Hook, Line and Misadventure: Stories from a legendary New Zealand fisherman Cliff Barnes

As he looks back over his adventurous life, Cliff Barnes muses that he must have used up eight of his nine lives while fishing along the Northland coast but, on a recount, concedes he has used up the lot.

Among his many scrapes with death was the time his boat was smashed against rocks and sank. Then there was time when he fell overboard and was left fully clothed and treading water as his pilotless boat motored away into the distance. On yet another occasion, he was stuck in a big marine cave on a distant archipelago for a week waiting for a storm to blow itself out, with nothing to eat but a rotting octopus and nothing to drink but the rusty radiator water from his boat's engine.

'I must have been crazy,' is a thought that occurs to him repeatedly as he reflects on life at the grand old age of eighty.