Ditch It All, Buy a Boat, and Head Out to Sea? New Book Tells The Story of Someone Who Did.

What is it about the sea that powers the daydreams of middle aged people stuck in jobs they don't care for?

Across working America visions of tropical isles, freshening breezes, and one's boat cutting through the deep blue rise from both cubicle and office.

Many are nothing but that -- daydreams. But Mary South turned fantasy into reality -- trading in her successful career in publishing for a 40 foot steel trawler. It was a bold move, for she had "virtually no nautical skills." And while she didn't sail Bossanova to the South Seas, in "The Cure for Anything is Salt Water" she tells how her maiden voyage up the East Coast altered her life for the better.

Fulfilling many a fantasy, South starts her escape at a company offsite when she goes out the front door during a coffee break and keeps walking. She felt that she'd reached some kind of turning point -- but what, exactly, was not clear:

"Was I having a midlife crisis? The timing was right. But to me it seemed more like a reckoning -- a complicated concoction of ennui and despair that was nothing more than appropriate. I think most people face this at some point. Some drag it around like an albatross for years. It can be disguised as depression. It can be subdued by drink. It can be pushed back into the corners of our minds by great vacations, by fantasies, by love affairs. But I was no longer able to fend it off."

In the previous few years, South had somehow become attracted to the idea of owning a trawler -- not an actual commercial fishing vessel, but a civilian version. She'd even taken a one week course in how to operate one. So in short order she sold her house, cleaned out her savings, found and bought a boat, and enrolled in a nine week course for professional captains.

None of this was easy, and South describes the emotional blend of charging ahead while wondering what she was doing.

The bulk of the book covers her journey up the East Coast, from Bossanova's old home in Florida to her new one on Long Island. As South admits, "it's been done a couple hundred thousand times before." But it's not an insubstantial trip, and with enough incidents along the way to keep the narrative moving. At the end, to South it meant that

I had finally done something that was intensely meaningful to me. More meaningful than good grades, scholarships, speedy promotions, bestsellers -- everything else I had done right in my life, all my other "accomplishments." I had gone from knowing nothing six months ago to coming up the East Coast through the Atlantic as captain of my own boat, and it was the greatest thing I had ever done in my life. No doubt about it.

The few post journey chapters are something of a letdown after the inherently more dramatic voyage north -- although South does strike up a surprising relationship with a fellow mariner. But at the end, her mental health seems much better that that of the harried book editor she was:

Okay, I'm poor. But I won't be poor forever. It's a beautiful day and I'm not sitting in a conference room in a suit listening to the deluded opine earnestly about things that don't matter. I'm where I want to be, doing something I enjoy. Right this second is wonderful.

She credits her "magic carpet" trawler for the transformation. Going along with South for the ride is an enjoyable way to pass a few hours.

What is the best "boats for sale" website, anyway?

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click here to go to the Amazon page for "The Cure for Anything is Salt Water."

Unfortunately, South now has Bossanova on the market -- she's "just a lot more boat than I need," she writes in the ad.