The couple who left Hong Kong to sail the high seas, island hopping from Taiwan to Japan
- Retracing the routes once taken by European explorers, an intrepid couple bade Hong Kong farewell and set sail to encounter buffeting winds, natural beauty and Asian bureaucracy
It was mid-autumn on the high seas, and we were halfway across the Taiwan Strait, beating into a northeasterly wind. It could have been a much kinder southwesterly, had we sailed a week earlier, but we were starting a new life, a sailing adventure, and saying goodbye to Hong Kong had taken a lot longer than we thought it would.
I winched our reefed mainsail in just a little tighter, and tried to point a degree higher, as we clawed our way upwind into a cold grey rain towards Taiwan. The notorious currents of the Taiwan Strait, which have earned it the nickname the Black Ditch, were kicking up a steep two-metre chop, knocking us back every time we built some momentum. But then, it had taken some time to build enough momentum just to leave port.
To explore the seas on my own sailing boat was a dream I’d been harbouring for three decades. Finally, my girlfriend and I bought an old but solid boat, and spent several years repairing and upgrading her. We saved money and sketched out our plan on a world map hung on our bedroom wall.
Then the pandemic hit. We spent the time working through our long list of equipment to buy, repairs to make, subscriptions to cancel and moved as much of our administrative lives online as possible. There would be no forwarding address.
Finally, on a cool October dawn last year, we cast off from our mooring on Middle Island and pointed Teng Hoi’s bow towards the rising sun. Our plans were simple – go east to Taiwan, and then north, following the string of Japanese islands until, well, we hadn’t thought that far ahead.
We knew we wanted to discover the far-flung islands and little ports. What we didn’t expect was how tightly woven together they were by centuries of maritime trade, piracy, wars and colonial rulers. As we sailed through our East Asian maritime history lesson, we would gain first-hand knowledge of what has been the core of this fraught, conquered and still-contested region’s centuries-long story.
