A bitter divorce becomes the final straw in Andrew Kincaids 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.
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 Darwins Galapagos, and the islands of French Polynesia. Mountainous seas, hidden shoals, and dangerous coral reefs challenge Kincaids sailing and navigation skills on his 20,000-mile odyssey.
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.
