Saturday 12th May

When I got back from St Helens I had a nice hour or so lying on the couch complaining away about my Day Of Pain, and then Pete and I made our way to Fullers for a book launch.  Mike Litzow and his wife Alisa are living on their yacht, Galactic, which is berthed in the Royal Yacht Club at the moment.  Mike has written a book about their trip from Alaska to Australia, with a small baby as crew.  They now have a second baby and are still going strong.

They have a blog – thelifegalactic.blogpsot.com – which you might like to look at.  Beautiful photos, and all very interesting.  Mike has written already about the launch, and has photos of the crowd at Fullers.  In the front row you can see:

Pete - looking unwell (he is still post-op and not his normal cheery self)
me – looking at the camera
Nicky – looking very seriously at Mike

Mike was a bit disconcerted to see a big sign outside the shop, saying: South from Alaska by Simon Litzow!  He thought it might be a bad omen…but it wasn’t.  There was a big crowd in the Afterword Café, and people queued up to buy the book. 

Alisa and Mike are very enterprising sailors.  They have done long ocean passages, up to three weeks and 3,000 miles, far from land.  Nicky introduced me to Alisa after the launch, and she said, “So you must have done some very lovely long passages too?”  Well no…three days and nights… My preferred method of sailing is to start early in the morning (or late if possible!) and to STOP at 4.00.  Being able to island hop, and STOP at night makes it all pleasant and enjoyable for me.  Before we set off on our trip, I was chatting to one of my nieces (who shall be nameless…) who said, “But surely you can just drop anchor, at night?”  Well no…the ocean is very deep, my darling Nameless Niece…