Gale Warnings

The equinox is upon us, and the weather will be taking a last bare-knuckle swing before it puts on the gloves and resigns itself to a bit of sparring, with any luck from directions beneficial to the passagemaker. Meanwhile here at the MQ we have been fielding a large number of contributions ancient and modern, which we hope will amuse and instruct while simultaneously purging the soul with pity and terror.

We kick off with the final instalment of the seagoing-under-sail career of the young Bernard Penrose. While ostensibly less dramatic than his circumnavigation in the square-rigger Garthpool and his voyage to Greenland on the Rum and Bible ship, this one has moments of its own, which it would be a pity to reveal in advance of your reading. Tom Cunliffe follows with an account of a schooner race off Antigua that cannot fail to warm and inspire. After which things cool down nicely, in temperature if not in action, as we travel to St Kilda with Jeremy Warren. Recommended kit for this read includes a drysuit, as Warren made the voyage, which he describes in detail simultaneously inspiring and instructive, in a Wayfarer.

We remain in the Hebrides for Michael Skidmore's account of a cruise to Fladaigh Chuain north of Skye, in which he meditates on the power of Gaelic myths on seafarers ancient and modern. The mists of folklore clear to reveal the rust-bitten and stinking side of a tanker in the final episode of Julian Blatchley's stint on the horrible Adirondack – a report from the late 1980s, but weirdly topical in its reflections on sanctions-busting and the dangers of the Ukraine, then centred on the Chernobyl explosion rather than the territorial ambitions of Putin.

There is more sanctions enforcement with Andrew Livsey, a young RN officer told to bring a knackered tanker to an anchorage in the Gulf, and trying to work out how. Then we head for the other side of the world with Carol Dunlop in a flight from the Fijian immigration authorities that involved crossing a large tract of Pacific in a sinking boat. There are calmer waters, at least physically, for Philip Stevens, who worked as an apprentice in the Morgan Giles boatyard at Teignmouth as GRP replaced wood as the preferred (except by boatbuilders) material for building boats. Then we rocket into the social stratosphere to eavesdrop on the reflections of Sir Philip Hunloke, pillar of the Squadron, who looked after the King's Britannia at the height of the Big Boat era.

Philip Guzzwell was one of the hardy breed who sailed enormous distances in very small boats - a breed Nicholas Gray has chronicled in his new book, and which he understands better than most people. Julia Jones is an enthusiast, and quite right too, for Rozelle Raynes, a splendidly independent-minded earl's daughter who ran sailing classes for orphanage boys on her folkboat in the 1970s. And finally Jim Ring, who is writing a new biography of Arthur Ransome, revisitsnthat mighty author, uncovering in the process some aspects of his life that may surprise readers who had assumed he was a sort of tweedy universal uncle.

As usual, in fact, much of maritime life is here.

Welcome aboard!

Sam Llewellyn