A Fatherly Course

In 2016, I set off from Turkey to sail around the world in a fifty-­seven-­foot Swan RS sailboat. My youngest daughter (age thirty-­seven) was to be one of four crew members on the Atlantic ­passage. But she quickly fell in love with sailing and said, “Dad, I’m going all the way.”

So it was that my daughter and I shared the same cabin for two and a half years and got to know each other as adults — a unique privilege for both of us. I remember one night, she and I were on watch, mid-ocean, and the heavens were on fire with a blazing arrangement of stars. A bowhead whale, larger than our boat, surfaced just off our starboard side, throwing phosphorescence everywhere. All around us, phosphorescence mixed with the stars. It was sheer magic.

We...