On Borrowed Time: A Mennonite Boy's High Seas Adventures Aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl

In the fall of 1972, at 19 years of age, Marlie Smucker flew across the world from his insular Amish-Mennonite community in Bird-in-Hand, PA, and boarded a three-masted square rigged Norwegian sailing vessel as a student-cadet in the experimental Oceanics School. As the ship made its way from Bergen, Norway to various ports around Europe, West Africa, South America, and the Caribbean, carrying a ragtag assembly of seasoned sailors, school faculty, and unconventional teenagers, Marlie's personal journey as a sailor and a seeker transcended geography.

On Borrowed Time is a reflective and engaging coming-of-age memoir set on the high seas-a there-and-back-again journey of lost innocence and hard-won experience, complete with victories, heartbreaks, storms, and shenanigans.