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everything, to claim ignorance or to half-listen. From now on, there would be no such thing as excuses. The outcome of every situation would depend on my ability to cope.
    With a gust of wind, Varuna suddenly tilted over at a 15-degree angle, sliding me to the other side of the cockpit, where my elbow banged against the winch. “Ouch!” I cried, rubbing the bruise. “Varuna is nothing like Pathfinder . She’s so tiny.” I couldn’t remember ever having been this close to the water on a boat. Today was the first time that Varuna had ever been out of sight of land, and this little cockleshell was as untested as I.
    Varuna was named for the Hindu goddess of the cosmos. She was a graceful 26-foot sloop and I was beginning to feel her spirit. Already thinking of Varuna and me as “us,” I felt we were a couple and, as a couple, we’d have to forgive each other our shortcomings and help each other to learn. Continuing to fuss over the Monitor, I reflected on our search for the perfect boat for the trip.
    My father and I had pored over the classified listings in sailing magazines for secondhand boats. The possibilities were narrowed down to anything between 20 and 30 feet that seemed seaworthy. I wasn’t the world’s most proficient mariner, and a smaller boat would help me learn more easily than a larger one. If problems arose on a small boat, we figured, they would be small problems. I would have to pull up small sails, and fix small leaks. My father even equipped Varuna with a mini tool kit with all sorts of miniature tools he had picked up at the bargain stands on Canal Street. Although they seemed perfectly adequate at the time, they were destined to corrode, disintegrate and be jettisoned one by one, within a month or two of my departure.
    In October 1984, I had driven with my father and Christian down to the Annapolis Boat Show in Maryland. If we couldn’t find a used boat, we’d have to try and find a good new boat. I had never been to a boat show and, although I eagerly explored every last display, nothing made my heart skip. I knew that I would instantly recognize the right boat when I saw her.
    We had gone to the show not only to find a boat, but also with the hope of selling an article I had written about our voyage on Pathfinder to Cruising World , a reputable sailing magazine. They accepted it and, after some discussion, a verbal agreement was reached that they would publish the writings chronicling my voyage. But, in order to write those articles, I had to find a boat.
    On the last day of the show, hidden among the hundreds of flashy boats on display, we found the Contessa 26 built by the Canadian company, J. J. Taylor. My father thumped around up on deck, checking to be sure the superstructure wouldn’t flex under pressure. Christian knocked away on the hull, feeling the thickness of the fiberglass. I sat down below in the compact cocoon of the cabin, looked around and heard myself say, “I think this is the one.”
    She felt more right than any other boat had up until that point, and after several days of thinking it over, we went to Canada to visit the factory, a common thing to do before purchasing a boat. Satisfied with the diligence of the builders, at the end of the day my father and I sat with the president and a salesman who had sailed his own Contessa 32 around the world. They all looked at me. Say yes now and there would be no turning back. “Well, here goes,” I thought, and sealed my fate.
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    I watched a tanker on my reciprocal course, probably heading toward New York Harbor. The sun was shining and the water was emerald green. Twenty miles down, 730 to go. I thought about how to read the barometer. “Does bad weather make a barometer go up or down,” I wondered. “Up? Yes. No, down. I think.” I glanced down through the companionway to the bulkhead over the sink where the