BY KAREN BOSSICK

When the economy went into freefall a dozen years ago, Kim Brown Seely and her husband found themselves at a crossroads.

Their jobs were stagnant and their youngest son was moving away to college. But, rather than hunker down hoping something come up to turn their lives around, they decided to step into the unknown.

They bought a too-big broken-down sailboat, learned how to sail and embarked on a 700-nautical-mile voyage that took them through the fabled Inside Passage that weaves its way from Olympia, Wash., through the islands along western British Columbia to southeastern Alaska.

Seely, who divides her time between Hailey and Seattle, wrote a book about their experiences in the Great Bear Rainforest of the Northwest and their search for the Spirit Bear, an elusive blonde Kermode bear that lives only in those secluded forests. And she will share tales from that book, “UNCHARTED: A Couple’s Epic Empty-Nest Adventure Sailing from One Life to Another,” at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 21, at Ketchum’s Community Library.

While a voyage of discovery on the physical level, theirs was also a voyage of discovery into who they were as individuals.

Seely, a 2016 Lowell Thomas Journalist of the Year, has been a contributing editor at National Geographic Adventure and a senior editor at Travel + Leisure. She has also written pieces for Outside, National Geographic Traveler and Sunset.

She has traveled to more than 30 countries for Virtuoso Life Magazine, and she has worked as travel editor at Microsoft and Amazon.