Welcome to our web site! Read all about Bosun Bird, our Vancouver 27 sailboat, her crew and her latest adventures.
Our most recent news is the publication of Nick’s latest sailing book – on Japan – about which we’re very excited. For further details, including how to order it in hard copy or as an e-book, see Sailing to the Heart of Japan – the book. Then, coming up January 15, 2025, Nick’s next book will be out, with stories and illustrations from our 70,000 miles of offshore sailing. See Under Wide and Starry Skies – the book; this can be ordered already.
We’ve described (and photographed) the dozens of exotic destinations – hot and cold – that we visited as we sailed 30,000 miles from South Africa to our home waters in British Columbia. For more detailed notes on areas not well covered by cruising guides – Solomon Islands; Kodiak & the Alaska Peninsula – see our Notes for Cruisers.
Nick has recounted our adventures in the wintry waters of Argentina and Chile, near Cape Horn, in his book “Winter in Fireland: A Patagonian Sailing Adventure”; take a look here for reviews and colour versions of the photographs from the book, which is available at all the usual online outlets, including Amazon and UAP, in soft cover or as an e-book. An excerpt from the book, with illustrations, was published in the September 2020 edition of the popular UK sailing magazine Yachting World. For some recommendations for further reading see The best books on sailing in Patagonia.
More recently we’ve been sailing in Alaska and British Columbia, which we now consider to be our home waters. Recent voyages include a summer in Haida Gwaii; an exploration of remote Seymour and Belize Inlets, behind Nakwakto Rapids; and, in the summer of 2020, a less ambitious COVID cruise to Desolation Sound and Princess Louisa Inlet. Summer 2021 was the Summer of the Engine as we replaced our 40-year-old Bukh diesel engine. In 2022 we made up for lost time with a 900-mile, 11-week cruise Around Vancouver Island and in 2023 with a shorter cruise to waters last visited 35 years ago: Desolation Sound.
In case you’re interested in reading how ocean voyaging has changed over the past thirty years, we’ve included a short section on our earlier circumnavigation of the world (1985-89) aboard Tarka the Otter, an Albin Vega 27. A year ago we had a serendipitous reminder of that voyage when news reached us of a long-forgotten Message in a Bottle.
Nick is the author of three other books – one on Colombia, another on Sudan and the most recent on South Sudan: “Collapse of a Country” with a foreword with Romeo Dallaire and Shelly Whitman. He is also a regular contributor to the UK’s “Sailing Today” magazine; a number of his articles can be found here.
Happy sailing!
Updated: June 2024