Mabel Stock

Sailing the Ogre Mabel Stock

Mabel Stock, her brother Ralph, and their friend buy a 45-foot gaff-rigged sailboat after World War I and from 1919 to 1920 sail it half-way across the world. They are one of the first cruising yachts to transit the Panama Canal in the OGRE sailboat. They go on to sail the South Pacific. This is one of the earliest accounts of a sailing yacht cruise authored by a woman. Mabel Stock joins the ranks of the Captain J. C. Voss and Joshua Slocum as an earlier pioneer of long-distance cruising in small sailing yachts. Mabel Stock and other crew sail from England to Spain, the Canary Islands, Barbados, Panama, the Galapagos, Nuku Hiva, Marquesas, Tahiti, Palmerston Atoll, and Nukualofa, Tonga. This was first published under the title of A LOG OF A WOMAN WANDERER in 1923 by William Heinemann Ltd., London. The 2019 Oxriver Publishing edition edited by Dr. Linus Wilson is annotated to bring out the historic significance of the text. This new version is edited to improve its readability for modern sailors. Mabel Stock died in 1941. This was her only book. In the text is a rare biography of the author created from consulting government documents and other, original source material.