November Meeting

November 8, 2008

Topic: Ten Hours Until Dawn

A Blizzard of ’78 Tale of Heroism & Tragedy

Speaker: Michael Tougias

Michael Tougias is a lecturer and award-winning author of 17 books. His latest book Fatal Forecast: An Incredible Tale of Disaster and Survival at Sea was praised by the Los Angeles Times as “a breathtaking book – Tougias spins a marvelous and terrifying yarn.” The author’s other true adventure book, Ten Hours Until Dawn: The True Story of Heroism and Tragedy Aboard the Can Do in the Blizzard of 78, was selected by the American Library Association as one of the “Top Books of the Year” and described as “a white-knuckle read, the best book of its kind”. Tougias has researched dozens of survival stories and includes them in his lecture for businesses titled, Survival Lessons: Decision-making Under Pressure. (www.michaeltougias.com)

On a lighter note, Tougias chronicled his misadventures at his remote cabin in Vermont in his award-winning book There’s A Porcupine In My Outhouse: Misadventures of a Mountain Man Wanna-be. This book won the Independent Publishers Association Award for the “The Best Nature Book of the Year.”

During the height of the Blizzard of 1978 the pilot boat Can Do, with five men onboard, set out from Gloucester to assist a lost Coast Guard boat and an oil tanker that was in a Mayday situation. Ten Hours Until Dawn tells the story of what happened on that awful night when the seas were producing monstrous waves of 40 feet and the wind was screaming at 100 miles per hour.