Cilin Ii: a Solo Sailing Odyssey: The Closest Point to Heaven

Edgar D. Whitcomb

nov 2011 · AuthorHouse

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In 1986, seventy-one-year-old Edgar Whitcomb faced a crossroads in his life; he needed a new direction. Th at venture became an epic journey, as this retired Indiana governor embarked on what would be a solo, 30,000-mile, six-year sailing trip. With virtually no previous sailing experience, he and his thirty-foot sailboat, the CILIN II, traveled around the world.

In this travel memoir, a chronicle fi lled with danger and adventure, Whitcomb narrates the details of his exploits on the seas and in ports from Greece, to the Canary Islands, Antigua, Panama, Australia, and many points in between. He describes what can happen to a sailboat in distress and the consequences when a boat runs aground or is snagged in a fi shing net.

A story of the joys and frustrations of sailing, Cilin II: A Solo Sailing Odyssey recounts one mans realization of a dream and demonstrates his courage, endurance, and the lessons learned from meeting new people, seeing new places, and experiencing new ideas. Its a story about a thirst for excitement and world exploration that both begins and ends in the hills of southern Indiana.

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Ed Whitcomb’s insatiable appetite for travel and adventure started early. By the age of sixteen, he had crossed thirty-two states of the union by hitchhiking and riding freight trains. Leadership also came early to Ed. He captained the Haymakers, the Hayden High School basketball team, through a losing season in 1935. In 1940, with a great desire to fly, Ed joined the US Army Air Corps. In 1941 Second Lieutenant Edgar Whitcomb found himself swept up in the Japanese advance during the Battle of the Philippines, but he refused to surrender and escaped from the Japanese army. Ed swam eight and a half hours at night through shark-infested waters to the Philippine mainland. He captured this story in his successful book, Escape from Corregidor. Following World War II, Ed returned to the US, where he graduated from Indiana University School of Law. While at IU, he also bolstered the university football team’s victorious season by playing the trumpet in the Marching Hundred band. Ed then embarked on a very successful legal and political career, culminating in his election as the forty-third governor of Indiana on January 13, 1969. Ed finally retired from his law practice in 1986. Many a man would have quietly retired and reflected on a life well lived, but not Ed. At age sixty-eight, new adventures beckoned, and Ed fell in love with sailing. Ten years later he completed the circumnavigation of the world in a thirty-foot boat. This biographical travelogue tells the story of that sailing odyssey.