John Passmore Joshua Slocum, on his solo voyage around the world, looked up into the cockpit one dark and stormy night and saw the pilot of Drake’s ship The Pinta at the wheel. Jean Le Carn in the Vendee Globe Race held his sister in his arms – and woke up hugging a sail bag. Hallucinations, when … Read more
Did you hear the story of the Spanish farmer and the bull? This farmer had a brand new calf and it was time for it to move out of the stable and into the field during the daytime. But the calf wouldn’t budge out of his stall. No matter how much the farmer cajoled and … Read more
Monday April 22nd 2019 Setting off to sail 350 miles from Lowestoft to Falmouth, you would think you could get away from the Extinction Rebellion people bringing central London to a standstill… Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for saving the planet – also, I’d rather climate change didn’t start setting off unseasonal hurricanes. But … Read more
There are three things Roy Marshall likes to do. He likes to spend his mornings sitting in his Aladdin’s Cave of nautical junk and wait for people like me. He likes to raise money for the Lifeboat. And he likes to talk. I’ve been in Oulton Broad, just up the lake from Lowestoft for five … Read more
I don’t think I have posted anything about my folding bike. The only time it has been mentioned at all was when it got me lost one miserable winter’s night in the sugar beet fields of Essex. But in fact the Brompton is just about the best thing on the boat. Brompton bicycles are very … Read more
If you wondered why people write sailing blogs, here’s an answer for you: You get to meet all sorts of useful people. My friend Jeremy is one such. I’ve never met him, of course. He’s a “virtual friend” – although, we have exchanged an enormous number of emails as he attempted (and finally succeeded) in … Read more
I have started learning Yoga from Desmond Dunne’s 1961 classic Yoga Made Easy – and discover that the exercise I recommend on the Bad Back page is, in fact, a pose called The Cobra (Bhujangasana): “An exercise to make the spine amazingly supple and flexible, at the same time it revitalises abdominal muscles. Kidney, liver … Read more
I have just been reading Leslie Johansen Nack’s book Fourteen about sailing the Pacific and this is her decription from 1974: Seeing the dolphins every single day never got boring or old. There were often twenty or thirty dolphins, maybe more because it was hard to count when they all came up at different times… … Read more
