Jacket Notes | 'The Sailor's Wife': A crazy, nerve-racking quest for a stolen yacht

“Write a book.” I had heard that more times than there are days of the year. “What a story,” everyone said. “More like a movie than real life.” It was so real, but often I had to pinch myself, until bruised. I often asked: “Why us?” We were knocked as flat as a pancake beneath a bulldozer, but then we were soaring like an eagle, only to plummet to Earth again.

It did not take me long, as a new bride, to realise I had married a man, Nelson, who had another love. She had curves in all the right places, liked to be kept polished and glossy, and was fast when her bottom was clean and her sails were up. Yes, he loved boats. Matching that was his love of the ocean and everything beneath it. A descendant of the maritime hero Admiral Horatio Nelson, maybe there was salt water in his veins. Let’s blame him.

Added to that love was a dream. “Dream” with a capital letter, if that is how one describes something overpowering. The dream to sail the world. Explore distant shores. The terrific Pacific, the fantastic Atlantic. Blessed with three sons, he reckoned he had his crew and all he needed was a boat. The problem? No money. So he set out to build his dream yacht himself. It took years before the sleek, glossy Alter Ego (so named because, for Nelson, this truly was his other self) was finally to be launched onto the waters of Table Bay.

The story begins in what might be termed the aching 1980s. South Africa was in turmoil. Economic sanctions against the country had hit hard. We had a tennis court construction business. Contracts dried up one by one. Bankruptcy loomed. Then disaster struck with a vengeance. The treasured Alter Ego was stolen from Royal Cape Yacht Club by bail-jumping thieves, taking with her Nelson’s shattered dream of sailing the world. A crazy world search to recover the missing yacht ensued. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. But a Good Samaritan, from a far-flung corner of the world, entered. And then? The story takes off.

It took the impact of the pandemic for my half-written manuscript to be resurrected. Our yacht charter business was hit hard. Doors shut. We were unable to operate. In that strange, surreal world of seclusion and silence, I found I had time on my hands. The “write a book” mantra was remembered.

Google was turned to, as usual. Indie publishing was becoming popular. Reach Publishers were advertising. They took over and came up with a winning cover: a tranquil yacht, lying at anchor, its dinghy lolling alongside it. The image belied all the drama on the pages — adventure, nerve-racking hurricanes and exotic islands.

‘The Sailor's Wife’ by Maureen Girdlestone is published by Reach Publishers.