Fifteen-year-old Gabe lives on a sailboat with his dysfunctional family, on the mountainous South Pacific island of Ma atea, where his parents dream of an idyllic world voyage has turned dark. He is both an outsider ashore and the object of his father s cruelty at home, his only solace his remarkable gifts as a sailor, his love of wooden boats and the sea, and his friendship with Lloyd a kindred spirit who longs to escape from his own world of abuse and violence. When they salvage Plumbelly, an abandoned wooden sloop, their dreams of freedom begin to take shape. Soon the two boys, along with strong-willed and rebellious Tanya, flee aboard Plumbelly into the vast Pacific. Grappling with life at sea, their sexuality and their pursuers, Gabe and his friends are forced to face themselves and find the strength to survive.