White yachts went sobbing and strumming past our bows and stern, their crews decked out in daffodil PVC and braided captains’ hats. The whole Solent was a crazy-paving of interlaced wakes as I did my best to thread us through the pack of charging motor cruisers, fishing parties, ferries, dinghies, yachts. The entrance to the Beaulieu River was hidden behind a bright fleet of sailboards. A big container ship, leaving Southampton Water, scattered the small fry ahead of it like a pike in a pond.
“Racing!” shouted a furious Saturday admiral from his cockpit, “We’re racing!”
“He seems cross,” my mother said.

What makes it different to the previous six books in this column is that it’s an adventure brought on by necessity rather than free choice.  It’s a story that is playing out in some form or another every day of the year in 2021, whether it be in the Mediterranean, the Indian ocean or the Caribbean. Normal people, whose mere existence is under threat, take to a small boat, to escape to a new life.