Our Ocean's Broken Heart

Our Ocean’s Broken Heart

Doina Cornell

English
2024
272 pages

About the book

There, at last, is land – a dark huddled mass of coconut palms rising above bare slivers of yellow sand, as if giant segments of lawn turf had been unrolled upon the ocean. After six sea-slow days, seasickness and sweat, heat rashes, broken nights, questioning and self-doubt, all was washed away in this moment. The meaning of my voyage lay there before me, a six-day passage by sailing yacht, to this remote Pacific landfall, whose name is on everyone’s lips. Tuvalu and climate change: today inseparable.

Our Ocean’s Broken Heart tells the story of one woman’s journey across the ocean and into the heart of those places most threatened by climate change.

Our Ocean’s Broken Heart is a personal pilgrimage to the frontline of climate change, based on Doina Cornell’s sailing voyages to the Arctic and the Pacific.

Accompanied by her teenage children, Nera and Dan, and her father Jimmy, Doina explores what it means to be a sailor and our relationship with the ocean. Tracing the legacy of colonialism and the pain of climate injustice she confronts head on how the world has changed since her 1970s childhood sailing the world.

Doina brings to life the crucial threats our ocean faces, such as rising temperatures and sea levels, through the testimony of the people in the places she visits, and through citizen science projects carried out by sailing yachts in partnership with scientists. Challenging the powerful vested interests that impede progress towards halting climate breakdown, she asks how we can find the path back to hope.

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