Nicholas Coghlan

Nicholas (Nick) Coghlan earned a degree at Oxford University (UK) before fleeing with his wife Jenny to sunnier Argentina in 1978. He used the excuse of employment at St George's College, Buenos Aires, to travel all over Patagonia for three years, then moved to Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where another teaching job permitted him to take up sailing. From 1985 to 1989 Nick and Jenny sailed around the world in their 27ft yacht Tarka the Otter, one of the smallest Canadian vessels then to have accomplished this feat. In 1991, seeking to get paid to travel, Nick joined the Canadian Foreign Service. Postings took him and Jenny successively to Mexico City, Bogota, Cape Town, Khartoum and Islamabad, with unavoidable stints in wintry Ottawa in between. He was the first Canadian diplomat ever posted to Sudan, and the first Canadian Consul General in Cape Town but his spell in Islamabad - interspersed with bombs and travel to the peaks of the Hindu Kush - was perhaps the most exciting. Meanwhile, he took two leaves of absence from diplomacy to go sailing again: from Cape Town back to Patagonia (a voyage recounted in Winter in Fireland) then onwards into the Pacific. Nick and Jenny are currently aboard Bosun Bird, their rugged Vancouver 27 yacht, in Japan's Inland Sea. Their travels (including to Patagonia) are charted on their website at www.bosunbird.com.