Guugu Yimithirr
‘Guugu Yimithirr’ is an Australian aboriginal language of the Guugu Yimithirr people of Far North Queensland. The highlight of my week may well be coming…
Tag: sea
Totland Bay Sign
Back from a short family camping trip to the Isle of Wight, where I stumbled across this wonderful sign on the side of an old…
Getting to Know Puffins…
…with a little help from the sun. An interesting article on the BBC website today about the seasonal habits of Puffins. The most interesting thing…
50 ultimate travel experiences: Les Ecrehous
A tiny piece about ‘Les Ecrehous’ islands, that I had written for the Guardian ages ago, featured in it last Saturday. Here it is: This…
Confirmation Bias
Russ Altendorff came on a course in the hills yesterday. He is a keen sailor, electronics guru and author of a popular blog on the…
Brighton in a Gale
I was in Brighton yesterday afternoon and the coast was being hit hard by a southerly gale. When the wind is this strong it is…
Depth and Colour
This photo shows the colour difference as the water shallows over a sandbank of the beach at West Wittering. Colour has been used by nautical…
Lulworth Cove Lobster Pots
The Gooleys are now back from a weekend’s camping in the isle of Purbeck, Dorset. This is a photo I took of some lobster pots…
Fort Ile de Raz
We spent the weekend on Alderney. We went there to muck about on the beaches and we were not disappointed. The water is still fresh…
The Colour of the Sea
I had been working on the chapter about the sea in my book last week, so was even more finely tuned to its vagaries than…
Jurassic Coast
My thanks to Richard, who sent in this picture from a lad’s walking weekend along the Jurassic Coast. He was given a private course as…
Wind, Water and Mr Bernoulli
The land’s wind shadow can be seen in the smooth water nearest the foreground of this picture of Nutbourne Marshes. This is an effect sailors,…
Navigating with Nature
One of the keys to navigating with nature is appreciating scale. It is vital that we do not spend too much time focusing too narrowly…
Sun, Sails and Sand
The Gooleys were out on the water this morning on our Contessa 32, Golden Eye. It was one of those spring days that exceeded expectations.…
Moonbows and a Quantum Fogbow
Last night I stumbled across a name I have been looking for since a sailing trip a couple of months ago, when I took this…
Sailing on a Friday
This weekend I came afresh across the notion that setting sail on a Friday is bad luck. I had heard this before of course, but…
Cats and Hats
Those who have been on a course will know the strange pleasure that I get from connecting seemingly unrelated things through natural navigation, so here,…
Millennium Mist
On Sunday morning, when sailing off the south coast, visibility came down to a few hundred metres at times. The sun played some of its…
Big Boats and Little Boats
Last night I was fortunate enough to be invited aboard HMS Warrior to give the after dinner speech to the Contessa 32 Association End of…
Two Beaches for the Price of One
There is something surreal, perhaps postmodern?, about blogging about a newspaper that is writing about you. Ian Belcher reviewed my course in the Sunday Times…
Tide and the Big Clock
Time and navigation have a cosy relationship, as John Harrison, inventor of the chronometer that cracked the longitude problem in the 18th Century would attest.…