Wise, funny and beautifully written, The Water in Between is an inspiring-and cautionary-tale for anyone who has ever wanted to escape into another life. A stint in the army and a broken heart lead Kevin Patterson, who has never sailed before, to buy a 37-foot sailboat. He recruits a more experienced sailor-another brokenhearted guy-and together they set sail for Tahiti, hoping to burn away their miseries in hard miles at sea. At first Patterson finds life under sail distinctly less heroic than the travel literature that has inspired him. But when his companion remains behind, Patterson single-handedly sails his boat across the North Pacific and through a perilous four-day gale, truly testing himself against the elements. "A first rate, quietly enthralling account othat belongs on the shelf with Theroux's Happy Isles of Oceania , Raban's sailings, and the work of landlubber Chatwin." ?Christopher Buckley, The New York Times Book Review "[A]n old fashioned story of personal adventure that probes its own themes with subversive intelligence." ? The New York Times "If a klutz like Patterson can sail to the South Seas, so can you. But writing about it this well is something else again." ? Outside and beautifully written, The Water in Between is an inspiring-and cautionary-tale for anyone who has ever wanted to escape into another life. A stint in the army and a broken heart lead Kevin Patterson, who has never sailed before, to buy a 37-foot sailboat. He recruits a more experienced sailor-another brokenhearted guy-and together they set sail for Tahiti, hoping to burn away their miseries in hard miles at sea. At first Patterson finds life under sail distinctly less heroic than the travel literature that has inspired him. But when his companion remains behind, Patterson single-handedly sails his boat across the North Pacific and through a perilous four-day gale, truly testing himself against the elements. Wise, funny and beautifully written, The Water in Between is an inspiring-and cautionary-tale for anyone who has ever wanted to escape into another life. A stint in the army and a broken heart lead Kevin Patterson, who has never sailed before, to buy a 37-foot sailboat. He recruits a more experienced sailor-another brokenhearted guy-and together they set sail for Tahiti, hoping to burn away their miseries in hard miles at sea. At first Patterson finds life under sail distinctly less heroic than the travel literature that has inspired him. But when his companion remains behind, Patterson single-handedly sails his boat across the North Pacific and through a perilous four-day gale, truly testing himself against the elements. Kevin Patterson grew up in Selkirk, Manitoba, and put himself through medical school by enlisting in the Canadian Army. When his stint was up, he worked as a doctor in the Arctic and on the B.C. coast while studying for his MFA at UBC. His short fiction has been published in Descant and Canadian Fiction Magazine. He is currently a resident in internal medicine at Dalhousie in Halifax and a regular corres-pondent for Saturday Night magazine. The Sea Mouse is moored on Salt Spring Island. Chapter One In August of 1994, I bought a twenty-year-old ferro-cement ketch on the coast of British Columbia. I did this in an effort to distract myself-at the time I was so absorbed in self-pity my eyes were crossed. I had been wandering around marinas sorrowfully leaning my head against dock pilings and losing my train of thought; I had the demeanor of an aging milk cow with the scours. People who met me thought I was either drunk or deranged. The most immediate cause of all this was a woman half a continent away who had been headed further for months. My sadness at our parting was histrionically out of proportion to anything that could have been justified by events. I spent weeks chain-smoking and staring at the ground. At the time I was working as a doctor at a summer camp for Canadian army cadets in the B.C. Interior. It was an absurd job and I made an absurd picture, shuffling around the dusty parade grounds, hands in pockets, sighing grandly and ignoring the columns of pubescent boys and girls marching stiffly past me. I was twenty-nine and had been out of the army myself for only a year. That summer, many Canadian medical officers were being sent to Rwanda and Bosnia. The army had always provided a doctor for the camp, but now they were short-staffed, which is how I had come to be there. When they called to ask me to fill in, I was working up in the Arctic, on the coast of Hudson Bay. It was late June, and so cold that even the river ice hadn't broken yet. The sea pack was solid to the horizon. I said yes without even thinking. At the time I was drifting and had been since the previous summer-ever since leaving the army. I had been in Winnipeg, on my way to the job in the Arctic, when I met her. There was a week of slow suppers and long, delicious conversation. This was earlier in