Can we agree that it’s an old myth that sailors survive entirely on Fray Bentos pies and ‘pot mess’? Certainly on Skylax mealtimes are something to look forward to as…
Cruising life
Sailing to Scotland: flitting north to a new home
Flitting is a traditional Scottish expression for moving house so our decision to move from Gosport to the island of Arran meant we needed a plan to ‘flit’ our Hanse…
‘The average age of this crew is 70 years old’ – Top tales from sailing across the Atlantic
People have been sailing across the Atlantic for centuries, following in the wake of Columbus in 1492, but there is still something about this navigation that quickens the pulse. It is a dream…
‘£10,000 and two broken engines in to my yacht purchase, I realised I may have made a mistake…’
Just about every middle-aged man dreams of buying a boat and going on a sailing adventure. The sense of freedom, the wind blowing across your balding pate without a care…
‘Why we’ll all miss the shipping forecast’ – Libby Purves
The long-wave shipping forecast reaches its centenary in 2024, though it’s not much of a celebration given that LW itself, ‘at the end of its life as a technology’, will…
‘Why a healthy dose of fatalism is good for you’ – Dick Durham
Nancy, my mother, drummed into me a set of lower middle-class rules, the origins and the validity of which remain, a lifetime later, lost to comprehension. Yet still I stick…
‘We were in a race against time’ – how a mad dash by these sailors prevented them being stranded
Five hours into our madcap race, we feared that we weren’t going to make it. We knew the odds were stacked against us, but we had no choice but to…
‘Crocodiles, sharks, box jellyfish, stonefish and sea-snakes’ – Sailing the northern Australian coast
The Kimberly Coast of Northern Australia has the largest tidal range in the southern hemisphere. In Derby, to the west of Darwin, the tidal range has registered as much as…
Sailing in the wake of the Vikings and attending the viking festival ‘Up Helly Aa’
There was no past. No future. Only right now. A moon spread its silver over the sea and the waves chased us along. We were on our way back to…
Cruising Guadeloupe: one couple explore a paradise teeming with natural wonders
The French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe is the most southerly of the Leeward Islands. Shaped like a butterfly, it is split into two halves, the wings forming Basse-Terre in the…