A novel about converging timelines

Question

I remember reading a novel where multiple timelines converge over several days and then separate again. The character gradually becomes aware that the convergence is happening through a sequence of events (which I can't now recall).

In one scene, the lead character sees his own body (from another timeline) in the burnt-out, melted remains of his yacht. The action takes place in a coastal town with a harbour (hence the yacht). As far as I can recall this was not a time travel story.

He is re-united with his dead wife/lover but at the end

the timelines separate again and he loses her and ends up with someone else.

I think I read this in the 1980s, I thought it was by someone like Bob Shaw, Roger Zelazny or Keith Laumer, and may have been a yellow Gollancz hardback. However I haven't had any luck finding it!

Answer 1

This could be Dinosaur Beach by Keith Laumer, which features a man who travels through time to correct the problems caused by other time travelers.

In one scene, the lead character sees his own body (from another timeline) in the burnt-out remains of his yacht.

In one scene in the Laumer book, the hero sees himself get killed on a pirate ship which is under attack.

He is re-united with his dead wife/lover but at the end

While undercover in the past he falls in love and is married, and longs to get back to her, but though it looks like it will work, things fall through, as I recall.