You Won't Find Author Memorabilia Like This on eBay

After the wild success of God's Secretaries, his history of the King James Bible, Adam Nicolson wanted to get away from it all and bought himself a sailboat, refurbished it, and found a guy who would help him sail around the British isles for months on end. Being an enterprising sort, Nicolson's turned a potential midlife crisis into not just a book, but a National Geographic documentary series which was apparently airing on British cable earlier this month; no word yet on when we might get it here in the States. Anyway, now that he's gotten it all out of his system, this "beautiful 42-foot Colin Archer-type ketch" is back on the market.

Here's how he describes it:

"What is the Auk when you get to know her? She is the great sturdy girl, the woman with heart, a complete floating embrace. She is like the earth at sea, your own planet, with her own gravity, her own irreducible sense of herself in all the trouble that surrounds her. But she's no dullard. She can 'pick up her skirts' as seamen say, and run with the best of them, surging for hours at a time on eight knots with the wind just aft of the beam and a smile on her face."

Also, when the wind is right, she can sail away.