I don’t often reread even my favorite books, since I’m getting old, and there are so many more to make it through. The temptation to read what’s new is always greater than revisiting the tried and true.

I made an exception to my rereading rule recently, though, after leafing through Sail magazine in my dentist’s office and seeing a classified advertisement for Sparrow, the 25-foot sailboat that David Hays and his son Daniel Hays sailed around Cape Horn, the story for the bestseller they co-authored, “My Old Man and the Sea.”

Sparrow, after all, is part of the rich seafaring history of New London ― they left from and returned to the Thames River in 1985 ― a daring journey by father and son in a small, engineless, sailboat.

It’s long been one of my favorite books ― the two write as well as they sail ― and I decided to read it again before answering the ad, which gave the contact as Daniel at sparrow7865@earthlink.net.

The book was as interesting and as exciting as I remember, a narrative that switches between the voices of father and son as they tell the story of how they conceived the adventure, bought a 25-foot hull in England, shipped it to Connecticut, fitted out the rig and interior themselves, to exacting, oceangoing standards, and then set out.

I don’t think I’m spoiling the story to say they made it around the Horn, with some of the weather and drama you might expect from the most treacherous ocean passage in the world.

There’s lots of big weather descriptions, which endear me to ships at sea books.

“It’s galing outside and feels especially lonely. It’s Jan. 5 and we are about 450 miles from Cape Horn with about 1,000 miles to go before the Falklands,” Daniel wrote, long into the journey that had already taken them through the Panama Canal and to Easter Island.

“The wind blows the foam off the top of the waves in white streaks. Visibility is only a few feet because of the spray ― waves are long and there is a roaring in the rigging. My foul weather gear leaks but it keeps the wind out. It’s a long watch, and I’m tired, wet …

“It’s getting worse out, the barometer is falling and it’s raining. Seas are big and scary. The cat is oblivious, cleaning himself on my chest.”

Yes, they had a cat, Tiger.

As they approached the Horn in a gale, Sparrow went over, with David, down below in the cabin, looking directly at seawater through one of the port holes, and Daniel, up on deck, swept into the ocean, pulled back finally by his tether as the little boat finally righted itself with the weight of its bottom keel pushing it upright again.

Father and son, recovering, did finally get a glimpse through all the weather of the “great rock sphinx, the crouching lion at the bottom of the world,” as David described it, before embracing one another and imbibing a finger each of Kahlua to celebrate making it through the infamous passage.

Daniel, who now lives in Maine, is asking $40,000 for Sparrow, which has been in storage for many years. He invested more than $30,000 in a recent rebuild of the fiberglass hull and decks, in anticipation of selling, work he now regrets he didn’t leave undone, so he could have given the boat away.

At one time, he planned a solo circumnavigation in her.

At 63, he says, he got too old to sail.

His father, a founding artistic director of the National Theater of the Deaf, is now 93 and still boating, having just purchased a new power boat, his son said.

Daniel went on from the sailing adventure with his dad to get a degree in environmental science. He wrote another book himself, “On Whale Island,” about a year he and his wife spent on a remote, 50-acre island he owns off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Hays told me he has put off selling Sparrow, but feels obliged to find her a new owner.

He has written a long description of the boat and its equipment and some of the circumstances of their trip around the Horn. She’s ready to go to sea again, he writes, with maybe some improvements, like new rigging.

I was the first one who responded to the ad.

“It’s not about the money. I want to find her a good home. I’ve been avoiding it for a long time,” he told me.

If you are interested in literary and New London maritime history, and would like an adventure, Hays would like to hear from you.

This is the opinion of David Collins

d.collins@theday.com