These people spent a year on a boat and lived to tell the story

It's evening in Kargi Koyu, a speck of a village on the Aegean coast. The heat of the Turkish summer has given way to a stiff, cooling wind, and to stars. The sky is bursting with constellations, punctuated now and then by the odd meteor. Listen closely. Aboard the yacht Nowornot, home to the Zuckerman-Meyerson family for the past year, you can hear the sounds of the sea.

"Hard to port . . . hard to port!"

"I am!"

Things aren't clicking the way they're supposed to tonight. The Nowornot has been trying to set anchor for over an hour, but it can't find traction in the steeply sloping sand below. Deb Meyerson and Steve Zuckerman have never tried anchoring at night before, and they're tired and irritated. Their kids, Danny, Adam, and Sarah, are hungry.

Yet for all the groping in the dark, this crew -- this family -- copes impressively. As Danny, 14, helps his dad negotiate the anchor, 11-year-old Adam zips about in the motor dinghy, tethering the ship to rocks ashore. Sarah, 8, feeds the lines around winches. They work well together -- out of love, but also out of acquired competence.

For the past year, Deb, Steve, Danny, Adam, and Sarah have lived together aboard the Nowornot, a 52-foot, two-masted boat that isn't as big as it sounds, especially if you're a family of five. They have sailed from the south of France across the Mediterranean Sea, exploring Italy, Greece, and Turkey. They have cooked and eaten together, played baseball together on the beach, and slept together on deck. School has been held onboard most weekday mornings, parents presiding.

This is the fruition of a dream Meyerson and Zuckerman have shared for many years. That it has actually come to pass is, in some ways, remarkable. Both are classic Type A achievers who have invested years in building reputations and a modicum of wealth. Meyerson is a professor of organizational behavior, and she enjoyed dual appointments at Stanford University and Simmons College. Zuckerman was a partner in the private equity firm of McCown De Leeuw & Co.

You probably have a dream like theirs. It centers on a beach in Bora Bora, perhaps, or on a novel you've thought about writing since college. You'd like to bike across the country or pursue a master's degree in Eastern religion or run for mayor. You'd like to ditch the job for a while and do something wildly different, something that's true to who you are.

And you don't do it. Let's face it, not everyone can afford to abandon a year's pay, or to bear the risk that they won't return to the sort of financial security they left behind. For many of us, though, money isn't really the issue. We're just afraid. We're afraid of forfeiting what we've accomplished professionally, wary that our bosses and colleagues won't take us as seriously as before. We worry about losing momentum, of losing out on the next big project or the next rung on the ladder.

Here is the story, then, of a couple, of a family, who actually made the break. Theirs was not a hasty, spurious escape. If anything, Deb Meyerson and Steve Zuckerman were meticulously intentional in the way they planned their year away. Ultimately, though, they couldn't be certain their careers would survive. They weren't sure how their children would respond or how their marriage might change. They only knew this: The trip was too important for them not to do. "We were willing," Meyerson says, "to live with uncertainty."

"I want to go on this trip, but I don't want to give up all the things that I have to give up. . . . I don't think it is worth it. I have to give up baseball for a year, but worst of all, I have to give up my friends. I think maybe when I am in college I will thank my parents for taking me on this trip. But right now, I am definitely not thanking them."

-- Adam's journal, September 22, 2002

The year of Nowornot was born in 1982, when Deb Meyerson, then 25, traveled with her family to Turkey. She and her brother hitchhiked to the beach at Olu Deniz, "one of the most beautiful places I'd ever been," Deb says. "A turtle came up to the beach and laid her eggs, and I stayed up all night watching the turtles hatch. I saw this family there on a sailboat. I have such a vivid image of them. And I just knew I wanted to do that someday."

What makes such a dream real? Good fortune, of course, but also resolve and discipline. Six years ago, Meyerson and Zuckerman began thinking seriously about their getaway. They chose 2002 as a target year, because Sarah would be old enough to participate safely and Danny would be young enough to leave school with relatively little trauma.