In 2003, novice sailor Janna Cawrse Esarey got married and embarked on a most unusual honeymoon, a two-year voyage by sailboat across the Pacific Ocean. She details the experience in her honest, vivid and highly entertaining memoir “The Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers, and a Woman’s Search for the Meaning of Wife.” Cawrse Esarey, now 38 and a mother of two daughters aged 1 and 3, will be speaking at the Seattle Boat Show today and tomorrow, Jan. 31 and Feb. 1. Information about her seminars is available here.

When you and your husband set out across the Pacific, did you know you’d write a book about it?
No. I was very opposed to writing a book about our sailing adventure. I love sailing for the travel and the experience and the magic of sailing, but I’m not into sailing in a technical way. I really felt like there’s (already) so many wonderful books about sailing adventures that are really more travelogues. About three-quarters of the way through our trip I was working hard on my novel and Graeme turned to me and said, ‘You know, you might want to focus more on the here and now and what we’re seeing every day.’

He encouraged me to write about our adventures, and the angle he suggested was writing about relationships. That’s when I got really excited about it. I felt like I could really be speaking to women and talking to my girlfriends about what my relationship was going through. It was going through a lot of the things their relationships were going through—they just didn’t have a keel under them.

A two-year honeymoon sailing across the Pacific sounds idyllic. Was the reality different than you’d anticipated?
Absolutely. When you’re just getting married, you really have these kind of glossy ideas of love, at least I did. And then there’s the hard reality of what it’s like to have a partnership with someone every day. And so there were these two parts—the honeymoon and the new marriage—but there was also just the fact that sailing is such hard work. So many things break and so many things go wrong that there are continual trials.

It can kind of take the romance out of it, but then you have these moments that are more romantic than you can ever imagine. It was absolutely harder, but it was also better, I’d say. A lot of people told us before we left that if our marriage can survive this, it can survive anything. When they first said that, I kind of scoffed. But now, looking back, I do think it was a very intense way to start a partnership.

How did your voyage influence your marriage?
I think it intensified it, and it made us deal with issues probably on a more compact timeline than other couples would have. We had our hurdles to overcome within those two years and it was just more intense. Towards the end of the book, we kind of went through this period where we would look at each other and think, ‘Okay, you again. What are we going to talk about? Where’s that loving feeling?’ We were out there alone and we’d gone off the beaten path of all the other cruises so we’d lost our community. It was just the two of us out there and it was a really challenging time in our marriage. I think lots of marriages go through that, but for us it was intensified by being stuck on a boat together.”

When it was just Graeme and me, we relied on each other more heavily to meet our needs when really, no one person can meet all of your needs. We’re planning on going cruising again and that’s something we’ve talked about—what will we do to make it that we’re not relying too heavily on each other for all these needs we have in our lives? We’re going to have our kids with us and we want to buddy boat with other boats with kids, because they need that interaction. But I think our trip taught us that we need that social interaction too.

Did it change you, as a person?
Yeah, it definitely did. Before we went sailing, I was a really stressed-out teacher. I wanted to be perfect in my job and change these kids’ lives for the better. (The trip) made me see things differently, and helped me figure out who I was and what I wanted out of life. Part of that was discovering that writing was really my passion.

And part of it was discovering my own contributions for this huge dream we had on the boat. What was my role? How was I going to contribute? How was I going to help us get us across the Pacific? That was a huge thing for me, because I was pretty much a novice sailor before we left. When you achieve something that is difficult and big and hairy, it makes you see yourself differently. It made me feel like I could choose the life I live every day.

What was the most surprising thing you learned on the journey?
I think one of the most surprising things was how quickly my perception of Graeme could flip flop. One minute, we’re cooped up on this boat and I’m frustrated with him because he has leaked oil on the cockpit cushions or something stupid like that. And the next minute, the engine breaks and he goes down and fixes the engine and I’m just like, ‘You are so amazing.’ So it’s this really intense flip-flopping of ‘Oh my gosh, you’re driving me nuts’ and “Oh my gosh, you’re so amazing.’ You’re up close and personal with both (your partner’s) foibles and strengths.

What was the most challenging aspect?
We instantly lost our support group and our community, and that was challenging. I think people assume that the biggest challenge would be being cooped up together all the time. For me, the biggest challenge was not the togetherness but the lack of otherness, the lack of other people to talk to, my parents’ support, my girlfriends’ laugher, even just talking to coworkers; you have a certain rapport there and a professionalism you respect. Losing all those different aspects of yourself and bringing it down to just this one other person on a boat is very intense.

In the book, you talk about the division of ‘pink’ and ‘blue’ labor aboard. Do you think cruising together in a male-female partnership reinforces those traditional gender roles?
I think that’s a choice, but I have to admit that I was shocked at number one, how many people do divide it that way and number two, that we divided it that way. It was so hard for me to accept. Part of it is that is I’m a self-proclaimed feminist and I can do anything a guy can do and yada yada yada.

But when it came right down to it, I did not want to learn to fix electronic systems. We divided and conquered. It did fall along traditionally male and female stereotypical lines. People often ask us are we still doing the pink and the blue now that we’re back on land, and we’re not. Graeme cooks every single meal and that’s wonderful. I like to say we’re much more purple now.

Many women today try to have it all: marriage, career, kids, love. Did your voyage teach you anything about how to balance those priorities?
What it made me realize is that I can’t have it all right now. When we were out there, there were times when I would miss certain things from home, particularly my friends and my family, and I just had to remind myself that those aspects of my life are going to be there when I get back. So I just had to remind myself, ‘This is our focus right now, don’t wish it away, but just be content with what we’re doing at the moment.’

There are times now when I’ll think, ‘Oh gosh, I wish I could travel.’ But I realize that I’m a landlubber now, and there are really great things about being a landlubber. Because we’ve gone sailing, I know that that is out there for us again. I don’t feel trapped. I know that we’re planning to go sailing again, and what I’m doing right now is my choice.

You and Graeme are obviously very different types of cruisers. Did you find a way to make that work?
Graeme loves the trimming of the sailing and the timing. For me it was just being out there and having the time to read and the time to write and the culture and the travel. But it was not the technical aspects of sailing that I liked. We made a rule that he could not tweak the sails while I was on watch. If he wants to race and go faster, he can do that on his watch. But on my watch, the sails are up to me.

What advice would you give other couples planning to embark on a similar journey?
My number one piece of advice is to realize that you are never truly going to be totally ready to go. There are people who spend 10 years figuring out the perfect boat, buying the perfect boat, outfitting the perfect boat, getting every duck in a row in terms of finances and their families’ health. Ultimately, if you really want to go, you just need to go. We went when Graeme’s mom had just gone through breast cancer, and that was really hard. But it also reinforced the fact that we had to go because we had to live our dreams and life is short.

What are you future cruising plans?
My ideal is to go when my youngest daughter is at least five, because that way she’ll actually remember it. If you asked Graeme, he’d say let’s go tomorrow. But realistically, I think we’ll go in the next three to five years. One of the things we’ve talked about is it would be really neat to cruise in Spanish-speaking countries so they would gain some proficiency. We’re not totally sure on a route, but we’re definitely in the dreaming stages of figuring where we want to go next time.