I have never read such gross-out sexist crap as your e-mail, Dantheman, whoever and wherever you are.

And so begins a very unlikely friendship.

Jess and Dan meet by accident on the internet: Dan, looking up blonde jokes, visits a guestroom of bad taste jokes about men. Jess reads his outraged response. Heated e-mails follow. Jess is 14, lonely and scared, on a year-long Pacific voyage with her mother, stepfather and assorted crew. Dan is struggling with his own eccentric family and small-town liffe in Northland, New Zealand.

Dan and Jess have no idea how powerful their friendship will become as Jess's yacht heads towards the South Pacific. In the last months of the millennium, the hurricane season is about to begin