Clare Allcard

Clare Allcard was born in 1946 and educated in UK, Belgium and Canada. After a bad start: a nervous breakdown in her late teens, she is now working on a book about what followed. '"Run, till there's no where left to run to" is a personal description of 1960s enforced psychiatric treatment: 26 electroconvulsive therapies, 21 days deep narcosis, cascades of mind-numbing dugs…”' Whilst still incarcerated she read an article about 52-year-old Edward Allcard, who was sailing alone around the world. What a dream! Aged 21, she wrote to him. Today her advice is, “Seize life with both hands! It works.”

The following year, 1968, they left England together to drive to Singapore and then re-join Edward’s small yacht, 'Sea Wanderer', in New Zealand. Clare is writing a book about that too. "‘Journeys’ tells the story of our outer journey: about the countries we drove through: Bulgaria, Iran, Afghanistan etc and also the inner, therapeutic journey of living for five months in a Land Rover and falling in love with a good man. It was either that or murder each other!”

In 1973 Edward completed his solo circumnavigation in Antigua. In 1974 they bought ‘Johanne Regina’, an ancient, 69ft sailing cargo boat. They lived aboard her for the next 12 years.

In 1990 Clare published ‘The Intricate Art of Living Afloat’ with W.W. Norton in New York and Adlard Coles Nautical in London. “It’s a how-to book for cruising folk: how to do the laundry using minimum fresh water, how to get rid of cockroaches, how to store-up for an ocean crossing, how to preserve fresh produce and fish without a refrigerator, how to home-school…”

In 1992 Norton’s published her next, more autobiographical book, ‘A Gypsy Life’, later translated into Norwegian and Catalan and being reissued in 2016 by Imperator Publishing. “It tells of joy and adventure with our young daughter, Kate: of washing clothes at a remote Spanish waterfall, of near death by fish poisoning in the West Indies, sailing Kate's diminutive dinghy, 'Tinkerbell', in the Mediterranean, a Mafia raid off Italy, of steering alone across an ocean on a starlit night with only dolphins for company, of capture and imprisonment by South Yemen Communists, and accused by them of spying.”

Clare’s now completed the first draft of the sequel, ‘The Wind, My Child, is Free.’ “This is about our palm-thatched hut on a small island in the Seychelles, a communist coup, flight to a desert island, on to Sri Lanka and finally the Far East.”

In 1985, fed up with immigration formalities, pirates and sex-starved bachelors, Clare and Edward sailed back to Europe and now live in the tiny Pyrenean principality of Andorra. Here Clare has become an Andorran citizen and recently co-authored ‘Andorra Revealed’, an engaging, in-depth anthology about the country, available on Amazon. Meanwhile, Edward, aged 101, has finished his fourth book, to be published shortly by Imperator Publishing. Set in 1966, it’s about his year-long voyage around South America and Cape Horn.