Two in a Boat: The True Story of a Marital Rite of Passage

When she was in her forties, recovering from depression and alcoholism, Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis decided to trade in her landlubber existence -- a house in Cardiff, Wales, and a responsible job at the BBC -- for life aboard a small yacht with her husband, Leighton, a former bosun with the Merchant Navy and now in his midsixties.

After buying a yacht -- Jameeleh -- and teaching themselves to sail it (a process not without its fair share of disasters, from psychotic seas off St. Govan's Head to a battle with buoys off Ballycotton), Gwyneth and Leighton set out to cross the Atlantic. But Gwyneth's seasickness and Leighton's daily deterioration into Captain Bligh were not the only catastrophes they had to contend with. This strange, stirring, and often hilarious account of their voyage is as much a beginner's guide to sailing as it is a portrait of a marriage under pressure.

Gwyneth Lewis's training, as a poet and a filmmaker, lends her prose a wonderfully visual quality, and her contagious optimism in the face of inconceivable adversity makes this unique memoir both witty and wise.