Blue water: Time travel to Fiji

"A lot has changed - the sailing, the islands and me too." With these brief words, behind which a whole life is hidden, Peter Kammler summarises the experiences of his most recent trip. He is now 83 years old and has lived in New Zealand for a long time. In his spare time, he is still out on the water as a skipper.

He sets off from Auckland with friends on a long voyage to Fiji. The three of them are at sea for over a week. There is plenty of time to reflect on sailing today - on a modern 54-foot Hanse - and back then - on the "Mauna Kea", a Nicholson 38 that was already old at the time. Later, after arriving at their destination, the differences between the archipelago, which has long since been largely developed for tourism, and the former, almost untouched South Sea paradise are, of course, obvious.

Kammler describes the changes in an entertaining way, without castigating the blessings of modernity. Nevertheless, he cannot avoid denouncing some of the achievements of technology - for example, when the chart plotter unwaveringly suggests a course across the reefs or when the expansive space in the cockpit and cabin, as is common on today's cruising yachts, turns out to be a space that can hardly be bridged accident-free on the high seas.

Kammler does not spare himself either. With humour and irony, he talks about his survival training in the hotel pool, which he completed especially for the trip, or about the difficulties of having to struggle into oilskins at night in wind and waves as an over 80-year-old. The body is just not as flexible as it once was.

Kammler's travelogue, which is also a journey back in time to the early years of blue water sailing, can now be read in the new YACHT (issue 18/2019, available now from well-stocked newsagents and as a Digital edition available).