Coming about: A Family Passage at Sea - Tapa blanda

An uplifting account tells how the author and her family restored the bonds among them through a nine-month voyage around the Caribbean aboard a sailboat, a trip that initiated them into the rigors and rewards of the sea. Original.

never lived on a sailboat. I had never sailed more than ten days straight. Would I like it? Could I do it? Was this journey a solution, or would it turn out to be just a new rendition of the same old problems?

I breathed deeply, and I jumped in."

Susan Hitchcock felt her family of four drifting apart. As she watched the daily demands of life tug her away from her husband and two young children, she knew they must find a way back to each other. So to reconnect as a family, they took to the sea.

Sailing for nine months and 3,500 miles around the Caribbean aboard Hei Tiki, they meet formidable challenges from the volatile moods of Mother Nature and the mighty ocean to the cultural barriers on distant islands, and their own innermost fears. Though a novice sailor, Susan soon develops an affinity for the water, feeling her life pulse with the sensual rhythm of the tides. And through both the rigors and the serenity of sailing, her family discovers a newfound inti