Book Extract: In Bed with the Atlantic

A travel memoir — sailing the Atlantic Circuit

The Sky, the Sea and the Wind

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

- John Ruskin

I changed course to go around squall. Isn’t it mad that you can do that, to change course for rain?

Before I went sailing I never imagined you could change course for weather, I thought it was something unavoidable, something that loomed on the horizon and would hit whatever you did. Weather was something that happened to you. But now I’m discovering that that only applies to immovable things like houses, roads and other constructs that anchor us, pardon the pun, to the earth.

If my childhood taught me anything, it’s that ‘weather’ chose the time, the place and the strength with which it hit. As we doggedly walked up Welsh mountains and through Lake District valleys, rain would be a given. Clouds would squat, fat and frumpy on top of the hills and wait to envelope you as you ascended, there was no avoiding it; you can’t out-walk a…