Coasting by Jonathan Raban
This text tells the story of how in 1982 the author set out alone in a 30-foot ketch to sail round the British Isles. Raban had never before handled a boat at sea, but wanted to inspect the country where he lived as an independent navigator with a sceptical outsider's eye for his homeland. He sails into his own past, into Britain's troubled present, and into a sense of reflection.