The dreaded "I" in memoirs.

It is possible that I should stop asking people to critique and edit and comment on my Atlantic Crossing manuscript or I will never publish it. Yet, reading it out loud, I still find sections that I want to change and paragraphs that don't sound smooth. 

One of my beta readers told me that I have too many sentences beginning with "I". How do you write a memoir not using "I"? So, I checked several other memoirs that are quite popular.
"Wild," by Sheryl Strayed begins as follows:

My solo three-month hike on the Pacific Crest Trail had many beginnings. There was the first, flip decision to do it, followed by the second, more serious decision to actually do it, and then the long third beginning, composed of weeks of shopping and packing and preparing to do it. There was the quitting my job as a waitress and finalizing my divorce and selling almost everything I owned and saying goodbye to my friends and, and, and...

 A ridiculous way to begin a book in my opinion and likely manipulated in order to avoid the use of the dreaded "I". All the sentences begin with "There was..."

I could rewrite my beginning to sound like that: 

 My ten-week sail across the Atlantic had many beginnings. There was the first time I was invited to sit on a sailboat and go for a short sail and loving it. Then there was the joining of a university sailing club and crewing in races at a real yacht club just to be able to pursue my passion. Then there was another invitation to be a chaperone for a married woman and her lover on another boat and then there was the trade of working for a sailing school in exchange for sailing lessons. Then there was the first decision to buy my own sailboat and to actually live on it in winter, followed by the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth more serious decision each time to sell one boat and buy another one. Then there was the crewing on other people's boats offshore out of sight of land and finding that I loved it, then there was the staying on board in Mexico for two years and also loving it. And then there was another beginning composed of weeks of looking for the right boat to sail around the world, shopping and packing and preparing to do it. But no, it actually wasn't like that. It was more like I loved sailing and there really was no decision to make. I bought a boat, my seventh, to live on, in Florida and had to leave Florida or pay the sales tax which I didn't have money for. So, ini-mini-miny-moe, I chose the Bahamas as the most promising destination. And then the hurricane season was upon us so I had to leave again. Ini-mini-miny-moe, crossing the Atlantic seemed like the best choice.

Is that better?
And how about this beginning from another bestseller, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert:

I wish Giovanni would kiss me.Oh, but there are so many reasons why this would be a terrible idea. To begin with, Giovanni is ten years younger than I am, and -- like most Italian guys in their twenties, he still lives with his mother. These facts alone make him an unlikely romantic partner for me, given that I am a professional American woman in my mid-thirties, who has just come through a failed marriage and a devastating, interminable divorce, followed immediately by a passionate love affair that ended in sickening heartbreak. This loss upon loss has left me feeling sad and brittle and about seven thousand years old.

And my version:

I wish I could have a man in my life.Oh, but there are so many reasons why this would be a terrible idea. To begin with, there are no suitable men here. There is one who owns a large powerboat and wants me to cut my hair and I hate powerboats and love my long hair. There is another one that I do find attractive but who doesn't even give me a second glance. And then there are two more men, who seem to prefer each other's company to mine. These facts alone make it unlikely that I will find a romantic partner here in the Bahamas while living on my sailboat. Also, given that I am a professional Canadian woman in my early fifties, who has just come through a failed marriage and a devastating, interminable divorce, followed immediately by a passionate love affair that ended in sickening heartbreak, looking for love at this time is a terrible idea. This loss upon loss has left me feeling sad and brittle and about seven thousand years old.

So, I think I will stay with my own (slightly altered) beginning and to hell with the "I"s.

Mozart’s Concerto No. 5, pours out of the speaker in the cockpit. Drops of sweat run down my neck and chest into the crevice between my breasts and over my stomach, as I dip a brush into a can of varnish, its turpentine smell overpowering the scent of the sea and carefully spread the golden liquid on the teak trim of my new sailboat. I am lost in the moment as I try to match brush strokes to the rhythm of the music.