Picaroon

A bitter divorce becomes the final straw in Andrew Kincaid's already troubled life. With his wife and three children gone and his self-esteem in ruins the forty-one-year-old former sailor burns all his bridges quits his New York City job and outfits a thirty-eight-foot yacht for a daring solo voyage.<p> Once on his boat the Picaroon he spurns the easy route through the Panama Canal and instead chooses a hazardous westward rounding of the infamous Cape Horn then a trans-Pacific passage to Sydney Australia via Darwin's Galapagos and the islands of French Polynesia. Mountainous seas hidden shoals and dangerous coral reefs challenge Kincaid's sailing and navigation skills on his 20000-mile odyssey.<p> However a single shore leave in South America changes his life in ways he could never have imagined. There he meets the boisterous and hot-tempered ex-pat Australian Kate Devonshire a fugitive running from a dark past; the two begin a sexually charged romance in Rio de Janeiro. Eventually Kincaid travels deep into the parched barrens of the Queensland outback to the scene of a psychopathic rampage that shocked a nation.<p>AUTHOR BIO<br> William Efford was born in Montreal Quebec. A former recreational yachtsman he has cruised in the Great Lakes and traveled widely in the United States. He lives with his wife in Wasaga Beach Ontario Canada where he writes fiction.