Welcome to our web site! Read all about Bosun Bird, our Vancouver 27 sailboat, her crew and her latest adventures.
We purchased Bosun Bird in Durban (South Africa) in 2003 and – over the course of the next decade and more – sailed her home to British Columbia (Canada) via the South Atlantic, the stormy waters off Cape Horn, the South Pacific, New Zealand, Japan and Alaska. Every leg of this long voyage is described in this blog, along with many voyages that we have undertaken in BC’s coastal waters since 2017.
The summer of 2025 saw us undertake a 1360-mile, eleven-week voyage north from Salt Spring Island to Haida Gwaii, returning via the west coast of Vancouver Island; you can read all about it here. And you can find more detailed notes, including GPS references, in our Notes for Cruisers section, along with similar sets notes covering the Solomon Islands and Alaska.
Meanwhile, in 2024, Nick’s book on our sailing adventures in Japan – complete with lots of practical tips – was published. Check out Sailing to the Heart of Japan – the book, for reviews, several illustrated extracts, a full set of colour illustrations and how to order it in hard or electronic copy.
Then in January 2025 came his latest book: Under Wide and Starry Skies – Fifty Sailing Destinations in Seas Less Travelled, published by Adlard Coles (UK). For further information, including reviews, extracts, a selection of photographs and instructions on how to order, see Under Wide and Starry Skies – the book.
Nick has recounted our adventures in the wintry waters of Argentina and Chile, near Cape Horn, in his book Winter in Fireland: A Patagonian Sailing Adventure; take a look here for reviews and colour versions of the photographs from the book, which is available at all the usual online outlets,
In case you’re interested in reading how ocean voyaging has changed over the past forty years, we’ve included a short section on our earlier circumnavigation of the world (1985-89) aboard Tarka the Otter, an Albin Vega 27. Tarka, under new ownership, is still out there, last seen off Panama.
Nick is the author of three further books that have nothing to do with sailing: one on Colombia, another on Sudan and a third on South Sudan: Collapse of a Country, with a foreword with Romeo Dallaire and Shelly Whitman; this was published in hardback in 2017 and will be re-issued in paperback by McGill-Queen’s University Press in early 2026.
Nick is a regular contributor to the UK’s Sailing Today magazine; a number of his illustrated articles can be found here.
Happy sailing!
Updated: September 2025