This is the story of the author's voyage aboard Cresswell, a wooden lifeboat converted to a cruising sailboat, accompanied by Nelson, his one-eyed, three-legged labrador. Together they sail the Baltic Sea, the English Channel, the Bay of Biscay, the Atlantic Ocean and the inland waterways of Western Europe. They survive storms, dismastings, arrest by the Soviet Navy, and being sunk by whales. The reader is transported from terror and dispair to hilarity by this entertaining tale.