‘Let it run!’ The sweetest three words in the English language. Our ears are acutely tuned to the L sound uttered by coach or sweep, depending on who has control of the boat in training or during a race. In both cases weary paddlers groan with relief or shout in jubilation and cease paddling. Breathing …
I’m writing this highlights of 2018 on the verandah of Riverbend books in Balmoral, Brisbane, with a flaming red poinciana tree shading me from today’s 30 degree celsius scorcher. Summer is blasting Queensland with a vengeance. Thousands of hectares of forest burn as I sit here sipping green tea and hundreds of families face a …
‘Ibitha’, says my partner in crime. Isn’t that the tiny Spanish island single young people jet off to for all night trance dancing, raves, and all manner of behaving badly? Who over thirty even goes to Ibiza?! This was my response to Stuart’s suggestion that we fly from Edinburgh to Ibiza (after catching up with …
Part four, the final instalment of my adventures with Skyelark and her crew. I had thought to end this personal journal with our arrival into Cabedelo, Brazil, but found the experiences of the next day so fascinating I’m continuing. I promise this is the end. None of us had visited north-east Brazil before so the …
Continue reading Ashore in Cabedelo, Brazil: Leaving Skyelark Life on Land Becomes Hyper-real
This is part three of a Trans-Atlantic crossing aboard the 51 foot charter yacht, Skyelark of London with a merry crew of assorted international sailors. The order comes down, report to Jamestown dockside at 3pm for a water taxi back to Skyelark to prepare for a 4pm departure from St Helena island. Skippers Dan and …
(Sailors have their own idioms – my sailing reference is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_nautical_terms) A minimum of 3,500 nautical miles across the Atlantic Ocean from South Africa to Brazil is a lot of blue water to cover for any vessel, but at this moment I am up for a big, hairy, personal challenge. I’m fit, healthy, solvent, and …
Two full days touring in Cape Town was an ideal start to my Trans-Atlantic crossing from Cape Town to Brazil, on the 51-foot yacht, Skyelark of London. I stayed at Victoria House in Kenilworth, a well to do suburb just south of Cape Town centre. Owner-Manager Corinne swapped her law practice in France for a …
Continue reading Captivated: Cape Town and Cape Point, South Africa
Back in familiar territory, Seville, and specifically Triana, I wrangled jet lag and fought off the hundred or so viruses other travellers had coughed, sneezed and breathed over me in Rio and in transit to Spain. I’ve lost too many weeks to bad head colds to repeat the mistake of diving in too deep to …
(Part One of this journal.) We blew into Jamestown like thousands of sailors before us, with the southeast tradewind at our backs, and our sights set on Jamestown’s diversions. And like most who’ve stepped ashore since St Helena was first mapped in 1502 by the Portuguese, we’re just passing through. This originally unpopulated speck of …
João Pessoa hits with full sensory overload after three weeks on the Atlantic. At sea you smell only what is in the boat; people, cooking smells, or things that land on deck, i.e. fishy stuff. You also look out on a seemingly endless sea to the far horizon, and up to clouds, sun, stars, moon, …
Continue reading Life’s Beachy in Brazil: João Pessoa, Paraiba
Never Ending Gap Year 