I  spent a magical 30 years living on a houseboat in Little Venice.  A trivial episode showed me the futility of working to pay for things I realised I did not need, which changed the course of my life.  I left London, leaving many dear friends in a state of shock, and landed in New Zealand. To my great surprise I unexpectedly bumped into Pete. A tiny sweet boat that I had just bought in New Zealand was temporarily abandoned for a sail on “Oryx”.  After seeing  Pete single-handedly tacking to the  tunes of yet another gale while performing what looked like Brazilian capoeira in the cockpit, I thought it might be fun to dance a tango with him at sea.

My love affair with the sea and the boats began in early childhood, on the island of Korcula in Croatia, where I was taken to the sea regularly as a small child. My father’s heavily loaded day-boat, was caught in a strong afternoon wind. The waves began filling it. When my father hurryingly started throwing large stones into the sea to avoid sinking, I was excited. I remember looking in astonishment at the huge seas surrounding us.  Many decades later, I was looking at the threatening Southern Ocean with the same awe.  The sea became and remains my life’s dream, something that fulfils me, and where I feel that I live life to the full.

I have 25 years of sailing experience, crewing on a variety of cruising boats in Europe (Croatia, UK & Ireland, France, Spain, Sweden) and further afield – French Polynesia, Australia, New Zealand, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, USA – covering over  35,000 miles. 

While I was crewing and reporting for Yachting Monthly, from “Gipsy Moth”,  I and the crew survived the most distressing shipwreck on Tuamotu’s reef at night. The experience did not lessen my zest for sailing and the sea.

Crewing on a 24m gaff schooner “Tecla”  from New Zealand, around Cape Horn to the Falkland Islands, therefore sailing “from 50 South to 50 South” qualified me for membership of the “International Cape Horners Association” which is very close to my heart.

I sailed as a mate with Pete in New Zealand and then to the Austral and Gambier Islands, onwards to Tahiti, Tonga and back to New Zealand on his beautiful junk rig catamaran “Oryx”. On our new boat “Kokachin” I sailed from the UK across the Atlantic, Caribbean, to Bermuda, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.  My sailing life with Pete is never short of adventures, as was best demonstrated during our crossing of the stormy Tasman Sea recently. 

Articles about my sailing have been published in OCC “Flying Fish” magazine, The Cruising Association and The Junk Rig Association, as well as in the Croatian nautical magazine “More”.  Talks about my sailing (miss-ad-ventures!) like shipwrecked on “Gipsy Moth”  and others were well received in the UK and Croatia.