Blue Star Logbook

I left Blue Star many years ago and whilst most of my memories are happy ones there are some that still haunt me. When it came to writing a novel I found myself mining some of these less pleasant experiences from a voyage on the New York Star down to Valparaiso in Chile in the 1970s. It was a nasty time as the democratically elected government had just been toppled in a CIA backed military coup by General Augusto Pinochet. People in their thousands were being ‘disappeared’ then tortured and killed, some of them on a training vessel for naval cadets berthed not far from us (see ‘Esmerelda BE-43’ on Wikipedia if you ‘re interested).
I decided to use what happened then as back story for the hero of my spy thriller ‘The Heretic’ who sails to Chile on a ship suspiciously like the New York Star. I thought I would let you know about the book as some of you might find it interesting, especially if you too sailed to Chile around that time. The book is written under my pen name of Fergus Bannon and can be purchased from Amazon as an e-book (£1.80) or as a paperback (£6.37).
I should perhaps make it clear that life at sea and in Chile make up only about a third of the book but perhaps it might ring a few bells for some of you,

Best wishes,
Barrie Condon, O/T on the New York and California Stars