"We're in the middle of the Pacific. As I write, we're rolling in a gentle swell just north of the equator on the 32,000-tonne container ship, the Hansa Rendsburg, a 175m-long Chinese-built vessel with what one of the crew described charmingly as a 'deciduous' engine - it sheds parts, apparently. Tahiti, our last port of call, is 2,000 miles behind us, and the next, Ensenada in Mexico, is another 2,000 miles ahead. In the context of 'getting away from it all', I'm not sure how much further away we could possibly get."