NAUTICAL ADVENTURES
S.V. Vera Mary
S.V. First Choice
Working at Sunshine Maritime, Puerto de Mogan, Gran Canaria, the first seeds of passion for blue-water ocean-sailing were sewn. I blame Mike Middleton! The oportunity of a passage home to the UK up the Atlantic, via Madeira, Portugal, and across Biscay was too tempting to pass-up. Besides, I had a wedding to get to in Sussex! First Choice, 45ft Bermudan Sloop, Built by Beneteau, France. Skipper: Jim Widdowson.
What a trip.
USA East Coast, and the Sailing Vessel Sandpiper
In 2004, I bought an abandoned 37ft (overall) Ferro-Cement Ketch in Baltimore, from The Living Classrooms Foundation. It had been donated by its builder John F. Laudadio, a NASA engineer who, with a group of friends, has rented and run a small boatbuilding co-operative plot on Middle River, just outside Baltimore on the Chesapeake Bay. Sandpiper is an ocean-going Chesapeake thoroughbred, built on the lines of Olin Stephens and Carlton Mitchell’s fabulous Newport-Bermuda fifties underdog race-winner. But nobody in Baltimore was excited about a ferro-cement ocean boat, so far from the sea. She was on her last legs when I found her, but between Dorry and myself, we brought her back from the dead, with a little help from our friends at Sheltered Harbour, Morehead City, and Myrtle Beach.
Click here for Sandpiper Ship\’s Log 1, with an entry from erstwhile first mate Mik Hetu.
S.V. Sensa
Racing Sensa, 31ft Swedish Metre Boat, from 1937 at the British Classic Yacht Club Regatta, 2008. We sailed from Plymouth in a ’shakedown cruise’, before arriving on the Isle of Wight, for a fabulous sun-and-wind-filled week of thrashing around the Solent and the Isle of Wight. Skipper: Cornelius Van Der Rijke.
S.V. Frenessi
Delivery of Frenessi of Clynder, gorgeous 1959 McGruer Yawl, from Poole to Lowestoft, via Brighton, across the Thames estuary, and up the gateway to the north sea in November. Remarkably convivial and relaxed project – mainly due to the excellent skipper, Tom Board. See it on Youtube.
