A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, by Sophie Elmhirst is a gripping account of a British couple, Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, who sailed the open waters of first the Atlantic Ocean, then the Pacific. What starts out as a dream of a lifetime, becomes an unimaginable nightmare.
The story briefly goes into the sailors’ backgrounds. Maurice had a sickly childhood. He grew to be a loner, socially awkward, and compulsive. Maralyn is dependable, systematic, and ambitious. They both shared a horror of wasting their lives, of living a humdrum existence. The Baileys married in December 1963 when Maurice was nearly 30, Maralyn 21.
They had a sailboat built to their specifications, a 31-foot Bermuda sloop they named Auralyn, a combination of both their names. It had a wind vane for steering, but no radio transmitter or other electronics of any kind. They sold their house, quit their jobs and, in July 1972 set sail for a journey of a lifetime.
The Baileys headed west from Hampshire, England, with a final destination of New Zealand. Marilyn, extremely organized, had made endless lists of their possessions and exactly where on the boat they were located. Maurice had taught Maralyn how to sail, but in all respects he was the captain of their vessel.
They sailed the Atlantic Ocean making landfall at many of the usual touristy places, meeting other sailors, but always returning to their solitary sailing journey. In February 1973, eight months after leaving England, they passed through the Panama Canal and began the first stage of their Pacific crossing, with their next destination the Galápagos Islands. By this time they had been sailing about six months.
Smooth sailing came to a crashing end when a sperm whale breached and severely damaged their boat. They tried briefly to stuff materials into the cracks, but it was no use, the boat could not be saved. They quickly gathered food, water, clothes, navigational tools, and their logbook. They launched the dinghy, inflated the life raft, and abandoned the Auralyn. Forty minutes from the strike of the whale, their boat sank into the unforgiving sea.
They tied the life raft to the dinghy and took turns sleeping in the more comfortable life raft. Unfortunately, their water jugs became contaminated by sea water, leaving them dependent on rain to replenish. At this point they were 300 miles east of the Galápagos Islands.
Would they have enough provisions to sustain them until they either reached land or were picked up by a passing ship? Would a ship even see them?
A Marriage at Sea held special fascination for me. My husband and I experienced a similar adventure—sold our house, bought a boat (Impunity, a Bristol 40-foot yawl), quit our jobs and, leaving Seattle, Washington, set sail for the South Pacific. Although we saw whales, they didn’t approach our boat. We did have a few rough times: storms at sea, a hurricane while in American Samoa. The Pacific Ocean is huge. In the thirty-five days it took to sail from San Diego to our first landfall in the French Marquesas, we never saw another boat or ship. I could well imagine the desperation the Baileys experienced in their 117 days adrift, exposed to the elements, utterly lacking in sufficient food and water. I’m glad I didn’t read A Marriage at Sea before we left on our sailing journey.
Side note: I wrote about our sailing experience in my memoir, Sailing with Impunity: Adventure in the South Pacific.