Sail Cowabunga!: A Family's Ten Years at Sea

Janis Lasky Couvreux

Oct 2017 · Filles Vertes Publishing

About this ebook

 From Bordeaux France to San Francisco, California, Sail Cowabunga! A Family’s Ten Years at Sea follows a Franco-American couple and their two young sons across the Atlantic Ocean and into a ten-year journey at sea. Through their adventures and misadventures, tragedies, and glories across four continents, the Couvreux family rarely had a dull moment living on the water.

Janis chronicles in vivid and lively detail how they fended off a midnight intruder, sailed to the microscopic St. Peter and St. Paul rocks on the equator, explored the jungles of French Guiana and Devil’s Island, and sailed through Cuba in the turmoil of the late 80s.

Their adventure was not without hardship, however, as Janis recounts battling medical emergencies that required sending her husband across the globe for treatment (twice), leaving her to single-handedly orchestrate a Panama Canal passage amid pre-war chaos. While living in the close quarters of their 42-foot sailboat, the Cowabunga, the Couvreux family was able to maintain sanity and a normal daily routine of cooking, schooling, and sleeping at sea, knowing all the while that something unexpected might be waiting just around the next peninsula.

Praise for Sail Cowabunga!:

“A pioneering family adventure built on creativity, grit, ingenuity, and joie de vivre, all bound together by an overwhelming love for all on board and the incredible life Janis and Michel created.

—Peter Stein, children’s author of Cars Galore and the Galore Series at Candlewick Press, and Little Red’s Riding ‘Hood of Scholastic Inc.’s Orchard Books

 

“What a wonderful way to be a family: A must read.”

—Philippe Kahn, Inventor of the camera phone, Time Magazine’s 2016 list of most influential images of all time

 

“One word describes this book, ‘Magnifique!’ This is a story of resiliency, teamwork, family, love and courage.”

—Keith Schneider, Assistant Chief, West Metro Fire Rescue in Littleton, Colorado

About the author

 Janis Lasky Couvreux is an award-winning writer, journalist, Franco-American, lover of languages, travel and adventure addict, sailor, mom, and grandmom. Formerly a newspaper reporter and freelance journalist, Janis is currently a blogger at Huffington Post, Pryme Magazine, and The Lady Alliance, where she writes about living bilingually, crossing oceans, backpacking adventures, and raising kids outside the box. Some of Janis’ vignettes have been recently published in Luna Luna Magazine, Longreads, and Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and she won the first place Adult Nonfiction award at the 2017 San Francisco Writers Conference.

http://janiscouvreux.com/