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by Duncan Gould

Sailing South Africa's Wild Coast

by Duncan Gould, Posted May 9, 2012
My wife, Irene, and I had spent a very happy year in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. We had no security issues, and we saw incredible game. We got to watch a leopard groom himself in the early light of New Year’s Day and almost drove our 4x4 into a wallow with two startled rhinos.

Bundaberg, Australia

by Duncan Gould, Posted June 24, 2011
This article originally appeared in the October 2009 issue   The Burnett River is a big, slow-moving river, muddy from eons of moving silt. Where Moose, our 39-foot cutter, is moored at “Bundy,” eight miles up from the sea, the current direction changes twice a day as the tide floods and then ebbs. But Moose doesn’t clock around with tide cycle because she’s tied,

A Passage to Africa

by Duncan Gould, Posted May 9, 2011
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”Baseball legend Yogi Berra gets credit for that advice, but it sort of encapsulated our motivation for the coming cruise.Our 39-foot steel cutter, Moose, was sailing out through the pass at Mayotte, a French island between Mozambique and Madagascar, bound for Ilha de Moambique, just off the African mainland. After a

Pirogues and Dhows

by Duncan Gould, Posted December 9, 2010
I can’t say it was an easy passage. True, the weather was so benign we had to motor for four days to complete the 1,500-mile trip from the Chagos Archipelago to Cap d’Ambre, at the northern point of Madagascar. But Irene and I, aboard Moose, our 39-foot steel cutter, were tense the entire way. Somali pirates, forced south by international policing of the Red Sea route, were now striking shipping

The Best Destination in the World

by Duncan Gould, Posted May 26, 2010
Chagos Archipelago—seven atolls, 55 tiny islands, and the military enclave of Diego Garcia—lies in the center of the Indian Ocean, 1,000 miles south of India. It is the largest coral atoll in the world, with a reasonable claim to having the healthiest reef and the cleanest water in the world. There are no permanent residents, no shops or businesses. We spent 83 days there, on a mooring left

Hole in the wall

by Duncan Gould, Posted April 6, 2009
From a mile out you see nothing but a sheer rock wall, 150 feet high and running both ways for miles. Run up to the north a bit and a sliver of a crack appears—the Hole in the Wall, one of Langkawi, Malaysia’s hidden jewels. Once you’ve butted through the tidal outflow, a view like a Chinese landscape opens. Mangroves line the shorelines, and limestone cliffs climb 500 feet
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