Aweigh of Life is a sweeping memoir of the author’s unique experiences of sailing and living in the South Pacific in the 1970s. From Hawai’i to the Marquesas to Fiji to New Zealand to Papua New Guinea and places in between, movie-screen images come alive– replete with gales and hurricanes, turquoise lagoons, and exquisite descriptions of the beauty, generosity and lifestyle of the less-developed island peoples of Oceania. More than an adventure story, it is peppered with cultural, historical, and geographical observations. More than a travelogue, it is the account of a fearless, strong, and independent woman daring to pick up the flotsam floating on receding horizons, pieces she gathered up to find her way home and the reason she left.
Journey with her as she sails to a remote island off of Papua New Guinea to birth her first child amongst grass-skirted peoples. Sweat with her as she hikes across remote islands. Live with her as she goes “bush” in New Zealand, building a thatched hut and subsistence farming before returning to the sea. Enter into awe-filled weeks of being these tiniest of moments on this immense endless ocean on this granule of a planet that is spinning through an unfathomably deep and endless space. Through her eyes, travel through the South Pacific as it was in the ’70s, more innocent and less spoiled than it is now. As she weaves seven years of adventurous tales into a “warts and all” memoir, feel into her heart as she explores, with grace and bravery, the emotional and metaphysical dimensions of the choices she made that left her aweigh of life for many years. Fascinating and intimate. Simply put, it’s a page turner.
“For seven years, I sailed the South Pacific, lived in thatched huts, experienced cultures less touched by civilization, and gave birth to my first child on an island of grass-skirted, betelnut-chewing, bare-breasted peoples. Though it’s only several yards cut from the bolt of my life, the fabric of who I am 50 years later is woven from the threads of that journey. Reconstructing the journey before it’s too worn to repair in my memory, I offer this fabric for you to experience its pattern, its colors, and to feel its texture, its warmth, its roughness, its softness, its wetness, its courage, its blindness, its self-deception, and its excitement.
So, welcome, welcome. Climb aboard and sail away with me, but hold onto your LaZBoy recliner as I bring these seven years of adventures alive for you.