Dorade: The History of an Ocean Racing Yacht by Douglas D. Adkins

by Llewellyn Howland III

Douglas Adkins' superb biography of the ocean racing yawl Dorade reads like a modern-day retelling of the Icarus legend. But it is a retelling with dramatic differences. For one thing, Adkins' account is as factual and as truthful as careful and extensive research can make it. For a second, it is not about an impetuous kid flying too close to the sun. Rather, it begins with two wonderfully able and self-assured young brothers—Olin and Rod Stephens Jr.—who not only fly, in a yachting context, as close to the sun as man has ever known, but circle it repeatedly, successfully, and in seeming defiance of the laws of gravity. more »