WINTER IN FIRELAND

Nicholas Coghlan circumnavigated in the late 1980s with Jenny, his wife, on their small yacht, Tarka the Otter, before taking up a career in the Canadian Foreign Service. Many years later they were back at sea sailing their Vancouver 27 Bosun Bird from Cape Town to the Beagle Channel. Thence, over the winter, they cruised through Patagonia and the Chilean Channels.

Coghlan makes little of their achievements, describing in a matter-of-fact way what is really a remarkable adventure. Happily for us, he also writes with great perception and is a shrewd observer of the human condition. In this extract from ‘Winter in Fireland’ he and Jenny are working their way northwards up the west coast of South America. Dividing their time between playing Scrabble and life-threatening mast climbs in shocking conditions, they are not much troubled by overcrowding. Indeed, other vessels are a rarity, but the contrast he draws between the two that they meet is dramatic. Fishermen or superyacht owners – which would you choose for company on a nasty night at the end of the world?

Read on, and join me in a moment of enlightenment.

For 13 days we got up anxiously at sunrise to download weather forecasts. The window