Captain Bungle’s Odyssey by Paddy Macklin is a great sailing book belied by its humble title. Extraordinarily self-effacing, Paddy makes light of a remarkable circumnavigation executed in truly Corinthian spirit,…
Great Seamanship
OSTAR 2017: David Southwood recounts an exceptionally brutal Atlantic storm
Competitors in the 2017 Original Single-handed Transatlantic Race (OSTAR) experienced the worst conditions since the race was initiated in 1960 in the era of Blondie Hasler and Francis Chichester. This…
Sailing to Jan Mayen: An extract from So Far, So Good by Paddy Barry
I first met Paddy Barry in the late 80s at a Breton traditional boat festival. I was on a raft of unrestored pilot cutters. Paddy’s and his friends’ Galway Hookers…
Sailing England’s East Coast: Extract from On and Offhore by Dick Durham
Dick Durham knows the East Coast of England better than most. He has sailed it, both deep water and shoal, since putting to sea in the 1960s as mate aboard…
North East Passage ice rescue: Extract from Northabout by Jarlath Cunnane
Jarlath Cunnane’s book Northabout is a must for anyone dreaming of ice navigation or who is fascinated by the history of the extraordinary people who have voyaged to the high…
Buster De Guingand on racing classic yacht Thalassa: An extract from The Yachtsman magazine
The name of E P De Guingand will be well known to crews on the RORC circuit. The race for the trophy known as the De Guingand Bowl is run…
Family sailing to Hawaii in a 34ft classic boat: Vixen’s great Pacific voyage
In September 2004, Bruce Halabisky and Tiffany Loney sailed from Victoria BC bound for Hilo, Hawaii, in their 1952 Atkin-designed 34ft gaff cutter Vixen. Eleven years later they have two…
1998 Sydney Hobart: Extract from The Proving Ground by G Bruce Knecht
Along with the 1979 Fastnet Race, the 1998 Sydney Hobart has become a byword for disaster at sea. Unless a writer was actually on board one of the boats and…
A bit aground: Extract from Nick Imber’s Travels With My Nan
A satisfying feature of looking after this column for the last 16 years has been the latitude granted me by editors for selecting material. This has delivered enough slack to…
Exumas to New York in a 33ft boat: Dick Carter’s extraordinary east coast voyage
In 1965 a young American designer, Dick Carter, met up with Bernard Hayman of Yachting World in the cockpit of Dick’s new race boat Rabbit. Yachting World recognised a mould-breaking…
Night fall: An extract from Cully Pettigrew’s Yachting Journal of a Hebridean Sailor
Yachting Journal of a Hebridean Sailor by Cully Pettigrew offers an unusual insight into the mind of a deep-thinking man. His relationship with a small yacht over 30 years and…
Solo overboard: An extract from Miles Hordern’s Sailing The Pacific
Back in the early 1990s, a young man called Miles Hordern sailed his 28ft Kim Holman-designed Twister single-handed from the UK to New Zealand. He lived aboard in Auckland for…
The amazing voyage of Laura Dekker, the 15-year-old who sailed round the world alone
In 2009, the English sailing community was galvanised by the arrival on the East Coast of a 14-year-old single-hander from Holland, writes Tom Cunliffe. This was Laura Dekker, skippering a…
Rammed by a trawler off the coast of Brittany: “There was no-one at the wheel”
The 90-ton ketch Johanne was launched in 1929 as a Baltic trader, writes Tom Cunliffe. Bought out of Denmark in the late 1960s, she sailed to Lymington on the west…
‘Force Unlucky’ mid-Atlantic: surviving a truly ferocious winter gale
Today’s sailing world is well stocked with sponsored heroes, performing remarkable feats in the cause of being fastest on some great endeavour, writes Tom Cunliffe. John Kretschmer is a different…