Throw Off The Bowlines

As Doug puts it: “As I stood on the deck at the start of our first solo voyage, with the Sugar Loaf Mountain passing on our starboard side, I thought, ‘How did the five of us come to be facing the huge Atlantic Ocean all alone?’ ”
The story of this epic adventure is wonderfully and intimately told through the medium of dozens of letters the couple wrote home to concerned and disbelieving parents back in South Africa.
Storms and even hurricanes, many windless and frustrating days, stunningly beautiful anchorages and islands, eccentric fellow “yachties”, close encounters with the Queen, Princess Margaret and Robert de Niro, vexatious bureaucrats, a robust social life while in port, (even a revolution!) and the challenges of feeding, raising and educating three lively and energetic young children within the confines of a 16 m yacht, are all part of this great story.
The adventure ends when Gaucho is sold in St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, in 1979, and the family returns to a “normal” life in South Africa, having forged a bond often denied most families.