Books about Albatross from Amazon.com

The Seven Seas—North America's #1-selling sailing calendar, now in its twenty-fourth year—takes you on twelve unforgettable voyages.

Bask in serene waters from the Marquesas to Tahiti and feel the glow of a sunset after a glorious day at sea. Experience the morning mist of Celtic's Killary Harbour, gaze at majestic cliffs sailing in the Tasmanian Sea, and feel the invigorating power of the ocean. This calendar is of the highest-quality printing—ideal for framing..
Price: $11.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this intimate and uproarious story, two daring New Yorkers convert an ancient, abandoned farm into a world-renowned winery.

Finding your dream house with a vineyard in Tuscany is like searching the woods for porcini mushrooms: a labor of love. Such feats require patience, discernment, resolve, and an indestructible sense of humor.

The Mátés' future home and wine estate lies amid breathtaking scenery in a community brimming with warmth. In Italy's most prestigious wine zone, Montalcino, they restore a thirteenth-century friary nestled on two hills within sixty acres of forest, olives, and potential vineyards. Here they plant fifteen acres of vines, build the winery, and learn from their famous vintner neighbors, like Angelo Gaja, the secrets of how to grow the best grapes and make superb wines. Within the first years, the Máté wines receive international acclaim.

This highly entertaining tale of how two dreamers struggle and thrive in idyllic Tuscany will enrich the lives of travelers and wine lovers alike..
Price: $13.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This is the first comprehensive field guide to the world's 136 species of albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters, storm petrels, and diving petrels Because many of these birds spend most of their lives far from the coast, traveling from ocean to ocean in a constant search for food, they are poorly known, enigmatic, and often hard to identify in the field. This guide will make field identification much easier. It illustrates every species and shows the distinct plumages of each. It contains 46 high-quality color plates opposite concise descriptions and a color distribution map, with more complete species descriptions following. Species are illustrated on the same page as their confusion species, allowing direct comparisons for more accurate identifications.

This field guide includes information on breeding, feeding, distribution, migration, and conservation. And it illustrates for the first time several extremely rare species, such as Beck's and MacGillivray's Petrels, and the New Zealand Storm-Petrel, which was rediscovered only in 2004.

Seabird watchers will find this an indispensable field guide for use around the world.

• A comprehensive guide to all 136 species of open-ocean seabirds, with subspecies and morphs fully illustrated
• Designed for field use, with concise information opposite plates, and close- and long-range identification tips
• Confusion species included on plates to aid accurate identification
• Detailed species accounts, including a color distribution map for each species
• Full treatment of recently rediscovered and rarely seen species

.
Price: $18.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The magic and misfortune of the world's greatest migrating bird.

Albatrosses are best known for their enormous wingspan and global migrations They are also the subject of intense scientific scrutiny. Recent DNA studies have revealed that there may not be just 13, but 21 to 25 albatross species. With all but two of them endangered, the albatross may disappear just as we are discovering more about it.

Tui De Roy and Mark Jones set out in a 43-foot sailboat to cross the world's oceans in search of the albatross. They weathered storms, finally arriving to camp on barren landfalls, where they studied and photographed these fascinating birds. Albatross features the very best writing and research on these extraordinary creatures. The book includes a breathtaking photographic portfolio, a series of essays by leading experts, and a natural history section with detailed information on each species.

Along with commentary on the authors' adventures, topics include:

• Size and population distribution
• Biology and recent DNA discoveries
• Food and reproduction
• Breeding sites and courtship behavior
• Albatrosses in exploration, exploitation, myth and legend
• Migratory routes and the mysteries of migration
• Conservation threats and status.

Albatross is an impassioned, authoritative and richly illustrated study of a magnificent creature.

.
Price: $19.84 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's greatest work, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", is utterly unique, unlike any other ballad. No narrative poem has rivaled it in combining scenes of terror with scenes of incomparable beauty. Although enormously popular in the nineteenth century, it is seldom read or studied today. This annotated version by Martin Gardner will help to renew the appreciation and deepen the understanding of Coleridge's unjustly neglected masterpiece. Preceding the poem is a biographical sketch of the great poet, which emphasizes those aspects of his many-sided life and personality that have the strongest bearing on the poem, especially on circumstances surrounding its composition..
Price: $20.58 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"The most beautiful sailing books ever published "—Yacht Magazine

