It’s fashionable, I’ve noticed, for people who are setting off on some great journey or other, to go to painstaking lengths to explain how society had driven them to it. That the brave new world which man has created has become so awful and unbearable and at odds with either their soul or spirit or… Read more Home, James
It was an inspired moment when we came upon the idea that we might not go around Europe, but rather through it. We’d had quite our fill of sea, we said to ourselves, and a trip up through the French canals would be just the ticket. We’d spare ourselves the tossing about that the Atlantic… Read more Route Canal
The title that accompanies this writing is almost completely inappropriate to its content, but at the same time it still refers to exactly what you came here to read about. The magic here lies in the fact that the Red Sea is a reference point to a part of the world with which we associate… Read more Why We Sailed Through The Red Sea
Sailboat Strange flight, the body Held at a threshold And never quite freed Or quite revealed— One wing taut with wind, One wing concealed Until the wind grows calm And it shimmers in a shadow-world, The shape of a sail, yet softer— The drifting boat A bird half in air, Half in… Read more A View From The Cockpit: Boobies and Border Control
In 1856 the Great Trigonometric Survey calculated the height of Everest to be 29,000 feet. An irritatingly round figure for all concerned. Fearing that their hard work to ascertain its dimensions precisely would be received as a mere estimate, Andrew Waugh resolved to add a little bit on to the measurement, all in bringing it… Read more To and Through The Gulf of Aden: Between Farts and Cockroaches
Time in Sri Lanka commenced with James and I confronting a navy boat in our pants at three o’clock in the morning. You can be relatively sure you’re in for an interesting time of it when things get going in this manner, and Sri Lanka was nothing if not interesting. What follows is an observation… Read more Sri Lanka: Whale Tales and Elephant Eggs
You would be forgiven for thinking that the most challenging aspects of sailing around the world pertain to raging storms, rascally pirates and the sheer vastness of the oceans to be traversed. I am both apologetic and grateful to tell you that this is not the case. Apologetic because these are generally the more exciting… Read more Checking Out The World
The problem with the view from an Indonesian street corner, more often than not, is the distinct lack of a corner to view things from. This is true of almost all Indonesian street corners I have attempted to occupy, and it was true of the one that I found myself on in a town called… Read more A View From An Indonesian Street Corner
It is quite an unnatural phenomenon on a boat, which should always be found creaking or sighing in some way, to find silence. Whilst I had fallen asleep to the pleasantly monotonous drone of the engine, I was roused from my slumber not by that, nor by the usual whirr of the wind generator, nor… Read more Miscellaneous and Mechanical Misfortunes in Malaysia
Today we kill 25 orangutans. No, I don’t care if it’s Christmas Day. Think of it as poetic if you like: it’s the 25th day of the month, and we’ve got 25 orangutans to dispatch. For years and years our methodical annihilation of Borneo’s rainforests has seen us terminate this many daily, and – Christmas or… Read more A Christmas Guide To Killing Orangutans