A Marriage At Sea is Sophie Elmhirst's retelling of the story of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, who survived a 118 day ordeal in a liferaft/dinghy combo that they used to escape after their sailing yacht (a 31' sloop). Elmhirst is not a sailor, so the book is lacking in nautical details. For instance, despite the notation that they day dreamed about their next boat during their days cast adrift, there's nothing about why they decided that a ketch would be better than a sloop-rigged boat, despite their sloop having already successfully crossed the Atlantic, and the sinking of the Auralyn was not due to its sail configuration.
The book is short and moves quickly, rapidly getting past their respective childhood, meeting, and marriage. The Baileys are quite experienced sailors, and they proceeded with their plan in incremental steps, building their own boat, selling their house, and taking shorter sails before committing to the longer journey to New Zealand. Maurice even applied for a job in New Zealand (their original intended destination) before setting forth.
Elmhirst clearly disliked Maurice Bailey. Her descriptions of him are never flattering, and she never notes how unusual it was in 1973, that the man attributed his survival to his wife. (And Maralyn Bailey did a lot, including a stint where she was nursing him back to life while keeping the liferaft operational as it was leaking and they had to pump it back up several times a day) What was even more extraordinary was that Maralyn Bailey didn't know how to swim!
Needless to say, their rescue (after 7 boats passed them by!) was a world-wide sensational story, with the story rights and press rights paying for their much bigger second boat and a second book, which wasn't a success because their second expedition succeeded. (Given that they'd already made it across the Atlantic once it was quite probably that making it to Patagonia wasn't as big a challenge as New Zealand would have been) And of course, today with modern equipment (and a Garmin Inreach Mini) such an expedition would not have resulted in 117 days cast adrift. (The author did note that Maurice didn't even have a radio onboard as he wanted complete isolation from the outside world)
The book doesn't overstay its welcome, and made me curious as to what the original book written by the Baileys was like (it's out of print). Chances are, the story is so compelling someone will make a movie out of it and that original book will get reprinted. I enjoyed it!
Maurice wasn’t quite able to grasp that it wasn’t the voyage itself that had made their last book an attractive commercial proposition, but its failure. No one would have suggested they write a book of their travels if they’d arrived safely in New Zealand. No one wants to read the story of an adventure going right. (kindle loc 2066)
