Fordyce Maxwell: 'After every 35-knot crash into a wave came the stomach-churning drop'

I'M not a seasoned sailor. But given good weather, a calm sea, not far to shore and professionals in charge, I'm your man.

So much so that in the past year I've spent a record time afloat. On modest boats, certainly, but starting with a hydrofoil from Corfu to Paxos with the coastline whipping past was fine by me. As was the sampan trip round Hong Kong harbour. No charge mentioned when we boarded to putt-putt around dozens of ships, every one with a line of washing, a barking dog and a man in a vest, but we had to part with 50 Hong Kong dollars to the big woman at the tiller before she would return to shore. You don't get rich by trusting tourists.

In Sydney we took the cross-harbour ferry to Manly on a blustery day. So blustery that as we crossed the heads – as we nautical types say – the boat pitched and rolled in a way any Aberdeen-to-Shetland traveller would recognise. So blustery indeed that it was the last crossing that day and we returned, mildly miffed, by bus.

But as nothing compared with whale-watching at Kaikoura off New Zealand's east coast, especially for Liz. She parted company with her travel sickness pills five minutes into the trip as the skipper – spurred on like a modern Cap'n Ahab by the radio message "Whales six miles out" – bucketed across the waves to reach them.

After every 35-knot crash into a wave came the stomach-churning drop, a relentless process that was too much for Liz as she lost interest in whales and concentrated on the supply of paper bags thoughtfully provided.

We saw three sperm whales, of the half million or so extant. A modest haul, but it was still possible to marvel at the way men once hunted these giants in rowing boats. Cruel, yes, but madly brave.

Between the Manly ferry trip and Kaikoura came the six-hour catamaran sail along the Abel Tasman coast, putting in occasionally to sandy bays, on the return journey skimming before a stiff breeze, trailing a fishing line and passing Adele Island, named after his wife by an explorer not because it was beautiful but because it was "big and lumpy".

The overnight cruise in Doubtful Sound was beautiful. An hour by fast boat across Lake Manapouri, an hour by bus over a mountain road to the otherwise unreachable Sound, then aboard the 'Navigator' to cross the still depths through precipitous tree-covered hillsides, past rare penguins and seals with dolphins swimming alongside.

According to Maori legend, such a beautiful land needed a curse – and it got it with sand flies, just as Scotland got midges. But it was worth the cost of insect repellent for the stillness of morning seen from the deck as the mist cleared and we listened to the silence.

Stirred by a year before the mast in foreign parts, this year I finally made an effort closer to home and got to the Farne Islands 40 years after I first thought of doing so and found I could still leap, relatively speaking for an old sea dog, from a moving boat to steep steps. Next adventure? Oban to Mull, perhaps, or possibly the South Shields ferry.