I am simultaneously on opposite sides of the world and part way in between.
I thank Mark for sending a link to an article about me in the Australian AFLOAT magazine and Goggle has just notified me that an excerpt from THE OPEN BOAT: Across the Pacific has appeared in PRACTICAL BOAT OWNER in the UK.
I knew that both pieces were being prepared, but not when they would be published.
The PRACTICAL BOAT OWNER piece does not appear to be available online.
Kevin Green, the author of the AFLOAT piece and I have emailed at intervals for more than a year and we had an hour long FaceTime conversation. He did his research and got it mostly right, but there are a few errors and I take exception to his assertion that I am the first American to sail alone around Cape Horn only because of the technicality that Joshua Slocum went through the Straits of Magellan. I have said that I believe the Straits are more difficult with deep anchorages, other traffic—though not in Slocum’s day, williwaws, and always lee shores. I prefer sea room. But the Straits of Magellan are not rounding Cape Horn. That is not a technically; it is a fact.
Neither Chichester nor I made non-stop circumnavigations. He stopped once; I twice.
Suzanne was not my fifth wife, but my third and maybe fourth in that we were married twice.
And I have never used the Torqeedo on my dinghy. I have never used any outboard on a dinghy. I row. I have said that when I am too old to row ashore, it will be time to give it up.
These are not to be seen as criticisms of what is a mostly accurate article in which Kevin used the now compulsory ‘legendary’ before my name, just minor corrections.
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After a few minor boat chores, I walked over to Mission Beach and along the ocean to a supermarket a little over three miles away. As you can see it is as is to be expected here another beautiful day.
