The chronicles of Jones' adventures aboard his beloved "Cresswell", a wooden lifeboat converted to a cruising sailboat. Jones survives storms, dismastings, arrest by the Soviet navy, the smuggling of Edam cheeses and Barbary apes and being sunk by whales. We also get to meet an intriguing cast of dockside characters: Karl, the German fish-canning salesman; Pete, the Australian smuggler; Sissie, the Englishwoman who weedles her way permanently aboard; and Neson, Jones' three-legged dog.