Nick and Julie met in Cambridge, England, at a youth hosteler gathering when they were both still at school. Julie was 15, Nick was 18.
Nick grew up in a small village north of Cambridge in England. An unlikely place to develop an ambition to go ocean sailing.
Adventurous holidays camping across Europe led to cycling to northern Lapland and other places as a teenager. Then summer work in the North of Scotland for the 1966 Atlantic rower John Ridgway, as an instructor at his Adventure School inspired his ambition to go sailing offshore in his own boat and ultimately to the Voyage of The Aegre
Julie spent her childhood and teens in Cambridge and later in London. Then she was accepted by Warwick University to study Mathematics. Had she stayed on at university her life might have been very different. But she didn’t, instead joining Nick in his quest to go ocean sailing. A brave move. She had never been on a boat smaller than the Isle of Wight Ferry. But that didn’t matter, she was clever, adaptable and in love.
Subscribe for more background; buy the book for the whole story.
