Inside the Book
Waterspouts, marine toilets, pirates, and a family slowly losing — and finding — their minds at sea. Here's a taste of every chapter: no major spoilers, just enough to know what you're getting into.
41 chapters•337 days afloat•1 sailboat named Twig
Part 1: Damn you Lisa
Cocktails and Dreams
One Jimmy Buffett song in his sister's beat-up Honda infected Greg with a thirty-year island obsession — and a third-date marriage pitch no sane woman should have accepted.
The hand of God
The night before inspecting their dream boat in Fort Lauderdale, lightning literally rained down and struck it. The brokers called it lucky. They were wrong.
Down to the Banana Republics
A whirlwind two-ocean weekend in Panama to buy the boat — complete with a mushroom-farm guesthouse, a marina blood feud, and one mysterious used bra.
Panama vs Twig
Repairs become a multilingual grudge match against an entire country — windows, keel bolts, and the batteries — scored round by round.
Christmas Blows
There's a season of brutal Caribbean "Christmas winds" no book warns you about — and it's exactly when 15-year-old rigging is delivering your boat home.
Georgia on my mind
A three-day Denver-to-Brunswick haul, a rooftop luggage box exploding across Kansas, and an anchor so good a dive crew couldn't pull it out.
Love and a sailboat
A misread road sign, endless rigging delays, and something dying in the rental floorboards — all while the family still doubts the boat is even real.
Part 2: Afloat
All Aboard!
The family finally meets Twig: a mud-caked disaster, a terrified cat, and a dog who needs a pirate plank just to pee.
There's Vodka in the Boy's Bathroom
Cramming a U-Haul of life into a five-pound sack becomes a never-ending "tile game" — which is how the booze ends up in the kids' shower.
Afloat
Two hired captains, a depth gauge that lies, an unmarked anchor chain, and Meredith's first involuntary swim off a dock with a backpack of clean laundry.
Hazmat
There's no reassuring "click" when you fuel a boat — there's a "whoosh," and miss it and you've got a diesel spill, dead ducklings, and a fuel-dock lady muttering "moron."
Things that go bump in the night
Anchored too close to a buoy at midnight, Twig drags, wraps around it, and Greg botches his very first VHF distress call — four rites of passage in one night.
Don't Ignore the Bright Red Light
A dead battery, an oil spill, a bucket of dog poop knocked overboard, and one warning light Greg swore he could safely ignore. He could not.
Caulk the Wagon
Cruising at the speed of a jogging 48-year-old turns the Thorny Path into a real-life Oregon Trail — complete with a waterspout and a game of cargo-ship Frogger.
Perfect Strangers
Fifteen years married, and a broken dinghy davit reveals they're total strangers when it comes to fixing things — the software tinkerer versus the flight nurse.
Part 3: The Bahamas
42 Flushes
Five people, eighty-four flushes, and a failed "joker valve" mean rationing toilet trips — and a repair Greg put off until the crew threatened mutiny.
The Nut Jiggler
A machete duct-taped to a pole, a barefoot coconut raid, and a curious family of swimming pigs strolling out of the woods at dark.
Watch your six
A windlass fixed with a hammer, a freezer dying, and a neighbor's radio call to gently mention that Twig is backing right over its own paddleboards.
You smell like a pirate
A floating recipe for olfactory assault — mildew, diesel, dog doody in the heat — until the crew gives up showering and hoists the Jolly Roger.
I wet the bed
The hatches sit right over the beds like sunroofs. Forget one before hosing down the solar panels, and yes — you'll wet the bed. Again.
Twist and Spout
A nerve-wracking reverse docking earns Greg an undeserved "atta boy" — then a clear-sky "three hour tour" delivers the biggest waterspout veteran sailors had ever seen.
Weather or not
Sailors don't have "the" weather app — they have a dozen, all wrong. A darkly funny tour of squalls, named storms, and the insurance bully you can never outrun.
Part 4: The East Coast
What if I have to go Poo?
First overnight passage, alone at the helm at 3 a.m., one increasingly urgent problem — and the fateful dinner choice of chili and coffee.
Dr Jekyll's Island
A lip-licking alligator, a dry stowaway raccoon who supposedly can't swim, a beer run on chainless bikes, and a friendly visit from the boat cops.
You say Savannah, I say Banana
Their third haul-out spirals into stripped saildrive gears, a hidden fuse hunt, twenty feet of progress before disaster — and pirates who pick a lock.
Pepperoni is not a fruit
When the nearest banana is a two-mile dinghy slog away, the kids start losing the plot — and the family accidentally eats ice cream for lunch.
House of Warship
A confusing Chesapeake entrance, an aircraft carrier bearing down from behind, and an armed Navy boat that did not find Greg's "right of way" joke funny.
Feeling Crabby
Chicken necks, a homemade trap, four strikeouts, and one rig sunk on the very first throw — then the kids finally taste blue crab and hate it.
Tot
A guided tour of life in an 11-foot rubber raft as your family car: grind the top off a sedan, remove the brakes, add an inch of water, and steer behind your back.
There's Always Room For Jello
Three swims a day was the dream; jellyfish, gators, and motion sickness deliver a jello-bodied reality — and Meredith's mandatory family burpee plan.
Oh Ophelia
An El Niño storm corners them in a tiny Deltaville marina, where Greg counts the storm surge foot by foot as the dock vanishes beneath the boat.
Part 5: Due South
Boat Chill Factor
Endless summer was the dream; instead it's 50 degrees in the Chesapeake, and Greg invents a wholly fictional (yet entirely real) "Boat Chill Factor" to cope.
I lack depth
The depth sounder dies in shoal country — a saga of wrong parts, a missing sensor, a dreaded thru-hull swap, and a fix that turned out to be just "reboot it."
Wednesday
No disasters this time. Just a long walk with the dog, a book in the cockpit, kids cooking dinner, and the quiet revelation of an ordinary, perfect Wednesday.
Anchor(s) Away
In the pre-dawn dark, something horrifying clings to the anchor chain. Is it a body? A log? And why is that deck light so useless?
Cinderella Lost Her Slipper
Five cases of Covid, a failed water pump, 50-knot winds — and an unmanned neighbor boat named Cinderella breaking loose to play Plinko with the anchorage.
Suck it Murphy
A crossing where everything that can break does — windlass, chart plotter, drone, autopilot, steering, depth sounder, engine — and the galley's still closed when they arrive.
And Then We Hit a Rock
A 19-hour marathon and a frantic harbor-hopping day end with a gut-wrenching CRUNCH on a rock the chart swore wasn't there — and a decision to head home.
What the Fog?!
A six-leg relay race home against a spiteful Mother Nature: lost lures, two wedding rings gone, sudden blinding fog, and one last tearful goodbye to Twig.
Epilogue
There's no place like home
Back in snowy Denver after 337 days, fielding the question everyone asks — "Would you do it again?" — from the strange far side of a lifelong dream.
Come Monday (Tribute to Jimmy Buffett)
Written the day after Buffett died: the man who, song by song, talked Greg into quitting his job, buying a boat, and sailing off — and the gratitude that finally turned to tears.
Glossary of Ridiculous Nautical Jargon
Glossary
Every absurd term you just survived, defined — keep it handy.
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