We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea

I liked it, it was a fun read. There was A LOT of boating terminology, which I don't understand; at first it wasn't so bad, but I found myself having to skim entire paragraphs that were simply describing how parts of the boat were working. For this I'm knocking off a star because it really did take up quite a lot of the book. Aside from that I found the plot and writing charming.

After a gentle start (there are seven chapters of preparation before anything out of the ordinary happens), this turns into an exciting story, in which four children aged about 9 to 14 find themselves unintentionally sailing a yacht across the North Sea, at night and in bad weather.

There are no baddies in this story: its heroes battle against the elements and their own limitations. But it's quite an epic struggle in which they're at real risk of death.

Readers should be warned that this is a sea story written by a sailing enthusiast: non-sailors may find that the blow-by-blow account tells them more than they wanted to know about sailing.

Also note before reading that it dates from 1937, so it's somewhat old-fashioned in general. The world before the Second World War was significantly different from the world we know now.

A story like this couldn't plausibly be set in modern times, because at least two of the children would have mobile phones, which would wreck the whole plot.