Spirit of the Wind: A Woman's View of Sailing Across the Ocean

This book is the story of sailing across the ocean from Guam to San Francisco on our wonderful sailboat, the “Spirit of the Wind”, a forty-one foot Taiwan-built Ketch designed by William Garden. A group of twenty-something kids went to Guam looking for the meaning of life, bought a boat, fixed it up, learned to sail across the ocean. It was a beautiful and spiritual journey while at times was totally and completely terrifying. It introduced me to the South Pacific Islands and the wonderful and gracious people there; it was truly “A Paradise.” The warm trade winds that I can feel sometimes in my dreams, the feel and sounds of the wind in the sails and moving through fear. I learned to improvise in the moment, how to deal with life then there was no land for weeks on end with just the horizon all around as if we were sailing on a mirror. It introduced me to the wonders of the ocean and its inhabitants.

This trip changed my life and what I thought the world was. It enabled me to see, feel and do things that I didn’t know I was capable of. It was a serious lesson in being with three other people, all men, in a forty foot sailboat with very little privacy. It taught me that the weather goes on; it doesn’t help to pray for it to change and is bigger than us. It was transformational in so many ways, facing death almost daily.