Entries Tagged 'Cruising Stories' ↓

In 1854 seven Cornish fisherman had decided to leave behind the hard times they were experiencing at home and try their luck in the Australian gold rush. They were all shareholders in a fishing boat, a 37 foot Mounts Bay lugger called Mystery. The group were considering selling the boat to pay for their passages when it was suggested over a pint in the pub that they should just set sail in the Mystery.

The group set sail on 18th November 1854 and covered the 11,800 nautical miles to Melbourne in 116 days, stopping only in Cape Town for supplies and repairs.

153 years later sailor and adventurer Pete Goss was looking for a new challenge when he came across the story of the Mystery and decided to re enact the voyage. The project commenced in August 2007 with design and building of the boat. Spirit of Mystery was launched on 21st June and will be fitted out over the coming months. The boat is a close replica of the original Mystery. No plans were used to build these boats in 1854 and no craft from that era have survived to the present although the basic dimensions of Mystery are known. Fortunately plans for a Mounts Bay lugger were found in a report into a 1848 storm in Scotland which sank 124 boats greatly assisting designer and builder Chris Rees.

Goss will be sailing with a crew of three making it considerably less cramped than on the original voyage and there will be a few modern conveniences onboard that were unavailable in 1854 including safety and communication equipment. However Goss intends to sail and navigate the boat just as it was done on the original voyage using a sextant and celestial navigation. An engine has been fitted to the boat for legal and practical reasons but the intention is not use it on the voyage. There are no electrics apart from a solar panel for the satcom.

Goss hopes to have the boat completed in time to set off in October and be in Cape Town for Christmas.

No stranger to adventure Goss, a former Royal Marine has taken part many offshore yacht races and organised expeditions to the North Pole. He famously rescued fellow competitor Rapheal Dinelli in the 1996 Vendee Globe. His revolutionary catamaran Team Philips broke up in a storm in December 2000 on its way to begin “The Race” to be the fastest boat to sail around the world.

Click here to visit the Spirit of Mystery website.

At 5.30 am on a cold and dark Monday morning I was reconsidering my invitation to sail down to the Sanctuary Cove Boat Show on a new Hanse 370. However the forecast was for 20-25 knots from the south west and a fine day, and it turned out to be a very fine day indeed.

With the sun just breaking over the horizon we left Mooloolaba with one reef in the main and also rolled away a bit of the self tacking headsail as we came onto the wind after rounding Point Cartwright.

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Many thanks to Captain Triko for this story about the Joshua C and her crew as they head off on voyages anew.

The Joshua C is a fine 80’ schooner that has been 10 years in the making. Since kissing the tide she has been lying on the northern bank of Petrie Creek a shallow muddy tributary of the Maroochy River on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

A few weeks ago on a particularly high tide, the Joshua C successfully separated herself from the mud and cane fields of Petrie Creek and motored two miles downstream and under the David Low Way bridge. A crane had come and pulled her masts from her in order to pass below the span which carries the 4 lanes of traffic linking the northern and southern Sunshine Coast. She was heading to a new berth just to the seaward side of the bridge to make final preparations for crossing the Maroochy River Bar on the next big tide.

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I have been following the progress of young Australian Nick Jaffe as he sails single handed from Europe to Australia.

A very relieved Nick on his Contessa 26 “Constellation” has arrived in Barbados, 30 days after leaving the Canary Islands.

The first 10 days were dogged by light and variable winds and large uncomfortable cross swells before Nick hit the trade wind belt. It certainly sounded like Nicks stamina and patience were tested.

Nick has put a run down of the first half of the voyage on his Blog.

Related posts: Young Australian Heads Home Alone

Related posts: Big Oceans, Small Boat Update

This article in the New Zealand newspaper The Nelson Mail made me smile.

Englishman Tony Curphy and German Susanne Huber-Curphy met whilst they were both sailing singlehanded. They have completed one circumnavigation together but still in separate yachts. Susanne has just had to rescue Tony part way through their second circumnavigation. Read the full story here.

American stuntman Robert McDonald is due to set off from the Netherlands to London on a shake down cruise for his 50′ viking ship replica. McDonald then intends to recreate earlier viking voyages across the Atlantic to North America via Iceland and Greenland.

Unusually McDonald chose to build his boat out of 15,000,000 recycled ice-cream sticks with the help of his son and more than 5,000 school children. The ship took four years to build using the ice-cream sticks which were sent in by children from around the world.

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Last week the crew of a New Zealand yacht mutinied whilst on a coastal delivery from Auckland to Nelson. The yacht had sailed north from Auckland and had rounded Cape Reinga on the northern tip of New Zealand before heading south along the west coast of the North Island.

It seems that the relatively inexperienced crew set off the EPIRB against the owner/skippers wishes because they feared for their safety.

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This is a guest post by Pete (Tricko). We hope to have more contributions from Pete (and a short bio when he gets round to it :)).

Once I saw a mermaid in the Mooloolaba Yacht Club . It was a Tuesday evening about 7pm and a line of thunder storms dark and mean in appearance had approached from the south west.

Like a few other people living on board their yachts I had taken refuge in the Club bar, rather than sit out the chaos of the storm on board. Sitting alone at bistro table number eight in the near empty club I could not help but notice her appearance.

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Young Australian sailor Nick Jaffe has been cooling his heels in the Canary Islands for 2 months while his solar panels were lost in the Spanish Postal system. Nick is sailing his 26′ yacht back to Australia on a shoe string. The solar panels have finally arrived and Nick is able to set sail again. He is departing today for the 3000 nautical mile trip across the Atlantic Ocean.

During the wait for the solar panels the window of opportunity for entering the Pacific via the Panama canal was closing. Instead he formulated a plan to sail to the east coast of the USA and transport the boat by land to the west coast stopping in Bermuda on the way.

It seems that a visa to visit Bermuda is not obtainable in the Canary Islands but is in Barbados. So Nick is off to Barbados poste haste as it is late in the season. It will take Nick around 30 days to cross the Atlantic. He will be sending in podcasts via satellite phone during the voyage to let us know how he is progressing.

During his crossing Nick is attempting to raise funds for the Oxfam Australia bridge building fund in rural Cambodia. Nick has a page on his website with details on how to contribute.

Related posts: Young Australian Heads Home Alone

For some reason I find the terms flotsam and jetsam fascinating, conjuring up images of old sailing ships sinking and lots of wooden wreckage. But what do they mean exactly?

As the name suggests, jetsam is goods or cargo which has been deliberately jettisoned by the crew, perhaps to lighten the ship in an emergency. Flotsam on the other hand is goods that are left floating after a shipwreck or that have been washed overboard accidentally. These days flotsam also tends to cover naturally occuring floating debris like driftwood.

Ships containers are lost overboard fairly regularly making dangerous flotsam for small boats. Also a lot of modern flotsam is plastic and not environmentally friendly.

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