Around the world in 32 feet
In the final days of our circumnavigation on Blue Eye, fate offered up a curious meeting. My school friend James and I had opted to complete our journey around the world through the French canals – we assumed they would offer an ease and serenity that beating up the Portuguese coastline was unlikely to provide. Serene the canals might have been, easy they were not. After three years of travelling by boat, we should have known better.
Regardless, Blue Eye rumbled into a marina in Rouen in northern France, the Yamaha engine of our Nicholson 32 wheezing away after a solid month of use in the waterways. It was there in Rouen that we met Matt and Tim, two English sailors younger even than our 27 year old selves. Rouen – where river becomes sea, where one journey was coming to an end, and where another was just beginning.
Our journey began in Portland, England in August 2016. James and I left with 32 feet of boat beneath us and 24 years of life behind us. If either of those numbers seemed too low to our family or friends, they kept any concern well hidden. They cheerily waved us off the dock on a hot summer’s morning, perhaps inwardly reassuring themselves that the numbers which really mattered were the amount of miles that we had sailed in preparation,
