Crossing the Wake

Crossing the Wake: One Woman’s Great Loop Adventure follows the waterlogged travels and travails of a woman willing to risk it all in a quest to bring some adventure to her life. A beautifully honest account of riding the waves of a journey, both physically and emotionally grueling, author Tanya Binford recounts her arduous six months with amazing detail. After leaving behind her work as a psychiatric nurse practitioner and saying goodbye to her grown children, Tanya Binford was ready to cast off. With an itch for sailing that had taken root decades before, she was finally ready to put her dreams into action—not even a lack of any real sailing experience could stop her! -- “Bittersweet, yet triumphant. The story that must be experienced.” --Sean O’Boyle AM, Australian composer and conductor


Tanya Binford grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She got married in her second year of college and dropped out when she was pregnant with her daughter at 19. Her son was born two years later. When her children were young she lived in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. After a difficult ten year marriage, she got divorced and went to nursing school to earn her associates degree in nursing. After becoming a nurse, she moved to Tucson, Arizona, where she lived for the next 14 yrs. During that time, she obtained her advanced degree and became a psychiatric nurse practitioner, working in public mental health. For ten years, she practiced as a nurse practitioner in Nogales, AZ, the later years through tele-psychiatry, out of her home in North Carolina. At 51, she took a year off work and accomplished her goal of circumnavigating the Eastern United States in a 25 foot boat.