SOLO OVERBOARD

Back in the early 1990s, a young man called Miles Hordern sailed his 28ft Kim Holman-designed Twister single-handed from the UK to New Zealand. He lived aboard in Auckland for the first winter before moving ashore and becoming progressively divorced from the sea.

After five years, however, the call of the Pacific could no longer be denied and he set himself a voyage around the current system of the world’s greatest ocean. Following the streams, he sailed the Twister across the Southern Ocean to Chile, cruised the archipelagos, then headed for Easter Island before following the classic South Seas route back to New Zealand.

His book, ‘Sailing the Pacific’ contains a good deal of historical commentary, some profound general observations on life at sea and is so beautifully written that, unlike many voyage accounts, it is a genuine page-turner. We join him in the trade-wind belt on the early part of the return passage a few days out from Juan Fernandez, when a fair weather idyll takes a sudden, nasty turn.

On deck the trade was fresh, between 20 and 25 knots, warm and woolly; in these latitudes the wind is a light angora that surrounds your whole body, tugging in the direction of the flow.

I ran between 140 and 150 miles a day, and was sure