The central event in A Marriage at Sea is a shipwreck: Maurice and Maralyn Bailey were sailing toward the Galapagos when their 31-foot boat Auralyn was struck and sunk by an injured whale. They spent 118 days drifting across the Pacific in a life raft before a Korean fishing vessel spotted them.
The title is the first clue that the book is not fundamentally an adventure tale. Elmhurst describes the Baileys ' improvised survival and subsequent press tour with a journalist's attention to detail, but she is most interested in what their ordeal tells us about their relationship. Just as the undeterred Baileys are about to embark on a second ocean trip, Elmhurst spells out her metaphor explicitly: "For what else is a marriage, really, if not being stuck on a small raft with someone and trying to survive?"
The final section of the book jumps forward to a time after Maralyn has died from cancer. Maurice is miserable without his wife to "untangle him," and quite a handful for his friends. We see how Maralyn's relentlessly forward-looking spirit was critical to their survival both on the raft and off.
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