ith more than 100,000 copies in print, these titles have become the standard reference for sailors and dreamers alike. The nearly 1,000 color photographs by the world's best marine photographers, accompanied by Ferenc Máté's consistently insightful, engaging, and analytic commentary, create the ultimate combination of beauty and practicality. Máté visited firsthand the leading boat builders in the world from Finland to California, surveying and evaluating the best boats built in the last twenty years. From Hinckley, Alden, Baltic, and Swan to new builders such as J-Boats, Oyster, Valiant, and Sabre, these have, over the years, consistently shown the highest quality and most creative innovation. Thoughtful and entertaining, the text is packed with technical information on design and construction, while the magnificent photographs celebrate the beauty of sailboats and fine craftsmanship. "A complete boat show between covers."—John Rousmaniere, author of The Annapolis Book of Seamanship. 450 color photographs; 227 black-and-white illustrations..
Price: $20.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"The most beautiful sailing books ever published "—Yacht Magazine

ith more than 100,000 copies in print, these titles have become the standard reference for sailors and dreamers alike. The nearly 1,000 color photographs by the world's best marine photographers, accompanied by Ferenc Máté's consistently insightful, engaging, and analytic commentary, create the ultimate combination of beauty and practicality. Máté visited firsthand the leading boat builders in the world from Finland to California, surveying and evaluating the best boats built in the last twenty years. From Hinckley, Alden, Baltic, and Swan to new builders such as J-Boats, Oyster, Valiant, and Sabre, these have, over the years, consistently shown the highest quality and most creative innovation. Thoughtful and entertaining, the text is packed with technical information on design and construction, while the magnificent photographs celebrate the beauty of sailboats and fine craftsmanship. "A complete boat show between covers."—John Rousmaniere, author of The Annapolis Book of Seamanship. 535 color photographs and 218 black-and-white illustrations..
Price: $40.14 [Notify me when price goes down.]

.
Price: $2.35 [Notify me when price goes down.]

No one can describe Mr. Langford's book with more understanding than the Captain of the Albatross

"Dick Langford was a tremendous asset on the school voyage of the Brigantine Albatross. He was a great human being, a leader of the young students, and a fine English teacher.

He has written a vivid, dramatic account about the ship's final, fatal voyage. His own experience was particularly harrowing. He brings it alive with great sensitivity and flowing prose." Captain Christopher B. Sheldon Brigantine Albatross ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Richard E. Langford has lived on and around the sea all his life. Born and raised in Pensacola, Fla., as a teen-ager he served as a volunteer Red Cross water safety instructor and lifeguard. He worked as a professional Safety Services Representative for American National Red Cross, training hundreds of instructors in life saving, swimming, boating, sailing and first aid.

In 1960, he took leave of absence from Stetson University to serve as English teacher aboard a school ship, the brigantine Albatross. This book is based on its nine-month voyage.

