The Next Port by Heyward Coleman is a bold and entertaining memoir chronicling the five year voyage the author and his wife made sailing their 42-foot sailboat, Skimmer, and offers a few insights about marriage, religion, and the pursuit of happiness. Readers will marvel at the warmth, generosity and wisdom the world had to offer them on this journey of a lifetime.
What began as letters to family and friends ultimately became an engaging book that chronicles the realization of a lifelong dream of the author and his wife to explore the world on a sailboat and is a powerful testament to the life and love that flourished during their five-year “world-wind” voyage. The memoir begins with a flashback sequence as the reader is catapulted into a world of high-wind hurricanes and pirate-threats with adventures from Guantanamo, Cuba to Djibouti in the horn of Africa and nearly forty countries in between. From the joy of new friendships and landscapes to a broken autopilot in the middle of the Pacific, a four-day storm heading for the Southern Cook Islands, and the despair of running Skimmer on the rocks, the seven seas were great teachers and have never been so restless—or forgiving.