Going West: Two Years Sailing Around the World by Barbara Fitzgibbon
Frank and Barbara Fitzgibbon, an ordinary couple in their fifties, were running their own business in Cork when they felt an urge to do something memorable while they were still healthy. They decided to take a two-year sabbatical, sold their home, left their six children and, with limited experience at sea and headed off in a sixteen-year-old thirty-nine foot boat to see the world. Learning as they went along, they extended their journeys from an initial two-night hop to Brittany to a lonely thirty-six days at sea in the Pacific, a period in which they saw only three other boats. Both had to undergo emergency surgery early in the voyage and they were shot at in the Red Sea but they lived to tell the tale and returned filled with incomparable memories. Seeking the Trade winds, they visited the Galapagos Islands, then roamed through Indonesia to Bali, and from Singapore to Malaysia and Sri Lanka, before struggling up the Red Sea to Cyprus and the Greek islands This is a travel tale that will enthral with its simplicity, and inspire all its readers to believe that they can do almost anything if they really want to.