Uncharted

August 12, 2019
In a debut memoir that tacks between sailing and parenting, travel writer Seely details a circuitous series of adventures that occasionally veers off course. She and her husband, James, reevaluate their lives following career changes and health threats, and decide “we could live safe, small lives or try something totally new.” That something new translates to “a ridiculous amount of boat”—the purchase of Heron, a “fifty-four-foot money pit” neither knows how to sail. Driven by a quest—Seely to spot the rare spirit bear in Canada’s Great Bear Rain Forest, James to uncover an ancient longhouse in British Columbia—the couple set sail from Seattle following their younger son’s departure for college. They guide Heron northward in a trial-by-water journey, dodging rapids, exploring deepwater fjords, anchoring in remote coves and learning about First Nations culture in tribal villages threatened by pipeline development. Seely’s travel writing is luminous, her prose mystical and revelatory—“the exquisite solitude felt glorious... like a gift to myself, and I tried to memorize these moments... to keep all these things inside me”—but in describing the empty nest, she relies on such clichés as feeling “punched in the gut.” Regardless, Seely’s nautical journey makes for an intimate, satisfying narrative.