The author reads as pretentious and arrogant but his methods and information are excellent. Study the book, particularly weather and weather around islands, and apply as needed.
Good Stuff,
September 26, 2014, Ryan Kieffer
Very informative read. Deals in island wx phenomena as well as routing through Bahamas, Turks & Caicos, and the DR. Style of writing is direct and wry. Many good general tips for making the most of the trip.
I'm taking my first trip down to the Carib via my own boat and see this book as a very good resource which will be re-read at least once more along the way.
Raya hunt
March 12, 2017
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
If you are going to sail in the Bahamas and the Caribbean and you leave without this book, go home . A must book for those who want to travel the thorny path by boat. Your passage south will be a better experience if you study and do what is suggested in this book.
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Margarita Cat,
August 6, 2010, Julia Bartlett, author of "Just Another Day in Paradise"
In 'Margarita Cat' Bruce Van Sant's voice spins his tales as truly as if you were sitting across the table from him in an out of the way rum shop on a white sand beach, sipping a frosty beer. The cruising life is seen through the objective, educated lens of a world traveler and makes a riveting read for old and new salts alike.
If you have cruised some of the same waters all will ring true to you; if not, you will be tempted to by these tasty snippets.
Spanning 40 years and four continents this is a window into a different way of life that still only a relatively few of us get to enjoy.
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An Excellent Collection of True Sea Stories,
June 21, 2010, William Hezlep, author of "Into the Land of Coconut Dreams"
Bruce Van Sant's new book "Margarita Cat" is a collection of sixty-four short, true, tales gleaned from forty years of his log books; the log books of one of the most experienced cruising sailors out there (see "The Gentleman's Guide to Passages South" and "Tricks of the Trades", both by Mr. Van Sant). This is a nice book to keep by your bedside, on the breakfast table, or where ever your reading seat might be. The stories are short, perfect for an early morning or late night read, and while places and characters appear and re-appear from tale to tale, each story is complete and can stand on its own. The stories are not little suger pills about how wonderful everything always is or was; the sort of name dropping, we went here, we went there and we, we, we had just a fabulous time stories, both short and book length, of which there are way too many in print. Nothing is perfect and wonderful for two years, let alone forty, and these stories of the people, places, ports, boats, bureaucrats, weather, joys, pleasures, dangers and fears of the cruising life are told as the author expierenced it over his years of sailing--warts and all.
This is a great book for sailors and cruisers, past presant and wannabe, for parrot heads, dreamers, drifters and the secret Walter Mitty in all of us.
Truth in advertising--since 1993 I have lived on small cruising boats, sail and power, following in Bruce Van Sants wake from Canada to Venezuela and beyond, he got there first and he tells it best.
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Peter Swanson, contributor to Yachting, Soundings and Passagemaker magazines
"Bruce Van Sant spent 40 years navigating in that subculture. But coming so early into it he never really fit in with the American cruising crowd as it swelled to a movement. His apartness has given him a unique, often hilarious perspective of what happens when Middle-America decides to escape by sea. Bruce痴 mind does not work like most of ours, so when he puts his thoughts in writing, as he has done in Margarita Cat, the result is an oddball classic in a genre of one."
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Cruising Guide Publications
"a lovely and indulgent book of letters, logs, and memories compiled like a giant love letter to the sea and all those who dare to venture upon her. Bruce Van Sant's Margarita Cat is yet another wonderful example of his literary and epistolary sagacity, whimsy and an ongoing love affair with the written word."