This was an age before helicopter parenting became a thing, but even so, the Saunders children were given a remarkably free rein, and were often riotously exuberant. WALKABOUT's dinghy was stowed upright on the cabin top, and it was a favourite haunt of the kids,

There seems to be a long tradition in the telling of maritime adventures of, let’s call it….embellishment. I personally find a note of inauthenticity in perhaps the most revered early circumnavigator, Slocum. Some people like Tristan Jones, just blatantly made stuff up! Even writers like Jonny Wray and Erling Tambs who I enjoy enormously, are prone to gloss over the emotionally and politically difficult issues. But Robinson doesn’t shy away from telling us of his fears, his unfettered delights and his opinions of all manor of human and physical discoveries as he sailed around the world.

The adventure was beginning and it was nothing like what I anticipated. Years, months, and days of prep work were forgotten. We just wanted to make it through the evening of squalls and then the Gulf Stream safely reminding ourselves that this trip was our vacation time.

In the middle of the Mornington Peninsula, an hour’s drive southeast of Melbourne, and 10kms from any substantial body of water, there is a block of land that really could only be described as a retirement home for old boats.  A few are receiving some late life attention, but most of them have gone there just to die.  There are the ubiquitous unpainted rusting steel home-made boats with big, hard chimes and protruding welds that look like badly healed scars.