Doann Houghton-Alico retired from her corporate job at 60, went sailing around the world, and wrote a book about her adventures.

In New Delhi to promote her latest book, Voice of a Voyage: Rediscovering the World During a Ten-Year Circumnavigation, award-winning writer and adventurer Doann Houghton-Alico recounted her adventures at a talk hosted by The Himalayan Club last Thursday, July 17. After retiring as CEO of a technical writing corporate firm, she along with her ex-Pilot husband embarked upon a ten-year circumnavigation of the world in 2001, sailing over 43,000 nautical miles, through 41 countries. Doann gave an animated account of how their main sail got caught in a wind generator and splintered into pieces. With winds blowing at 150km/hr in that area, and a husband with hypothermia, Doann had to take over and steer their way out of the storm. “It was a time when we were literally between a rock and a hard place,” she says of the experience that had her surrounded by obstacles.