Sophie Elmhirst
Nonfiction 2024 | 249 pages
This is the story of an English couple, Maurice and Madalyn Bailey, who have simply had enough with living on land and occupying themselves with boring jobs. They decide to build a sailboat and live on it, perhaps for the rest of their lives ... who knows how long? Maurice is a quiet loner, awkward around people, and Madalyn is charismatic and ambitious. But together they complement one another and build a powerful and obsessive dream. In June 1972, they set sail. For nearly a year all goes well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocks a hole in their boat, and it sinks beneath the waves.
What ensues is a dramatic fight to survive nearly four months in a dinghy and a rubber raft. Starving, exhausted, resourceful, they have to figure out how to survive their physical and emotional challenges, and their marriage, Their personalities are so in display in this adventure. Maurice navigates using a sextant ... no technology for him. Maralyn organizes food and water and the staples and basics of living on a boat and later, just a raft. They end up fishing with a safety pin, and catching rainwater to drink, and, against their values, killing turtles for some sustenance.
Elmhirst"s writing is tight, as dramatic as the story is, and very readable. The tale of their survival is jaw-dropping. You will sail through this true story (pun completely unintentional!) and, if you are like me, you will find Maralyn's menus for what they will serve after they have been rescued, as intriguing as how they patch the hole in the raft, perhaps created by skeleton fish.
On the last page before the epilogue the author writes that one of the main characters "...had a hard beginning, a dramatic middle, and an isolated end." Yes, the end is difficult, as both Maralyn's and Maurice's lives come to an end. But realistic, yes? And this book is way more about the "dramatic middle."
I heartily recommend A Marriage at Sea." I started it last year (New Year's Eve) and finished it this year (New Year's Day), and it was hard to put down.
January 2026