The last word: A family nightmare at sea

John and Jean Silverwood were happily sailing the world with their four children when the unimaginable happened. In a new book, Jean recounts a long night of terror.

Below deck in our catamaran sailboat, my husband, John, stood in the doorway of our tiny stateroom. I can picture him there in that instant before everything changed. Our four children—we had pried them away from their suburban world for a thousand reasons—were busy elsewhere on the boat, settling in for the night. John had just told me how long it would probably take us to get to Fiji, our next destination by way of Tonga. After Fiji and Australia, the plan was for the kids and me to head home to the States while John stayed behind long enough to clean up the Emerald Jane and sell her.

I was propped up in bed with a laptop as John chatted from the doorway. He hadn’t had a drink since his big meltdown in the Caribbean, and I was pretty much in love with him again. We had done what we set out to do two years earlier when we first set sail. Along the way, our children’s eyes had opened to the beauty of the world. The kids were very strong characters now, very different from when we began. We loved them in new ways—maybe deeper ways, because we had taken the time to finally get to know them. John said he had just finished a sweet conversation under the stars with Amelia, our 14-year-old daughter, during her turn at the wheel.

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