Now retired, Langford writes book reviews and commentary. At age 75, he swims more than half a mile daily in DeLand, Fla. AUTHOR COMMENTS: Back in 1960 I answered an ad in Yachting Magazine, placed by The Ocean Academy Ltd. owned and operated by Christopher B. Sheldon, Ph.D., and N. Alice Sheldon, MD. They wanted a teacher of English for a nine-month voyage on the school ship Albatross, a square-rigged brig to be crewed by teen-aged students. The Sheldons expected to sail through the Caribbean, transit the Panama Canal, then spend a month or more in the Galapagos Islands before returning to their home port of Mystic, Conn. I was 35 years old, teaching English at Stetson University in DeLand, Fla., when I answered the ad. I was determined to sail on Albatross's first schooling voyage even if obliged to resign from Stetson. Fortunately, an understanding dean and department head allowed me a leave of absence. As many readers no doubt know, the first schooling voyage of Albatross was also her last. This is the tale of that voyage. I wrote most of it in the middle '60s, then put it aside for the interim. The film White Squall engendered fresh interest in the Albatross voyage, even though the film was more Hollywood parody than fact. Readers of this volume will acquire a more realistic understanding of the people and events involved. I am indebted to travel writer Janet Groene for her interest in this book. She read it, liked it and recommended it to one of her publishers. Without her efforts on my behalf, the manuscript would remain in a box beneath my desk, where it had been for more than three decades. Richard E. Langford TABLE OF CONTENTS: FIRST CHAPTER EXCERPT: chapter one THE SHIP I first saw Albatross in June 1960. She lay alongside a wharf at Mystic Seaport, Conn., her long bowsprit almost touching the stern of Charles W. Morgan, the old whaler now permanently moored there as an exhibit. Albatross' captain, Christopher Sheldon, had already hired me to serve as English Master for his ship's first schooling cruise, beginning the following fall, and I looked forward to seeing the vessel I would live aboard for nine months. Albatross was 92 feet long, drew nine feet in the bow and 11 in the stern, and was rigged as a hermaphrodite brigantine: four squaresails on the foremast and a marconi main. She had teak decks, a 21-foot beam that gave ample deck space, a galley house on deck forward and a chart house aft. Painted white, trimmed in red and black with a beautiful mahogany stern rail that gleamed with varnish, she was the largest sailing ship I had seen up close. She had served as a North Sea pilot schooner following her commissioning in 1921 before conversion to a brigantine. Chris and Alice Sheldon bought Albatross from novelist Ernest K. Gann, author of best sellers such as The High and the Mighty, Soldier of Fortune and Twilight for the Gods. Used by the Nazi Kriegsmarine during WW II, the ship was sold to a Dutch company in 1949, from which Gann bought her in 1954. Gann had Albatross re-rigged as a brigantine, and though this probably affected her stability, he assured the Sheldons it did not. In any event, Albatross became a suitable romantic setting for the writer's adventure novels. When the Sheldons bought Albatross, ship's cook George Ptacnik came with her. George was an intelligent, educated 30-year-old Mexican-American teacher of English who found Albatross far more appealing than the classroom. By the time I came aboard, George (who later became known as Spook) had already sailed with the Sheldons on an adventure cruise through the Mediterranean and around Africa. Standing alongside, I craned back my head to see the tops of her masts. They looked like giant steel trees with white branches in the clouds, fitting perfectly with all the old sailing vessels surrounding her in Mystic Seaport harbor. No one was on deck. I walked to the gangway and shouted, but there was no answer. Stepping aboard, I stuck my head through the aft companionway into the chart house and called out again. This time I got an answer, and Skipper Sheldon came on deck from the engine room where he had been working. He was a big man, about 6'2" and heavy through the midsection, with blond hair balding in front. His eyes were a startling blue. I introduced myself and we sat on the aft-deck lockers. As we talked, I looked around at the bulwarks, the big wheel, the engine-room telegraph, the large compass and the wheelhouse. Albatross needed some red lead and paint, and what I could see of the mainsail did not encourage me regarding the ship's condition. Sheldon read my expression. "We're taking her to Nova Scotia this summer for yard work." he said. "We just returned from Africa and a year at sea, and right now she's not up to par, but she will be by the time you see her this fall." As I was to find out in a few months, even after the work in Nova Scotia Albatross required constant hard labor to keep her looking decent, more work than most of her young students had expected to perform. Albatross took on supplies, tons of canned goods, crates of fresh vegetables, coils of new line stacked all around her well-worn decks. Skipper pointed to a high pile of canvas on top of the charthouse. "That's our new main. The old one is about gone, and I expect it will blow out almost anytime." Later that afternoon I helped feed the new main through the skylights down into the main cabin where we packed it away in one of the vacant bunks. I explored the ship above and below. Albatross had a private stern cabin where Skipper and his wife lived, and it spanned the width of the ship. A narrow passageway led into the large main cabin where there were bunks for twelve. The dining table, in gimbals, was in the main cabin as well, while at the aft end was the ship's library (about 10 large shelves of books). Forward of the main cabin were 10 more bunks and several wash stands with two heads off the forepeak As I climbed up the ladder out of the forepeak I heard a feminine voice say, "Hi. Welcome aboard." It was Alice Sheldon, the ship's surgeon, a handsome, heavyset woman of about 30 years. She smiled, and her short, brown hair blew about her face in the breeze. She spoke authoritatively and surely; I could tell that she was a very important part of the whole venture, and a few minutes of conversation with her told me that hers was the organizational mind that kept the Ocean Academy Ltd. moving smoothly. John Perry (whose name soon became simply J.C.) had been hired a few days before as math teacher, and we worked together to stow our gear in our compartment. Alice had hung a heavy curtain between us and several of the boys so we had a semi-private area. We each had two bunks, one for sleeping and one for stowing books and other teaching materials. Most of the students would come aboard in Bermuda, but Rick, Bill and Tim were already aboard, as well as several friends of the Sheldons who had sailed with them on Irving Johnson's Yankee a few years before. Our cook Spook was there, of course, and in just a few days, J.C., Spook and I had become good friends. At 35, I was the oldest person aboard Albatross; J.C. was 27, Spook was 30, and Skipper Sheldon was 34. We rode out Hurricane Donna at Mystic Seaport. Though the Seaport wharves were under water and we had some wind and rain, there wasn't much damage. Skipper had us put out an extra anchor astern in the river and another on land. Spook once described J.C. as "a loud, wild-eyed German storm trooper with an insane giggle," but it was said with a smile. Our math teacher was indeed loud-voiced, but he was also smart, confident, quick-witted and a skillful math teacher. He adapted quickly to the ship and became the mate of one of the three watches. The final moments before we sailed from Mystic Seaport were hectic. The pilot and Skipper stood atop the charthouse as Albatross backed from her berth, swung, and headed down the Mystic River toward the town bridge. As we passed beneath it, Spook's laundry came bombing down on deck. (He had forgotten to pick it up, but a hasty phone call arranged for it to be delivered in this extraordinary fashion.) We were under way..
Price: $12.69 [Notify me when price goes down.]