The
Anchors in an Open Sea
Trilogy

Sailing into the full catastrophe of living.

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be driven, most of your life, by an overwhelming desire for spiritual experience?

Dyana’s trilogy of spiritual autobiography novels are based on true sailing adventures throughout the Pacific Ocean, contrasted with over 30 years of Tibetan Buddhist retreats and learning. Names of people have been changed to protect identities, but the experiences of Alice and her family are based on true life.

Explore with Alice through thirty tumultuous years, cycling, tramping, sailing, making love, sitting through spiritual retreats, teaching and raising a family. Taste life through mystical eyes, experience being raised to heaven, experience the torment of being plunged to earth when the heart fails.

Endlessly curious about life and the human journey, Alice throws herself with abandon into the natural world, rough and raw, creating heroic confusion while plunging deeply into the mystery of mind. What she discovers at the end is not what she expected.

This is your chance to travel with her and come to understand why her desire for spiritual experience was so overwhelming and why she found it so hard to make peace with ordinary living.

The autobiographical honesty and poetical language make this story compelling. Hang on as you sail off with her into the ocean of stunning sunsets and wild waves.

Published by

The Yoga of Sailing ISBN 978-0-473-37386-3

Buddha and a Boat ISBN 978-0-473-37391-7

Book One
The Yoga of Sailing

Leaping free from the world into spiritual experience.

Join the four crew on their first serious voyage through gale-force winds and treacherous reefs, on a 35ft ketch.

An intimate look at three generations of one family through the eyes of a mother and daughter.

The Yoga of Sailing brings alive the land and ocean. From mystical experiences to onboard romance, Alice navigates a life of rich contrasts and at times tumultuous passion and confusion.

What drives the desire for spiritual experiences? What is the spiritual journey? And what do we mean by freedom?

Experience the delight of sailing offshore from New Zealand to Fiji, with its dangerous and fragile coral reefs, and the crew tumbling from exuberance to disenchantment.

Life presented itself in full, in the immediate physicality of sailing through the huge seas. We were tired and ill and needed to find an inner resolve for the night watches. We needed to banish any frailty.

Book Two
Buddha & A Boat

Digging into the mystery when life gets sticky.

Alice, Roger and Cornelius set sail from Fiji for Vanuatu and New Caledonia and the adventure and excitement continue. They share watches through the day and night, cope with seasickness, struggle with headwinds, and Cornelius is almost immobilised with an unexplained pain in his leg.

When she goes cycling solo around Vanuatu, Alice explores teachings from earlier retreats and she reflects on her early life as she hitches alone around New Caledonia.
Buddha and a Boat by Dyana Wells