The memoir, ISLAND BORN, challenges what is possible in love and nature. The author and his partner (and soon-to-be-wife), from vastly different backgrounds in Los Angeles, resolve to follow an intuition and sail "the wrong way around the world" - eastward across the Arabian Sea. Pitted against treacherous conditions that included the volatile social and political situation of the world ashore, they discover what it takes, and what it means, to surpass all previous personal and cultural expectations so that they might truly live, and in the end, truly die.Twenty-one years old, Gayle becomes pregnant in the middle of their sailing adventure, but her pregnancy does not make them retreat to Los Angeles where they began. They discover a tiny uninhabited island in a remote atoll, as barely discernible as a shake of pepper in the vast blue of their Indian Ocean chart. There they decide to give up their dream ship, and begin a real life journey neither of them could have ever imagined. With the help of an old chief on a nearby island, they build a thatched family home with no electricity, no running water, no telephone, no address, no bills, and no neighbors.ISLAND BORN seeks to answer the question of whether it is still possible to voyage to an unspoiled place, not only on the globe, but within ourselves. In meeting this risk head on, Frank and Gayle's voyage takes them to a reality of themselves that confirmed the bare whisper of that initial intuition. Together, they pull up anchor from the seabed of their culture and travel to a place where their determination, their romance, and their lives are challenged beyond the limits of each horizon, but they keep going.
About the Author: Frank Burnaby is a poet, traveler, sailor, and storyteller. He worked as a gifted and successful lighting designer in Los Angeles for many years. Then moving to an island in the Pacific Northwest, he devoted his time to raising his sons, writing, and to the creation of a wilderness school focused on the developmental needs of 7-13 year old children to experience nature. As a youth, he survived his parent's good intentions of enrolling him in military school in seventh grade where he learned to disassemble and reassemble his rifle with his eyes closed, and to pull weeds for not having a mirror shine on his shoes. For high school they sent him away to boarding school in New Jersey. In 1969 after a stint at San Francisco State University film school, Frank boarded a freighter bound for North Africa. Hitchhiking across Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, he made his way through India and South East Asia, to remote islands in Indonesia by native boat, and finally on to Hong Kong where he taught English. Landing back in New York City he drove a taxi at night, and studied acting at Herbert Berghof Studios. He worked quickly as an actor including an offer to be a principal in a travel adventure feature film, but instead of pursuing an acting career he started a thriving vegetarian taco stand on the edge of the meat packing district. Drawn to the sea and his own dream of sailing to a tropical wilderness, he took a job as an apprentice shipwright in a Los Angeles marina. Soon after, he set off with his soon-to-be wife, Gayle, to purchase a small vintage sailboat in England. He was 27, and she was 17. The ensuing five year voyage, eastward across the Indian Ocean, and their amazing story living on an uninhabited island changed his life forever. This is the story, Island Born.