It seems that Punta Gorda is just bursting with new authors. Mike Hirsh’s new book “Fly on the Wall,” an excellent whodunit set in the turbulence of Hurricane Charley, was recently released. Now another new author has emerged with a book about her adventures as a once reluctant sailor when she and her husband sailed their 44-foot Island Packet, the “Lena Bea,” from Lake Superior to Punta Gorda.

Michelle Sharp was living in Minneapolis, far from an ocean, when her husband, Wayne, decided to follow a dream: to sail his boat from Lake Superior, through Canada’s St. Lawrence Seaway, down the Eastern coast, around the Keys, and up the Gulf of Mexico to Charlotte Harbor and Punta Gorda.