When Dan and I sailed away on Capricorn in the mid 1970s, I started keeping a log on a yellow pad of paper. I wrote in pencil, detailing almost all the events that took place after Dan lost his business and we took up full time residence aboard our 40’ Newporter Ketch. As the years went by, I sent the pages to my daughters for safekeeping, thinking I might lose them if our boat sunk or caught fire or was lost in a hurricane or other unknown circumstance.

Danny died on April 15, 2003 after a ferocious fight with Lung Cancer, and I started writing the next day, incorporating the pages from the ship’s log in my story. I wrote manically, my fingers flying across the keyboard. I wrote all day long, every day, as I sat in my little bookstore in Florence, Oregon, paying little attention to the customers who browsed through my store. At the end of a year, I had written more than 1,600 pages, more than enough to fill four books.

I sent the manuscript to several publishers and didn’t hear back from a single one. Then I received an email from a Publisher who said they would publish the manuscript if I cut it into two separate books. I was surprised and excited until I studied all the details of the contract, finding that with the acceptance of the offer the Publisher would have control of the cover design, the interior editing and the rights to the story for many years. It didn’t take me long to reject the offer, deciding to publish the story myself in two volumes.

The first book gives the reader a picture of Dan’s background and mine, so the reader will better understand the events that caused us to sail away from our traditional lives on a small boat. It details the fall of Dan’s business, and leads you through the days when we wandered aimlessly through the crystal clear waters of the Bahamas in search of a new life, then places you smack dab in the middle of the crowded interior of our small sailing yacht as we learned how to pamper and please perfect strangers on their dream vacations. Despite the challenges which included riding out hurricanes at anchor and even sinking on our mooring one dark night, we found we loved chartering, the guests, the islands and the life. It was a voyage we seemed predestined to experience.

It seemed logical to end the first book when we sold Capricorn and set off to find another boat to continue our charter career. The purchase of Capricorn Lady and all the events which followed over the next twenty years, culminating with Dan’s death, fill the pages of the second book.

Food, fun, famous charter guests, and fantastic adventures are yours to experience in the pages of my books, but most of all, I offer the true story of a love that will never dim. Readers say they laugh and cry when they read my story, as many identify with my feelings for Dan and understand them because of the close relationship they share with their mate. Others wish to find such a bond, and for them, my story offers hope and inspiration that they will find the same kind of love one day. I hope you feel the same.

I designed the cover, using charts from Capricorn and Capricorn Lady, and was more than pleased with the support of Xlibris, a strategic partner of Random House Ventures. My books can be published from the publisher, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Borders and from me personally. I had a story I wanted to tell, and I hope you will agree that it was worth telling.