NAVIGARE NECESSE EST by Elsi Vassdal Ellis

The rocky and rough coastline of Norway offers few options to its people other than to turn to the sea for sustenance, occupation, leisure. My father's father worked on a shipping vessel as a cook. His father lived on a small rock and fed this family through limited farming and fishing. His father probably did the same. My father's mother tried very hard to keep her youngest child from leaving terra firma for the uncertainty of the sea. My father's sea adventures involved sailing for the sake of sailing and always with the hope of sailing to Paradise. This book is an embellished biography of my father that examines the decisions he made throughout his life that attempted to resolve the conflict as an artist and then teacher with a desire he could never expunge to sail across the ocean blue. He eventually designed and built his own sail boat, a steel hull double-ender with red modified Chinese junk sails. He sailed it within Puget Sound but was too old to fulfill that wanderlust.