KEEPING AHEAD
OF WINTER
4100 Nautical Miles Inside America
Nonfiction
“Keeping Ahead of Winter” is a startling account of a unique honeymoon and an insight into the world of the boating community.
The journey for me was a geography and history lesson. Viewing the country from the waterside is like a different world than by land. I was enthralled with the changing scenery, migrating birds and dolphins that played alongside.
Boating was new to me. I went to United States Power Squadron class to learn the language. Like; learning port from starboard and how the boat was built and learn the basics of how it propels through the water. In spite of my poor mathematics I had to learn about navigation and learn about the sea and the weather.
And know how to operate the equipment.
Since there was only the Captain and me, I had to reach like I never reached before both mentally and physically, and I loved every minute of it. Even though I pushed and encouraged the making of the voyage, had I known what the journey would entail I wouldn’t have believed it possible.
It was mostly a life among men. There were few women in 1965 that were a part of the cruising scene; I was First Mate, Stewart, Chef and Ordinary Seaman.
We had taken our home with us and went off on a safari in North American Waterways .
The journey was not finished. It needed to be told and I was no writer. I took the Famous Writers home study writing course and went to writer’s seminars and joined critique groups. I wrote my first draft in 1971, life got in the way and it wasn’t until I was widowed and eighty-years-old that I got back to the book and re-wrote it again and again until it was worthy of publication
The burgeoning amount of retirement age readers will welcome this story of an older couple’s determination to live life to the fullest.
A recently divorced, fifty year old woman said, “I thought life was gong to be all down hill for me. But since I read your book; that you were fifty, newly married and could go on an adventure like that. There is hope for me!”
