Welcome to our web site! Read all about Bosun Bird, our Vancouver 27 sailboat, her crew and her latest adventures.
In June 2024, Nick’s book on our sailing adventures in Japan – complete with lots of practical tips – was published. Check out Sailing to the Heart of Japan – the book for lots of reviews, several illustrated extracts and how to order it in hard or electronic copy.
Then in January 2025 came his latest book: Under Wide and Starry Skies – Fifty Sailing Destinations in Seas Less Travelled. This is now available worldwide in electronic form and in softback in the UK and Europe; it will become available in softback in North America in May 2025. For further information, including on how to order, see Under Wide and Starry Skies – the book.
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.
Since returning to British Columbia, we’ve visited remote Haida Gwaii, explored the little-known waters behind Nakwakto Rapids, sailed around Vancouver Island and, in 2024, revisited old haunts in the Broughton Islands.
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. More recently, 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 a third 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: January 2025