The Cure for Anything Is Salt Water : How I Threw My Life Overboard and Found Happiness at Sea

From Publishers Weekly A mid-life crisis and a latent sense of adventure caused book editor South to give up her life in publishing and take up residence on the Bossanova, a steel-hull trawler she bought before knowing how to captain it. The subtitle is largely hyperbolic-South's time "at sea" was really a short, if perilous, sail from Florida to Sag Harbor, where the boat is now docked-but South makes an interesting memoir from her skillful observation of the sailing life: "Good seamanship isn't the thoughtless instinct that salty dogs make it seem to be. It's the good habit of always asking yourself the right questions in the right order and answering them thoughtfully." Sometimes, she seems to have forgotten landlubbers might pick up her book; a sentences like, "One danger is that your bow will slow and your stern will get kicked out to the side, causing you to be beam-to," is just one head-scratcher of many for the uninitiated. She can be clumsy when transitioning between sailing stories and other aspects of her life ("This sailing was happiness. For a time, happiness, too, had been Leslie."), but her clear-eyed perspective and involving stories keep the narrative moving. This small but well-observed memoir is a worthwhile read for anyone stuck in the workaday rut. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From South, a successful book editor with stints at Ballantine and Houghton Mifflin, turns 40 with "a complicated concoction of ennui and despair," an average midlife crisis. But her next step is far from ordinary: she abruptly walks away from her well-paying job, sells her recently acquired house in Pennsylvania and most of her belongings, and buys a used 40-foot, 30-ton trawler, planning to pilot it up the coast from Florida to Maine. South recounts the rigors of her nine-week course at the Chapman School of Seamanship, where her classmates include an aging executive, a pony-tailed trucker, an Alaskan fisherman, and a documentary filmmaker. She describes her sometimes harrowing, always challenging trip up the Atlantic coast, assisted by a fellow student and novice, a trip marked by sudden storms, tricky inlet currents, long, energy-sapping days, and incredibly gorgeous seascapes. Though not as daring as "climbing Everest or sailing solo around the world," for South the voyage was the most "intensely meaningful" thing she had ever done, and well worth relinquishing luxuries and security. Deborah Donovan Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

At forty-two, Mary South had a pleasant life: a good (if unfulfilling) job, a nice house, a handful of close friends, a couple of much-loved Jack Russell terriers. Something was missing, though. Shuttling between the meeting room and her station at home in front of the TV, she couldn't help feeling that she was missing something intangible but essential. So she decided to go looking for it where so many have before: at sea.

Six months later, South had quit the job, sold the house, packed up her things, and relocated her life onto the Bossa Nova, a repurposed fishing trawler she intended to pilot -- despite her almost total lack of sea-going experience -- between the far outposts of the eastern United States. Taking along the dogs and her sailing buddy, John (her odd-couple opposite in politics, lifestyle, attitudes toward women, and everything else except the love of the open ocean), she set off from Florida to New York State. What began as the fulfillment of an idle wish became a crash course in navigating the byways of the self.

The Cure for Anything traces South's voyage, from the charming Americana of Florida's Intracoastal Waterway out into the open waters of the Atlantic. As the trip progresses, South grapples with the ghosts of family and loves lost, and takes a truer reckoning of what's really involved in casting off an old life and making a new one.

People

“A fed-up publisher heads, via trawler, from Florida to Maine. It’s fun going along for the ride.”

At forty, Mary South had a beautiful home, good friends, and a successful career in book publishing. But she couldn't help feeling that she was missing something intangible but essential. So she decided to go looking for it . . . at sea. Six months later she had quit her job, sold the house, and was living aboard a forty-foot, thirty-ton steel trawler she rechristened Bossanova. Despite her total lack of experience, South set out on her maiden voyage — a fifteen-hundred-mile odyssey from Florida to Maine — with her one-man, two-dog crew. But what began as the fulfillment of an idle wish became a crash course in navigating the complicated byways of the self. South quit her job, sold her house, and set out on a fifteen-hundred odyssey from Florida to Maine-- with her one-man, two-dog crew. What began as the fulfillment of an idle wish became a crash course in navigating the byways of the self.