I began writing my debut novel, Fifteen Years to Hiva Oa, in the mid-2010s, right around the time my wife and I made a 10-year plan to quit our jobs and start sailing around the world. We were living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My mother had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and my father-in-law with cancer. Chris Peterson, a colleague at the University, had unexpectedly died. He was one of the founders of the field of positive psychology and had written extensively about what it meant to live a life worth living. He certainly did. So it was quite a heavy time spent reflecting on issues of purpose and meaning. Those events inspired the book.
Influenced by my brief stint in film, the first version of the book was a screenplay treatment. It was just an outline of the key scenes of the overall story. I recently read that old treatment and cringed at how bad my writing was at the time. Yet, I was surprised at how much of that initial story made it into the final book. The overall plot, the characters—Tom, Cindy, the kids, Roger—the boat, and even the final scene were all there from the beginning.
It wasn’t until 2024, after we moved into our boat in Antigua and started our own circumnavigation, that I began converting the treatment into a book. By then, my brain was full of ideas gathered during the years it took us to get there. Stories about the sailing community in Lake St. Clair, about the struggles in finding and refitting a boat, and the heartbreaking accounts of sailing dreams cut short by illness and death. Then, as we sailed south through the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, and eventually to the shores of Hiva Oa, our experiences gave life to the second half of the book. The incidents in Carriacou, the arepas place in Bonaire, the scare with the powerboat off the coast of Colombia, and the tree stuck in the rudder on the way to the Galapagos all happened to us in one way or another.
I finished an ugly first draft in Hiva Oa, of all places. It wasn’t planned, but it felt inevitable. I subjected a dozen beta readers to that early version and benefited immensely from their feedback. Multiple drafts and rounds of review followed. And slowly, I stopped cringing and began smiling when I read each line.
Earlier this week, I finished the final version of the book while at anchor in Great Barrier Island, New Zealand. It was almost 10 years after I wrote the original treatment. My mother and my father-in-law have both been gone a while now. I wish they’d had a chance to read it. After all, this is a story about the pursuit of a life worth living. They certainly did.
The ebook and paperback versions of Fifteen Years to Hiva Oa will be released in mid 2026. A launch party with the cruising community will take place in Musket Cove, Fiji. Free advanced copies will be available for those interested in writing a review.
In 1990s Detroit, Tom and Cindy are tormented by the feeling that life should mean more than their dead-end jobs. They dream of buying a sailboat, leaving it all behind, and sailing around the world with their kids. After a decade of waiting, Tom and Cindy finally find a weathered sailboat they can afford. Their daughter names it Hiva Oa, after the mystical island in the Pacific. For years, family and friends work tirelessly to restore Hiva Oa to her former ocean-crossing self. Yet, just as the ocean is finally within reach, Tom is diagnosed with cancer. With time running out, Cindy pushes Tom to decide whether to keep wasting his uncertain future rebuilding a boat that might never set sail, or cast off the lines now and head to the atolls of the South Pacific before it’s too late. Fifteen Years to Hiva Oa is a tender yet raw novel about what one family is willing to sacrifice in the pursuit of a life worth living.
Recent micro-stories in case you missed them:
I'm so excited to read this, Nestor! Congratulations!
I hope to be in attendance at the Musket Cove launch!