The summer before I turned 40 — with my fertility ebbing, as everyone with a vested interest in such things felt the need to remind me — I decided to set sail on the biggest adventure of my life.Together with four men aboard a small sailboat named Barba, we cast off from southern Norway, bound for the remote Arctic archipelago of Svalbard on a four-month expedition that covered more than 4,500 miles.A freelance travel writer and experienced scuba diver who grapples with seasickness, I’ve traveled the world mostly on land. I’d been sailing offshore in something other than a cruise ship only once, during a training trip to the Faroe Islands from Norway aboard Barba. And I’d perhaps oversold my cooking skills as a way to get back onboard for this more serious adventure (officially, I was the expedition’s chef).The truth is, I was looking for adventure. And I was hardly the only one.Read more…