A picture from times long gone. A small white sailing yacht looking like one of New England's fishermen of the nineteenth century tacking into Horta's harbour carefully avoiding the modern mega yachts liing at anchor. Sails falling in the inner corner of the bight then let go anchor. Silence. Blue skies and dead calm the next morning. Cup of coffee in hand I am watching an elderly gentleman clad in shorts, an Italian style strawhat and a snowwhite beard wrigging the same boat into the inner marina, finally making fast to a fingerpier without a sound. I know this boat but it takes a second cup to connect it with a name: "Taleisin" of Lin and Larry Pardey. This couple is a bluewater legend from the time when cruisers names were Hiscock and Moitessier.

They have been out there for more than thirty years now. They built their two Lyle Hess designed traditional wooden boats themselves and never had an engine or any of our modern gimmicks. Thirty feet were always enough for them. They wrote countless books and articles on all aspects of cruising which I used to devour.During those endless hours of on call in the hospital waiting for the next emergency they used to send me to a world I always wanted to belong to. Now we are finally doing what we should have done years ago and my heroes of so many waisted nights are only a few yards away. In the afternoon I grab one of their books and go over to meet them feeling excited and a bit shy. Larry's smiling face dives out of the hatch: "Hi, I can see what You want, come on board." Hours later I leave them with my autograph and a bag full of bluewater stories slightly bedazzled by the affluence of incohol. Wit, energy, sparkling vitality and a boundless joy of life have left a lasting impression on me.