Vancouver Hybrid Club Night – Under Wide and Starry Skies

Nick and Jenny will present Nick’s latest book: Under Wide and Starry Skies – Fifty Sailing Destinations in Seas Less Travelled, which was published in early 2025 by Bloomsbury/Adlard Coles (UK). As Nick explains in the introduction, this is a book for offshore cruisers who wish to stray from the well-populated cruisers’ milk run – away from the BVIs, the Windwards, Tahiti and Tonga  – and find solitude (but in safety, and without venturing to extreme latitudes).  They’ll pick half a dozen or so of the locations featured, which range from fabled Robinson Crusoe Island to the remote fortress of Saint Helena and – least travelled of all – Crocodile Island, on war-torn Sudan’s Blue Nile.

Wide and Starry Skies was shortlisted for the prestigious Best Book of 2025 by the UK’s Maritime Foundation, and has been written up favourably in Currents and many other locations; for more reviews and extracts click here.  A small number of copies of the book will be available to purchase, but to be sure of obtaining yours, go online to Under Wide and Starry Skies.

Presenters

Nick and Jenny cut their teeth as BCA members in the Gulf Islands aboard their Albin Vega 27, Tarka the Otter. Starting in 1985 with only eighteen months of sailing experience, they circumnavigated the world via the South Pacific, Australia, the Cape of Good Hope and the Panama Canal, returning to Maple Bay in 1989. Later, on another small vessel – Bosun Bird, a Vancouver 27 which they bought in South Africa – they crossed the South Atlantic from Cape Town to Brazil, spent a year in Patagonian waters, then sailed the South Pacific once again. After New Zealand and Japan, they spent several years cruising Alaska, based successively in Kodiak, Cordova and Sitka. Back home at last in Ganges (Salt Spring Island), they now have 70,000 miles under their keel.

Meanwhile, Nick held down jobs as best he could, first as a teacher on Vancouver Island then in the Canadian Foreign Service. The last of Nick’s six diplomatic postings overseas was as the first Canadian Ambassador to the newly independent Republic of South Sudan. Nick and Jenny were both awarded the Meritorious Service Cross (MSC) by the Governor General of Canada for their role in evacuating Canadians under fire from Juba, when civil war broke out in South Sudan in late 2013.

Nick is the author of three “serious” political books covering Colombia, Sudan and South Sudan, and three sailing-related books:Winter in Fireland – A Patagonian Sailing Adventure (2011); Sailing to the Heart of Japan (2024); and Under Wide and Starry Skies – Fifty Sailing Destinations in Seas Less Travelled (2025).

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Hybrid Meeting Format

In-Person Attendees (Check-in and Pay Cash at the door):

• Doors open: 7:00 pm, meeting starts at 7:30 pm.
• Cost: $5/Members, $10/Non-Members.

Virtual Attendees via ZOOM:

Click here to register for and purchase your virtual meeting ticket and receive the Zoom meeting invitation.  Please note that you must be signed in to the BCA website to get the member price.

• Virtual doors open: 7:00 and meeting starts at 7:30.
• Cost: Members – $5.00 per connected device; Non-Members, $10 per connected device, payable online (see link below).
• Note: Due to the small cost of virtual tickets, and an equal or greater cost to BCA of issuing refunds, no refunds will be issued unless Vancouver Chapter is unable to deliver the Club Night via Zoom.

For More Information and to Register – Click Here