Two Sailboats, One Moon

is full of drama and tenderness, frustration and courage, travel adventures and sailing stories, as well as the minutiae of daily life. Qualities of good character abound.

 

In 2002, Bob Bennett and Sue Montana had been together for 17 years. They had made a point of revisiting — and renewing — their commitment to each other every few years, and talking about their goals as they looked towards the future. It was the year after 9/11, a horrible moment in history. At the same time, Bob was at a turning point at his job. As they reviewed their commitment and goals that year, Bob and Sue agreed that it was “time for Bob to do something different” with his life. They did not know then that “something different” would entail Bob resigning from his job and signing on as crew for a small sailboat that would spend a year circumnavigating the globe.

 

In the meantime, Sue was launching a new business. It also fell to her, during the year of Bob’s absence, to maintain the house they had purchased together. In addition, Sue had never captained their own sailboat, Habanero, by herself before this. So, while Bob was off sailing the seven seas, Sue mastered sailing Habanero by herself, as well as the fine art of small boat repairs.

 

During this year Bob and Sue each kept journals of their daily activities, tracking the memorable events in their respective lives — crossing the equator for the

first time, seeing fields of glaciers and pods of whales; taking Habanero out solo for the first time, dealing with the unexpected death of a beloved cat. And they recorded the more mundane details of day-to-day life as well — the types of things that you tend to forget when you aren’t able to converse with your significant other many times a day.  Every time they saw the moon in the sky at night, as they had promised, they not only thought of each other but they wrote about what they were doing and thinking at that moment in their journals.

 

Like all sailing adventures, this one resonates with romance — the romantic notion of embarking on a round-the-world sailing adventure, and the eagerness with which these two sailors met up in foreign ports three times during this unforgettable year. But the very human realities are here, too — Sue’s unexpected feelings of bereftness after Bob’s departure, and Bob’s unexpected doubts about his ability to stick it out for the entire circumnavigation.

 

Two Sailboats, One Moon is unlike any sailing adventure you’ve read before!