Colin sometimes tells June to visit Maurice alone; he works six days a week as a carpenter, and Sunday is his only day off. When he visits, Maurice presents him with lists of household and garden repairs. June returns from visits drained as well, as Maurice gives her sweaters to mend and teases her throughout the day. 

The narrative flashes back to the 14-month Patagonia voyage on Auralyn II in the 1970s, with Colin, June, and Maralyn’s friend, Tony. Maurice’s tyrannical behavior reduced June to tears, and Colin compared Maurice to a cat toying with a mouse. Maurice declared himself God on the boat, but Maralyn quietly maintained authority, and Maurice usually deferred to her.

Colin, June, and Tony each brought enough money to fly home if necessary. Once, after Maurice fell on deck in the Gulf of Mexico, Colin and June imagined throwing him overboard. When June begged to leave, Colin persuaded her to stay. Tony became miserable from constant undermining, and after helping refit the boat in Uruguay, he flew home. 

In the present, Colin reflects that without Maralyn to temper him, Maurice is hard work and sometimes difficult to like despite his obvious loneliness.

By spring 2002, cancer treatment had severely swollen Maralyn’s face and body. In late April, she and Maurice vacationed in the Lake District with their dog Beda, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, and celebrated her 61st birthday in a wooden cabin. Maurice photographed her raising a glass, though she did not smile. Her last walk, using two sticks, was around Tarn Hows, a gentle mile-and-a-half path around water, encircled by trees.

Maralyn died less than a month later on May 21, 2002. Maurice had her cremated in Taunton and photographed both the crematorium and her coffin. He scattered her ashes at the Naked Man, an old oak tree in the New Forest where they once walked Beda. The flat heathland reminded Maurice of being at sea.

In a June 5, 2002, letter, Maurice expressed his deep grief and praised Maralyn’s courage. Without Maralyn, his grief turned into self-punishment. In December 2003, he wrote to his friend B., expressing profound guilt over his perceived neglect of Maralyn during her illness. His depressive thoughts became self-perpetuating cycles of failure and regret. He spoke of dying by suicide so frequently that his doctor began seeing him monthly.

Maurice does know how to live without Maralyn. Before her death, she had arranged for their friend B. to move in and care for him. Colin helped prepare the second bedroom, but B. declined and moved away. Shortly after, Beda became ill and had to be euthanized. Maurice scattered the dog’s ashes at the Naked Man. Soon after, the koi carp leaped out of the pond and died. 

Maurice maintains meticulous standards at home, always keeping an ironing board set up for his shirts. He preserves the last fires Maralyn laid in their wood-burning stoves, vowing never to light them. He spends his time in his study writing letters, first on a typewriter, then on an old word processor, and finally on a laptop, with Jamie’s guidance.

Maurice resists modernity, which isolates him. He establishes a routine: Sunday mornings at the teahouse with Hilary, Dave, and Jean; Sunday lunches with Colin and June; fortnightly meals with a friend from Bournemouth; doctor’s appointments; chats with Jamie; and visits from his cleaner. Bell-ringing, a hobby inherited from his father, fills most of his week. The activity resembles sailing in its use of ropes and need for precision. Maurice composes his own ringings and keeps them in a special folder. He considers the other ringers colleagues rather than friends and struggles with conversation, often refusing to join them for dinner or leaving early.

Maurice wants to talk about Maralyn constantly but cannot adequately express his feelings aloud, so he decides to write them. Their second book, Second Chance: Voyage to Patagonia, sold poorly in 1977. After Maralyn’s Galley Handbook was published in 1978, Maurice continued writing essays disguised as letters to friends. Each year, June received an extremely long thank-you letter for the birthday gift she gave him. He even wrote to his neighbor Jamie and mailed the letters rather than delivering them.

A year after Maralyn’s death, Maurice begins a series of letters to B. about Maralyn’s life and their sea adventures. He struggles with the imprecision of language and his inability to remove himself from their story. Without Maralyn to corroborate his memories, he worries his account is untrustworthy.

Over 18 months, he writes 25 long letters, from May 2003 to December 2004. He realizes the letters are becoming his third book, with each letter serving as a chapter. He immerses himself in old charts, diaries, and logbooks. In an August 2003 letter, he compares his loneliness to a desolate landfall, noting he was lonelier in an overpopulated town than he ever was on a life raft with Maralyn.

Maurice begins his account with the moment he met Maralyn and focuses almost exclusively on their four years of adventures at sea. Near the end, he recounts how Maralyn discovered she was pregnant while in Spain. They sailed to Gibraltar for a doctor, then Maralyn flew back to England with June’s help while Maurice sailed the boat home. The pregnancy was terminated because the fetus was malformed and dead. The narrator notes that while dying, Maralyn spoke to Pat about this lost child. The final letter described their decision to sell Auralyn II after returning to England due to a large tax bill. Years later, they heard the boat had sailed 60,000 miles to New Zealand, the destination of their original journey.

Maurice prepared meticulously for death, organizing his will, insulating his loft, replacing gutters, and inventorying attic strongboxes. He is diagnosed with prostate cancer, but it is not severe enough to threaten his life. He told Jamie, almost in disappointment, that the disease would not kill him.

Eventually, a kidney problem lands him in Southampton General Hospital. He declines quickly and is moved to a hospice, where doctors believe he has only days left. He spends his time typing on his laptop. When he does not die, the hospice transfers him to a nursing home to free the bed. Maurice stays in his room and refuses to enter a communal area decorated as a Caribbean beach.

Jamie visits and takes him on wheelchair excursions around Lymington and to the coastal cliffs. From there, Maurice looks out at the Solent and the Needles, a view he knows well from sailing with Maralyn. 

His body slowly fails, and he sleeps nearly all the time. In mid-December, his friends from the teahouse, Jean and Dave, visit. Maurice tells them he is ready to die and seems relieved. The next day, December 15, 2017, he dies.

He left instructions for no ceremony and for his ashes to be scattered at the Naked Man. June arrives at the parking lot holding a handmade sign with Maurice’s name to identify attendees. After a few words from June, the small group scatters his ashes. Sorting his possessions later, Colin and June find a drawer of napkins from the tearoom and boxes of his self-published memoir. Maurice requested that his hard drives be destroyed and his belongings properly disposed of. The local museum declines the books, and thrift shops agreed to distribute the multiple copies among several stores.

The narrator reflects on how to measure a life. A November 2003 flashback reveals a moment of clarity: Maurice wrote that life’s success should be measured by the extent to which one has loved and been loved, which makes his life a triumph.

Shortly before his death, Maurice was interviewed by Alvaro Cerezo, a young Spanish filmmaker who collected castaway stories. They met in a noisy pub, and Maurice initially struggled to hear Alvaro’s questions. He said Maralyn would have given a better interview. After adjusting his hearing aid, he recounted the key events of their survival at sea, including details absent from his books: Maralyn touching the noses of passing sharks, their milkshake obsession in Hawaii, and the awfulness of his childhood. He told Alvaro that he did not know what affection was until he met Maralyn.

Asked if he wished the sinking had never happened, Maurice considered the question. He decided that if he could do it again, knowing rescue would come after four months, he would. It was the farthest he had ever been from civilization, and it gave him the experience of living in the ocean. When Alvaro asked if he felt lonely, Maurice confirmed that he did but claimed to be happy being lonely.

Maurice also returned to the memory of that second whale, describing it as a treat to have it sit alongside their raft, staring at them, before gliding away. As he recounted the encounter, the memory animated his face and brought tears to his eyes. He felt as if he was with Maralyn again, and time had dissolved.