In 1980, Buckley gathered together his friends and set out to sail
across the Atlantic. This is what he correctly describes as a
"celebration" of that thirty-day event. Here are the calms and the
storms, the melodrama and the rumination, the wine and the song, the
navigation and the introspection that in Buckley's distinctive blend
capture the imagination of sailors and non-sailors, amuse the
lighthearted and the dour, and engross the reader who wishes he were
aboard, as also the reader who thanks heaven that he is not.