A Star to Sail Her By: A Five-Year Odyssey of Adventure and Growth at Sea

In 2003, casting their fortunes—and their lives—to the wind, the Ellison family embarked on what they thought would be a one-year voyage on their forty-seven-foot sloop, Promise. Five years and more than 25,000 nautical miles later, the family of four returned to the United States and dry land.

In this memoir, author Alex Ellison chronicles his family’s adventures on the seas. Culled from a detailed daily journal that Ellison began keeping at the onset of the voyage when he was just eight y...