Dennison Berwick

Marine Diesel Basics started as a project to write down everything I knew about marine diesel systems, so that I could identify and plug knowledge gaps. After writing 600+ pages of text, and realizing no-one wants to read so much technical information, I decided to learn to draw and to convert the information into drawings. Thus was born the Marine Diesel Basics series of four books (Book 2 coming in late 2018). The aims of the series is to provide clear, simple, practical information for the hands-on boater (and mechanics) on all types of canal, motor and sail boats. Adventure has been in my blood since I was a small boy living on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales in northern England, and enjoying summer holidays by the sea at Filey, on the east coast. I now live aboard my third sailboat, SV Oceandrifter (a 36-foot Chevrier built in France in 1984 and refitted in Australia in 2002). The years between hunting for crabs on Filey Brigg as a boy and blue water sailing today, has brought adventures in Africa, South America and Asia and the publication of five other books. After leaving school, I hitch-hiked alone from Cape Town to Cairo and visited Afghanistan in 1976, before the Russian invasion. I emigrated to Canada in 1980 and in 1983-84 walked the entire length of the Ganges, India's holiest river, raising money for Save the Children Fund. The fascinating journey took seven months and was the subject of my first book, "A Walk along The Ganges". From 1985 to 1991 I travelled extensively in the Amazon in a canoe, carrying little more than a rain canopy, mosquito net and a hammock, and wrote about the experience in "Amazon". During these travels I was fortunate enough to met and eventually stay with Yanomami Indians in a remote area of the rain forest north of the river Amazon. At that time their land was being invaded by illegal goldminers, with government sanction. I was able to chronicle their fight to survive in "Savages, The Life and Killing of the Yanomami". I was so intensely involved in their struggle that afterwards it was difficult to find any project equally compelling. So I took a break from travelling and writing and in 1995 built and operated Still Life Retreat in southern Ontario, Canada, offering peace and quiet to the "wilted and the wired". I also edited and published two editions of the "Canadian Retreat Guide". I left Still Life just before the new millennium and then became hooked on sailing. My first boat was a Robert 36, in Malaysia. My second, SV Kuan Yin, was a 32-foot steel Tahitiana in which I sailed solo almost to the tip of Labrador. The original purpose was to retrace the extraordinary voyage of an Inuit sea captain and Moravian missionaries who sailed north along the coast of Labrador into Ungava Bay in 1811. I greatly enjoy chatting with readers and can be contacted easily via: facebook - Dennison Berwick or Marine Diesel Basics twitter - ocean hermit marinedieselbasics.com dennisonberwick.com Thanks for reading. Fair winds and a reliable diesel.