Bernie Katchor is a fun loving, gregarious, irreverent and shoeless Australian who has lived on sailboats for the last forty years bestowing his lust for life on those he meets and in his writings. His detailed, intriguing and explicit portrayals of Australian flora and fauna, especially the Great Barrier Reef, excite his readers worldwide.

Around the Next Bend his first non fiction book will be closely followed by two more. Some hundreds of short stories relating to Australiana, his worldwide travels to unusual places on sailboats , and fictional material have been written. Unique Australian humour with a lack of respect for convention predominate.

‘Suddenly an idea erupts. Luckily, it stays with me, through gales, calms, and bird watching expeditions. It develops in my mind, awakening me in the silence of the wee small hours. I crawl out of my bunk, walk eight feet and two-finger type. Thus, I have a record. This is exactly how it happens,’ laughs the amiable Australian sailor.

THE MAN

Who the hell is Bernie bloody Katchor and who bloody cares?

Born in 1941 he says he is too rapidly approaching sixty eight.

At sixteen years of age he lied his way into Adelaide University and the resident College, St Mark's. After many fun filled years he finally managed to graduate in Pharmacy. Bernie immediately looked for more thrilling challenges.

With very limited knowledge, he sailed from Adelaide keeping Australia on the left for several thousand miles until the vessel caught fire and was lost.

He married Yvonne an equally fun filled pharmacist. The pair bought a large forty-ton lugger near New Guinea. They swapped this disastrous boat for two air tickets to England. At the first stop, Fiji, they swapped these tickets for a leaky seventy-year-old sailboat.

After cruising the Pacific for two years they sailed back to Australia where the first of two daughters was born.

Soon after they, themselves, built a steel sailing yacht "Nari" and, before it was completed, sailed to Queensland's Whitsunday Islands.

Here they made the choice not to work in Pharmacy. Both became Master Grade IV Ship's Captains and in 1970 pioneered the sailing industry in the seventy-four Whitsunday Islands with Nari day sailing Cruises. Whitsunday Rent a Yacht, bareboat sailing charters, followed.

After twenty-five years in business Bernie and Yvonne found themselves working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, marketing, operating and maintaining their seventy four-vessel fleet and sixty eight staff.

Bernie said, 'Why is it only our customers have fun?'

Common sense prevailed and the business was sold. They bought an old sailboat in Florida, USA.

Happy go lucky once again, they have enjoyed every one of the forty thousand miles they have sailed in the last fifteen years visiting countries such as Canada, USA, The Caribbean, Guyana, Venezuela, Columbia, Panama and Cuba.

Bernie bestows his lust for life on those he meets on the way. Presently in Cuba, it is the intention of this adventurous couple to continue their adventures until Bernie is eighty in 2021 when they will pass through the Panama Canal as it will be time to sail to Australia to meet the grandchildren.

Writing was impossibility for Bernie, apart from publicity articles in magazines and newspapers, whilst involved in the cacophonous boating business. Aboard their sailing home "Australia 31" time to write is now available.

"Around the next Bend" is Bernie's second published book.