Written by John Ridgway and published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1975. This entry published with the kind permission of both. (OUT OF PRINT)

“The boat that can sail in October, will sail the world over!” cackled old Granny Ross, from her rocking chair in the corner of the old stone croft house. Running the John Ridgway School of Adventure at Ardmore, means a family holiday must come in the winter season. And if it involves sailing a thirty-two foot sloop from the extreme north-west of Scotland to the Cape Verde Islands between October and December, a degree of calculated risk is as inevitable as the seasickness. When the crew of six includes John Ridgway’s wife, Marie Christine, and their seven-year-old daughter, Rebecca, it also brings an extra personal dimension and some sharp observation of life on a fairly steep ocean wave, as seen by a small girl to whom a supermarket on Santa Cruz is as wondrous as a killer whale off the bow or an inquisitive submarine.

The expedition to the Cape Verdes, off the west coast of Africa, was the last chance for the Ridgways to have along family holiday all together before Rebecca would have to go away to school. After a proving voyage brings English Rose V home from Gosport to Ardmore, near Cape Wrath, through every winter hazard conceivable and few that weren’t, the faint-hearted might have given up the idea of winter sailing as a suitable family hobby. But at the end of September 1974, the Ridgways set sail – John, Marie Christine and Rebecca, along with Stafford Morse, Krister Nylund and Jamie Young, who made up the crew.

Their ports of call included the holiday island of Madeira, where the men took a walk off the tourist track across the island’s 5,000 foot volcanic plateau. Santa Cruz, the eerie wreck-strewn coastline of the Spanish Sahara where the great desert stretches down into the sea in the treacherous uncharted sandbars, and the impoverished Cape Verde islands. From there they set sail for the Azores, a green and bountiful last port before the long perilous voyage home, on the North Atlantic in December. John Ridgway’s account captures the humour and the misery, the exhilaration and the apprehension in equal parts, and suggests to other yachtsmen that theirs may after all be an all the year round sport.

Postscript 2003 by John Ridgway This is my sixth book, I wrote it in 29 continuous days of non-stop effort, trying to achieve flow and momentum. It was during this period that I realised I was no Tolstoy - and promptly went down with flu.

English Rose V was a fine yacht. This is a trip from the days before I realised how useful an engine could be in a sailing boat. We had all manner of scrapes and we were so lucky not to lose the boat in the storm off the west coast of Ireland a couple of days before Christmas.

Perhaps it was a form of education for our dear daughter, Rebecca. But it did rather put her off sailing for a bit – and her Mother too….

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