“Dinner & a Movie Night” at TrawlerFest-Bay Bridge Marina night features the film adaptation of one of the greatest maritime novels of all times, Erskine Childer’s Riddle of the Sands.

The 1979 adaptation has many things to recommend it to a nautical audience. Unusually, it is true to Childer’s original. Unlike the recent Redford film All Is Lost, the boating bits are true and accurate. And it has a love interest to spice things up. There are some great scenes about dead reckoning in fog, so the film truly complements our seminar curriculum.

Plus, the book has an interesting backstory that will be revealed when the movie is introduced.

Dinner & a Movie Night is on Friday, Oct. 2. Admission costs $35 per person, but the better option is to purchase a VIP Pass for $375, which includes the following

  • Access to all (4) days of TrawlerFest boat show
  • Access to all seminars (excluding diesel engine and boat handling courses)
  • (1) Ticket to Trawlers at Twilight on Thursday Night
  • (1) Ticket to Dinner & a Movie on Friday Night

Here is what one reviewer said about Riddle of the Sands:

“Erskine Childers’ Riddle of the Sands is often considered one of the earliest examples of a spy novel or political thriller. The book is nearly 110 years old, and a century of imitators–from The Thirty-Nine Steps to Hunt for Red October–might ruin some of the surprises that would have been in store for us in 1903, but there’s still something fresh about Childers’ approach.

“Particularly compelling is the wide-eyed innocence of his protagonists, Carruthers and Davies (played in the movie by Michael York and Simon MacCorkindale). They find themselves trying to stop an armada of battleships with just a single yacht, and yet treat the entire excursion like some kind of wild vacation.  Childers also adds an abundance of accurate nautical details including maps and charts that, if you’re into sailing or, like me, a landlubber who’s just fascinated by the lingo, gives the book’s far-fetched plot an interesting layer of reality.”