NO ONE FELL OVERBOARD

A detailed logging of a family failing takes the Potters and their four children through their long search for the right craft and, once the Seven Seas was acquired, on their dreamed-of cruise. Then the new experiences begin, from the trial runs -- once they headed into torpedo practice -- and the furnishing and equipping, the problems of cooking and feeding and ping and clothes, and they are off from Massachusetts, down the coast, with many an assist from the Coast Guard, on to Washington and through the Inland Waterway to Florida. Up and around to the Gulf, the Mississippi and the Tennessee and a safe landing in Pittsburgh where her husband's family warmly welcomed the waterborne. The record of sailing techniques, mishaps and escapes, storms and sicknesses, ports and all kinds of weather is amplified by the sightseeing they managed, the fellow sailors they got to know, the way in which their knowledge of a new kind of life was extended. Some nightmares, many rewarding incidents, the excitement of the unexpected -- this is seasoned well with salt as well as domesticity and is good fare for sailing-minded families.