A delightful and beautiful ode to the sea and the desire in all of us to be transported. Sebastian Smith has written a book that is part travelogue, part meditation on our enduring fascination with sailing and our need to pit ourselves against the elements and our own self-imposed limitations.

Lulu Garcia-Navarro, New York Times Journalist

A beautiful story of sea-soaked obsession. Sebastian Smith charts his sailing life from absolute novice to ocean-master, from war reporter to husband and father, leaving you with a profound sense of the rewards and perils of life aboard - life enhanced, life enlarged and enriched.

Philip Marsden, author of The Summer Isles: A Voyage of the Imagination  

A captivating tale, and an inspiring one, yet packed with good advice based on hard won experience. High seas and high ambition. It's a must-read if you want to follow in his wake.

Paul Heiney

Sebastian Smith's Running Away to Sea is a thoroughly enchanting tribute to the pull of the ocean – and one of the best books I've ever read about learning to sail and leaving land behind. Smith shows us, in seamless prose, how wedded to screens and schedules most of us are and proves how anyone with enough moxie can learn to sail different boats at different stages of life. By his third boat, he and his wife are deftly bluewater cruising and adventuring with two young daughters. A deeply life-giving book with excellent advice on the nitty-gritty of boating and voyaging, step by step.

Kim Brown Seely, author of Uncharted: A Couple's Epic Empty-Nest Adventure Sailing from One Life to Another

Sebastian Smith's advice on running away to sea is as sound as eight bells, but he gives us so much more – a chart of how life can be lived to the full, 'as trespassers, forever tiptoeing in wonder through the house of God'.

Smith goes beyond telling us how. He also tells us why, and nobody does it better.

Tom Cunliffe