The most impressive thing about the film is that it is stunningly beautiful. In spite of the fact that Alizé was seriously seasick for about half the passage and this is her first feature-length film, her camera work is exceptional. Somehow she has no trouble getting big waves to look big in pix (a trick I’ve never mastered), and she has a very nuanced eye when it comes to depicting life onboard.

Autumnal news from around the wooden boat world.

Your bunk is no retreat. You are a vagrant chunk of ice in a cocktail shaker. You hold on to the berth with your toes and the muscles of your derriere, all the time scrounging out of the way of the Chinese torture-drop coming off the over-head. (Damn that shipyard man, you told him about that leak.) You don't feel like eating, but that damned fool Cookie (showing off) has fired up the alcohol stove. The cabin slowly fills with unconsumed alcohol fumes which make your eyes smart and which go right to the pit of your stomach before his miserable scrambled egg can get there.

In one season alone Coles made sixteen Channel crossings in COHOE, but her most famous voyage was the 1950 Transatlantic Race from Bermuda to Plymouth.