Clawmarks Down the Jetty: A Nearly But Not Quite Circumnavigation

With $50 cash and just an echo sounder and sextant for navigation, Jill and Bunji Harris set off from Nelson, New Zealand on a world voyage aboard their 34ft steel sloop Bloomers.

Far from the stability and comforts of land life, their sailing odyssey took them to the Comoros Islands, Kenya, Sudan, Yemen, Mauritania, The Gambia and beyond.

With no experience on yachts, Jill learned how to live in a watery world that was rarely horizontal and immersed herself in the realities of other cultures outside the sanitised bubble of the tourism trail.

She experiences times of fear and elation, acute anxiety and utter hilarity, from illegal work to whisky smuggling, from a Red Sea disaster to childbirth in Cyprus.

The good times come at a cost, as Jill sails herself into her own voyage of discovery.