When we were sailing I felt borne up by wings capable of taking me much farther than I’d ever thought possible, to places where I could watch the storm petrels glide before the rising and falling walls of waves. Where a calm night’s watch was spent watching the swirling bioluminescence in our wake while trying to think of the ways and whys I could and should steer my professional life away from the noise and…

Giving up or going forward would require all hands. And there was one additional problem: among his crew was an incapable infant me. So my father did what any good crew member would: He put me in my car seat, tied the car seat to the mast below deck, with a bungee cord as my baby sitter, and finished the race. My attachment to boats, wild and innate, grew from that day forward.

1. “When you get to Copenhagen, don’t give your grandfather a hard time,” my mother says at the airport. We’re to board the QE2 in Copenhagen and sail with my grandparents for two weeks. I’m 17. My grandmother, who has owned her own travel agency since the 1960s, specializes in group travel. She’s got groups of 15-50 wherever she goes and if she’s sells enough rooms on the QE2, they throw her an extra one…