Barbara's love of the sea and adventure began during a childhood spent at the Baltic seashore in Poland. It grew when she and her family crossed the Atlantic on board a cruise ship, while immigrating to Canada.
She studied at the University of Victoria, British Columbia and first worked as a bank teller, fruit picker, and a secretary. From 1980 to 1986, she was a researcher and a project manager at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C. on Vancouver Island.
She began her writing career 1987 as a reporter and a photographer for The Goldstream Gazette, a community weekly paper and as a roving freelance contributor to local publications in Victoria, B.C. Later she submitted her freelance articles to sailing magazines in Canada, the US and the UK. Her photographs often accompany her writing and grace the occasional cover.
She began sailing in 1980, first with the University of Victoria Laser dinghy club, and as the racing crew at the Victoria Royal Yacht Club, and finally on her own boats. Overall, she has owned at one time or another seven sailboats.
She has sailed on the west coast of North America from Victoria, B.C. to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico as well as in the Caribbean, across the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean from Portugal to Greece.
From 2010 to 2014, Barbara was the founding publisher and managing editor of The Ionian, an English language, glossy, yachting, travel and lifestyle magazine in Greece.
She is the author of Salt Water In My Veins, a collection of short stories about sailing, Atlantic Crossing, a narrative of her voyage on a small, untested sailboat with an ex-boyfriend, How to Write Your Book One Simple Step at a Time and Memoir of a Childhood in Communist Poland.
Presently, Barbara is cruising in Greece, aboard her 32-foot sailboat, Eidos, writing her next book and planning a sailing writers' retreat.
She is the mother of two sons as well as a grandmother.
Links to a recent published article:
Sail Magazine: Alone in gale conditions
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