Fear and silenceWhen I started this blog, I said it was about fear. My fears around mast climbing and seasickness and writing honestly.So why have I been so quiet recently? Why not write about the wide horizons and storms and excitements? Has life just got in the way? What’s wrong … Continue reading
Let us sound the battle-cry for #penguinrights. Suppose penguins took us humans to court for destroying their habitat? Suppose they won? I am not talking only of animal rights, or even land rights, but earth rights. Penguin power is habitat corpus: the battle to protect an ecosystem – a place … Continue reading
Penguin chicks lie among the pebbles. Still nearly complete, some of them, beaks agape and wings extended as if the raw spine might haul itself up and zombie-walk to the sea. Remnants are arranged into memento mori, reminiscent of Victorian child shrines kept by loving mothers.Scraps of bone and feather mark … Continue reading
There is no private, prior language. No baby talk nor word of god has meaning beyond our shared agreement. Today, it seems, our shared language has betrayed us, is fading to leave only the emoticon of a tear. Real things exist whatever their names on our charts. You can be shipwrecked on Isla … Continue reading
The Salisbury Plain trip left us all smiles at the antics of the wildlife – and each other. Quite a few crew members made it ashore. Harko and others took a zodiac cruise along the length of the beach. Everyone enjoyed the sunshine and the antics of penguins and seals, including … Continue reading
Jabberwock is the beast of change, of many words spat out into the trees, the jib-jab of uncertainty. Spells of shapeshifting are cast on the breeze and scribbled across the mackerel sky. She is slain by an unknown boy, the beamish boy, with his sword of the spoken truth, the … Continue reading
It’s about 90 nautical miles from Puerto Williams to Cape Horn; my little chartlet is not necessarily our exact route but gives you a good idea. We left in a glorious sunset across the Strait, with Laurits, one of the crew, replacing the baggy winkles on the mizzen boom topping … Continue reading
The folded, twisted landscape of the southern tip of south America creates ing fjords leading off the Beagle Channel, twisting lines in the rock where the water is still and opaque under the dark sky. The cliffs end in ice, slow rivers coming to a shattered blue and white wall wall. … Continue reading
I started this voyage with three big fears: climbing, seasickness and writing, and wrote about them just before we left on 6 March. I still think that fear is no reason not to do something, but it slows you down.Climbing proved the hardest challenge. Not because I am frightened of … Continue reading
I am writing this mid-afternoon on 6 March, but will set it to post later, where it will be too late to take it back.In less than three hours we will be aboard. A wee part of me has been hoping for some really good reason for the trip to … Continue reading
