ONCE BITTEN – FOREVER SMITTEN
a voyage to distant shores
COMING SOON
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Why I wrote Once Bitten – Forever Smitten – a voyage to distant shores: The inspiration to write this book came sixteen years after my great adventure and by chance, after recently reading someone else’s memoir, a book about their sailing adventure across the South Pacific. When done reading of their experiences, I actually felt quite depressed. There were stormy seas, unpredictable weather, inconvenient access to food, unfriendly islanders and I thought, ‘Anyone planning to go sailing and having read that would be contacting a yacht broker to sell their boat.’ My experience was nothing like that. For years I had been asked, “Why don’t you write a book?” and my response was always, “There are already too many sailing books and they are all the same.” But they are not the same, as I discovered. Reading ‘that’ book was the shove I needed. I dug out my journals (10 of them) and wrote my own story; my adventure was exhilarating, fun and often funny, memorable, life changing and certainly challenging at times but not for one moment was it regrettable.
ONCE BITTEN – FOREVER SMITTEN
a voyage to distant shores
In what began as a circumnavigation of Vancouver Island was the beginning of a five-year sailing adventure.
I cast off my worldly chattels. Purged the stuff that no longer mattered. Rid myself of trinkets that cluttered my shelves. Eliminated the mounds of nonsensical things that crowded the corners of my life. I tore away the binds of the internet, broke down the bricks and mortar that surrounded me, and I excused myself from the stresses of life, driven by bills and the hopeless state of a materialistic world.
Although I have always loved boats and being on the water, sailing had never been a dream of mine, but perhaps the sweetest things in life occur when one is looking the other way – dreaming a different dream. Some thought me to be brave. Others described me as foolish and naïve. I didn’t care.
The Pacific Ocean awaited me.