Product Description

In the summer of 2002, two profoundly amateur sailors, Griff and Bob, set off in an elderly yacht for Russia, because, on the map, it looked easier than sailing to Cornwall. They took Baines with them, as he knew how to mend the engine. And this is their story. Over four long months of applied bickering in a vessel no bigger than a London taxi, they visited most of the geographically interesting restaurants on the Baltic seaboard. They sailed, over, and, even at one point, onto the mysterious heart of the Nordic world. They pushed themselves to the very limits of human endurance, before finally agreeing to wash their sleeping bags on a cool cycle at number six. To the Baltic with Bob is the full account of their stirring journey through the longest heat wave the frozen north has ever suffered; of three men in search of the answer to a troubling question: can you really outmanoeuvre a mid-life crisis by running away to sea?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #196681 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The historian Macaulay once remarked that the British navy of Pepys' day was staffed by gentlemen and seamen: the seamen were not gentlemen and the gentlemen were not seamen. Comedian Griff Rhys Jones, and theBob of To the Baltic with Bob, would fall, decidedly, into the "gentlemen" category of mariner: enthusiasts, amateurs in the original sense of the word and therefore, naturally, inept sailors. (Rhys Jones pins the blame for his obsession with all things nautical on Arthur Ransome and on his late father, who made the freezing West Mercia boat park the family's home from home.) Luckily for Rhys Jones, his mate Bob is a marginally worse yachtsman. And in this record of a summer voyage from the Thames estuary to St Petersburg, Bob, the ex-hippie entrepreneur with a beguilingly childlike urge to possess Scando-Soviet tat (canned reindeer, Russian amphibious vehicles etc) is cast as Passepartout to Rhys Jones's Phileas Fogg.

The pair are assisted on their journey by Baines, a technical wizard whose abilities, as Jones says, "certainly drew attention to our own deficiencies". Rick, an anally retentive chartsman, is also around until the point at which, like a commissar in a Politburo photograph, he vanishes following a testy disagreement with the author about "Baltic surge".

The wayward sea, estuary and canal route through Holland, Denmark, Latvia, Finland, Russia and the Turko Archipelago--"so topographically complex that it was expedient not to draw it"--results, predictably, in a slew of map-prodding nautical mishaps and encounters with intransigent boat repairers, officials, restaurateurs and Estonian lap dancers. As is to be expected, from one half of television's Alas Smith and Jones (or Snow in My Cottage, as Finnish viewers knew it), Rhys Jones writes very amusingly. The petty on-board squabbles and reminiscences about his boat-blighted youth are funny and, intermittently, affecting. The contrasts he draws between the "practical, modest" peoples of Scandinavia and the swaggering pomposity of ex-imperialist nations such as Britain and Russia are well made. But, at over 400 pages, the book is flabby, bloated by extraneous incidentals and verbatim renderings of conversations of the "oh, do you remember the 1970s" variety. When, on page 370, Griff asks Bob: "Can you even remember Helsinki?" some readers may find, they too, have to think twice before answering. --Travis Elborough

About the Author
Griff Rhys Jones was born in 1953. He was educated at Brentwood school and Cambridge University. On the way to becoming a writer he worked as a security guard, a petrol-pump attendant and a television star.

Customer Reviews

Should never have left the mooring
I am a keen sailor who has undertaken a number of extended cruises, I love travel itineries and have always found Griff Rhys Jones amusing. What could be better than To The Baltic with Bob?

Sadly the book came as a huge disappointment. Although Griff tries to extract humour from the events of his trip and the eccentricities of his companions (and indeed his own), the combination of his limitations as a writer and the thinness of the material result in the book struggling to maintain reader interest. While I persevered to the finish, the narrative raised little more than a few smiles which is a poor hit rate in over 400 pages. I found his attempts to create drama from the race and the small number of high wind passages positively cringe-worthy due to the unremarkable nature of the events being described.

What was particularly striking was how joyless the whole trip seemed to be. While any cruise will have highs and lows (often dictated by the weather), I was left with no sense that anyone derived any great pleasure or satisfaction from what should have been a fantastic (albeit hardly exceptional) experience. Perhaps this explains why Griff was forced to pay the two main crew members to accompany him.

In short if you want a book that extracts humour from cruising try Michael Green's Art of Coarse Sailing or Art of Coarse Cruising. While they are over 25 years old they are still hilarious. If you are looking for a humourous observational traval narratative then you will get more laughs reading a Bill Bryson book for the fourth time than setting sail with Griff and Bob.

Did he really enjoy this adventure?
I have just finished reading this book and I did enjoy it. I loved reading about the various characters that Griff encounters and sails with. Bob in particular seems to be one of those wonderfully laid back people that worries about nothing (how I long to be like them). The descriptions in the book allow you to picture a part of the world that not many people visit, and perhaps that is why it is the way it is described. Living and having grown up in Suffolk where Griff starts his journey, makes this book feel slightly more personal too.

My one criticism of this book (and I believe one of the other reviews mentions this) is the way that Griff does not appear to get any joy from his journey. It seems to be a voyage of 'oh no not another day' type days. This doesn't really detract from the book (especially given its subtitle of 'An Epic Misadventure').

If you like Griff Rhys Jones, then this is a 'must read'. You can almost hear his distinctive tones describing it. I am glad that I bothered with it and hope that Griff goes on to write more.

Like a Christmas Round-robin letter
I don't suppose Griff Rhys Jones is to be blamed for the quote on the front jacket that there are "3 good jokes on every page", but it is certainly misleading. This is an amiable enough account of a rather grumpy sailing trip, but I doubt there was more than one moment that made me laugh.

The book comes alive briefly in the account of a sailing race out of Kiel, but otherwise there is little to recount. The characters are thinly described and unmemorable and there's no feeling of place - they might as well have sailed around the Isle of Wight. The book seems to be like an overextended round robin letter one receives at Christmas from friends who you've lost touch with.

There is a great book to be written about the history, geography and people of the Baltic....I guess we'll just have to wait for Bill Bryson to take up sailing.