Fran Mallery

In 1993, Fran and her husband, Tim, had a stable and comfortable life in Vermont with their two young children, Casey and Julia. Living in a house they had built themselves, it seemed a dream existence: Fran had achieved her goal of becoming a Waldorf teacher, and the children were growing up in a supportive community with close friends.

But Franny and Tim were restless. That year they made the radical decision to sell their house, quit their jobs, and embark on a sailing adventure aboard Anywhere, a forty-two-foot Vagabond ketch. The plan was to sail up the St. Lawrence River, east on the Erie Canal, and down the Hudson River to the Intracoastal Waterway, cruising south along the Atlantic seacoast and into the Caribbean.

The following year, they did just that. For four years, on and off, the family lived aboard Anywhere, with Tim as captain, navigating the sometimes perilous waters of the Caribbean, and Franny as first mate, setting sails and homeschooling their children. Island-hopping through the Bahamas and West Indies, they eventually sailed to South America.

Nearly every day during those four years, Fran Mallery kept a journal of their adventures aboard Anywhere. In Anywhere: A Journal of Adventures at Sea, she has chronicled, with sensitivity and vivid language, her family’s many life-changing adventures and the amazing variety of places and people they encountered while living under sail.