage, in which he modified a 38' Canadian cedar, Indian dugout canoe for blue water service. Then from 1901 to 1904, he and an ever changing series of companions undertook a 3 year, 40,000 mile, 3 ocean adventure from British Columbia to Kent, England. The remarkable tale is replete with South Seas isles, primitive cultures, battling gales and typhoons, lost at sea, a death at sea, even the smashing of the Tilikum. An amazing tale. The other tales describe a treasure hunting expedition off Peru in the 35' Xora and the extraordinary voyage of the 25' Sea Queen which sailed head-on into one of the century's worst typhoons. It's an amazing tale of seacraft and survival. For more than 100 years Voss' Voyages has rightly had a place in sailing libraries.