WRITER, PHOTOGRAPHER, SAILOR
Marguerite Welch is a writer, photographer and sailor whose eclectic tastes and interests have often led her in unexpected directions. Her articles on photography and travel have appeared online and in various art and literary publications, such as The New Art Examiner and the Washington Review. Her travel memoir, Waterborne: A Slow Trip Around a Small Planet documents a 14-year circumnavigation of the world with her husband Mike on their 38-foot sailboat Ithaca. Her novel Borrowed Child is based on 10 years of experience as a tutor and mentor of children from the under-served communities in her own backyard.
current publications
Waterborne is a story about an artist, an engineer, and a labrador — three entirely different personalities—who abandon a stable middle-aged lifestyle for a pitching deck and the possibilities of pirates.
Challenged by culture clashes, gear failure and sudden storms, this book is as much a sea saga as a travel memoir, celebrating the interior as well as exterior journey and joys of an inquisitive engagement with the world—a timely subject in today’s climate of increasing tribalism.
Published June, 2019
Borrowed Child is a 91,020-word novel that explores the ambiguities of motherhood and salvation through the anguished relationship between Mia, an illegal, troubled Hispanic teenager, and Helen, the upper-middle-class, grieving mother who takes her in.
Issues of cultural disconnect surface when Helen attempts to “save” Mia and is forced to face her own deep-seated prejudices and thus redeem herself, while Mia faces down her own demons in her search for self-identity and meaning in her life.
Published July 2025
“The day we bought the wind vane steerer we really didn’t have a plan. As a matter of fact, we never really had a plan. We just thought, let’s head out in a generally westerly direction for a couple of years and see what happens. We imagined we would be gone for three years, maximum, vaguely thinking about a circumnavigation but not committed and certainly NOT telling anyone we planned to sail around the world.”
Waterborne: The Dream
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Marguerite Welch
WRITER, PHOTOGRAPHER, SAILOR