4 books, May to August 2027
4 harbours, and a skipper who goes in first
Sapphire Pascoe brings other people’s boats from one harbour to the next and is gone before the harbourmaster has learned her surname, and in these books she is the one who does the rescuing.
This summer the work keeps putting her ashore for longer than she meant. From a yacht she minds below an old fort to a racing yacht she navigates round the Mediterranean, every harbour brings danger she has to answer and a man she did not plan for.
You do not need to know a halyard from a hairdryer, because the sailing lives in what she notices and what she does about it. A book arrives every month from May 2027, and Book 1 opens with burning fuel in the bay.
Help me write Book 3The summer plan
A series is a promise with dates on it, so here are the dates. Book 1, the bay, lands in May 2027, Book 2, the island, in June, Book 3, the race, in July and Book 4, the end of the season, in August. Each one is a harbour and a love, complete on its own and better in a row. Put the first week of each month aside, or save all 4 for the deck in August and read them while the rosé sweats on the table. The letter tells you the day each one lands, and nobody hears it before you do.
Book 1, the bay, May 2027
She can bring any boat through any weather, and she has always been the one who leaves. Then a contract pays Sapphire Pascoe to sit still for a month in a small bay below an old fort on the Côte d’Azur, and sitting still is a skill she has yet to learn.
Days into the month a helicopter ditches beside the anchorage, and she is in the water working the rescue next to the island’s ferry captain, a deliberate man she files at once as all throttle and no seamanship. Luca Ferro crosses her bay 12 times a day to the minute and slowed his whole life down on purpose for a reason he tells nobody. The courtship is conducted in engine notes and lifted coffee cups, and there is a man in the fort she gets magnificently wrong.
Sapphire saw where the superyacht lay when the helicopter came down, and she says so in a statement the people who pay her would rather she had not signed. Then the yacht’s official track arrives placing her somewhere else, on clean sand, and the insurers would like Sapphire to agree with it. A small boy with a receiver in his lunchbox says that boat is in 2 places. Proving him right could cost her the money she has saved for a boat of her own. The ferry she has been calling the lawnmower holds the same line across the bay, and its deckhand writes every crossing into a day book in his best exam hand. The love scenes are on the page, steamy, with the door open. She was taught to choose between being admired and being kept. The ferry keeps its timetable, and the calendar says Genoa.
Book 2, the island, June 2027
Her first command in her own name is a grey survey boat called the Petrel, on an island that has not decided whether it wants her, where the bread comes at 06:40 and everybody talks the morning after.
The job is a seabed survey of a seagrass meadow that a fund wants cleared for a marina, and the scientist running the dives has written to Paris twice about the survey stations being moved and been refused twice. Adrià Navarro is a free diver with a teenage son on the Sunday ferry and a dorky streak, and he brings a seashell up for her from the bottom of the meadow. He is right about the sea and says so, and Sapphire, who is used to being right herself, starts to enjoy the argument. A grandmother on the hill keeps a chair for her at a table under the vine.
That table is the one place in the series where nobody is fighting, and I kept a chair there for you as well. The love scenes are on the page, steamy, with the door open. The scientist has a boy and a conscience, and Sapphire has a boat she can leave on any morning she chooses. Whether she is still aboard it when the island wakes is the book.
Book 3, the race, July 2027
The crew share a language of complaint, and Sapphire learns it inside a week.
She brings a dark blue racing yacht into Palma as navigator for the autumn classics and finds the regatta turned into a treasure hunt. Foiling boats lift clear of the water and chase the gold of a lost Roman cargo from harbour to harbour round the western Mediterranean, with drones overhead and influencers filming in every cove. Each clue sends the fleet to a patch of sea the old charts left blank, and Sapphire would very much like to know who picked the blanks.
The tactician is Till Behrens, who writes the wind numbers on the back of his hand and believes, down to his cycling socks, that the hunt is drawing a true chart of the sea at last. She falls for him on purpose, and when he asks about the ferry captain she tells him the truth. The love scenes are on the page, steamy, with the door open.
Up the coast the ferry still crosses its bay to the minute, and its captain has asked her for nothing. Before the finish she will have to say out loud what is wrong with the chart Till believes in, in front of the crew and the cameras.
Book 4, the end of the season, August 2027
The harbours empty after the last race, and Sapphire ties up for the winter in a boatyard on the Côte d’Azur, with an old man’s wooden boat to finish.
The money behind the treasure hunt has not finished with her, and now it wants the yard. A file from her first summer comes back with the man who closes files when he says so, and the winter sea has one more test waiting for her.
Across the bay the ferry still crosses to the minute, and this time its captain tells the story with her. The love scenes are on the page, steamy, with the door open. Staying is the bravest work of her life, and every harbour this summer has been teaching her how.
Help me write Book 3
I write in the evenings with a glass of wine, and every month I share where the books stand and ask for your votes.
- Action or romance
- The characters
- Intrigue and plot turns
- Cultures and languages
- Which language next
What happens when
| January 2027 | A story for readers of the letter, Sapphire’s last 3 days at sea before Book 1 opens |
| End of January 2027 | The first look at the cover, to readers of the letter first |
| Early 2027 | Early copies of Book 1, by invitation from the letter |
| May 2027 | Book 1, the bay |
| June 2027 | Book 2, the island |
| July 2027 | Book 3, the race |
| August 2027 | Book 4, the end of the season, and the whole series yours for the rest of the summer |
Questions readers ask
Do I need to know how to sail?
No, the books are written for readers who have never set foot on a boat. Where a boat word matters, the everyday word comes first.
How warm are the love stories?
They are warm, and the door is open. The intimate scenes are on the page and they carry the story, and each one is a conversation the 2 people could not have any other way.
Can I start with any book?
Each book is complete on its own, with 1 love and 1 harbour. Reading them in order lets you watch Sapphire across the whole season.
Will the series really finish?
Yes, Books 1 and 2 are drafted and in their edits, and Book 3 is mapped harbour by harbour down to the finish line. I already know how Book 4 ends, which is the part I love most. Book 1 does not go on sale until all 4 are in hand, so the summer arrives on time.
Are the harbours real?
The coast is real and the harbours are drawn from places I have anchored. The names of the small ones are changed, and the bread queues are not.
Keep me posted on the series
The letter tells you the day each book lands, and nobody hears it before you do. One letter a month from now, the story in January, the cover at the end of January, the first book in May 2027.