Michael Chapman Pincher, son of the great investigative journalist, left school at 17 to become a stagehand in London’s West End. At 23 in 1974 he quit and went to sea with John Farrell and his sailing companion Carola, both Irish and both on the run from dysfunctional marriages. Together with the cat, Stryder, this unlikely trio sailed to the Caribbean on the 37ft Gander – not a large vessel for three and a cat on a protracted voyage. Michael’s personal log of the trip went missing, but it turned up in Florida in 2020. It was somehow returned to him and is now published, complete with sketches, as Long Lost Log.
The genes of a great writer have clearly passed from father to son. What could be a mundane passage comes to vibrant life. No punches are pulled on tensions among the crew, the poetry that is astro navigation is revealed and the action leaps out at us. We join them becalmed a few hundred miles east of Antigua.
FRI 13 DEC: MOMENTARY MEANING
The wind, says the skipper, like death, can come like a thief in the night, and so be upon us at any time. Right now, the thief is stealing my dreams as I watch for zephyrs floating in the spooky stillness of a silent ocean. The new moon is
