Oceans of My Soul - Solo Sailing the South China Sea

Born in the Welsh Marches, Gillie attributes her love of poetry to her late father John, who would recite poems and write his own one of which was the speech at her wedding in 1981. She won her first competition at the age 8, when her poem Swing High, was read out on the local radio.Gillie lived in the South West of the UK until she finally took the audacious leap, to a life afloat in 2006! It is not a life for the lazy or faint-hearted, but often there are times of great solitude when I write prolifically, she says.Gillie lives aboard her little sailing yacht Tuppenny and they are currently in the waters of S E Asia awaiting borders to open and the world to return to normal. Sailing for over 30 years, she is on a slow circumnavigation. Having bought the boat in the US Virgin Islands and sailed in the Caribbean to Windward and Leeward Islands down to Venezuela, up the East Coast USA as far as Boston, Tuppenny headed for Panama in early 2008, via Cuba, Mexico and Belize down to Panama, where she traversed the canal. In May of 2008, Tuppenny and her crew headed out across the Pacific towards New Zealand. Having left the boat in Malaysia for a return trip to her homeland, Gillie climbed back aboard alone in 2016 and is happily afloat in S E Asia, she often traverses from Malaysia to Thailand but is currently waiting for borders to open up again which have been closed as a result of the 2020 Covid Pandemic.