Dowagiac visitor’s book named a 2010 finalist
Published 10:42 pm Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Gregg Granger’s itinerary read like he tried to visit every “Survivor” locale.
Vanuatu.
Gregg Granger of Middleville, author of “Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home,” visited Dowagiac last August to talk about his family’s 4 1/2-year voyage to exotic locales, which he discussed at Rotary Club as the guest of City Clerk Jim Snow.
Borneo.
The Marquesas.
Actually, it’s simpler than that. And much more complicated, though he can confirm the active volcanos in Vanuatu because he perched on the rim of one during a 38-country odyssey.
The author of “Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home,” who visited Dowagiac Rotary Club last August as guest of City Clerk Jim Snow, sailed around the world for 4 1/2 years, from November 2003 until May 2008, with his wife, two teenage daughters, Emily, 15, and Amanda, 12, and 5-year-old son, Gregg II, or Greggii — The Circumnavigators.
The book cover shows Antipodes, rechristened Faith, sailing beneath Anzac Bridge in Sydney, Australia.
ForeWord Reviews has announced Granger’s book as a 2010 Book of the Year Awards finalist selected from 1,400 entries in 56 categories.
Award winners are chosen by librarians and booksellers working with patrons and customers daily.
ForeWord is the only review trade journal devoted to books from independent authors and publishers.
The impact of malaria, broken bones, storms and other struggles was a small price to pay for the personal and family growth they experienced; that same impact was dwarfed by the Created world and goodness the Granger family witnessed.
“I’ve been a member of this Rotary club since 1980,” said Robert Eady of Niles, “and this is the most invigorating, interesting presentation I can remember.”
Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home is available at amazon.com and from the author’s website at www.faithofholland.com.
“The whole theme of the book is that the world is populated by wonderful people everywhere,” Granger said in Dowagiac. “We saw God’s image reflected everywhere we went, despite what you see on the news every day.”
Before leaving Hampton, Va., aboard a 56-foot monohull boat to cross three oceans, the Granger’s sailing experience consisted of a week aboard a Florida charter and a 16-foot Hobie Cat at their Gun Lake home, where he owned a hardware store.
“You’re going to a lot of places where they don’t value human life like we do,” friends and relatives reacted to their plan, although he says his two favorite places in retrospect were Yemen and Indonesia, where President Obama lived as a boy.
Their journey aboard the vessel they named Faith was about travel and culture, but more about relationships.
Relationships with their creator, with each other and with people on similar journeys like a Swedish family they kept encountering.
Learning to sail was the least of the obstacles they faced while traveling head-long into places where they grappled with preconceptions and prejudices to discover how strong and wrong were their preconceived notions.
Time abroad afforded the Grangers a view of America from a different and not always popular perspective.
Gregg’s malaria — his death was predicted before God put in his path a doctor with credentials to have him evacuated to Cairo — broken bones, four memorable storms and that 10 months it took for their boat to be painted in Malaysia were small prices to pay for the personal and family growth they experienced.
His two daughters attended Calvin College. His son is in seventh grade at Thornapple-Kellogg.
Granger grew up in Lansing and worked in his father’s construction business.
He earned a master’s degree in labor and industrial relations from Michigan State University.
Besides owning the local hardware store on Gun Lake, Granger started a construction company that built seawalls and sold docks and boat hoists.
In 2003, “I was inspired — by God, I believe — to do something different with my life and my family,” although sailing around the world was supposed to take two years.
“In June 2002, my wife (Lorrie) and I were feeling a little bit stretched, going this way and that, trying to build a business, trying to put something away for the future,” he recalled Aug. 5 at Elks Lodge 889. “One night I had a revelation that I believe came from God. Why did I keep trying to keep myself away from my family? Just give myself to my family. By October we bought a boat in Annapolis. We left Hampton, Va., in November 2003. A lot of people have a life dream of sailing around the world. It consumes them for years. It wasn’t our dream, it was just something laid on our hearts to do.”
