Green eyed monster time...
...as we introduce uber administrator Perry Crickmere. In his own words: "Perry is a keen sailor with a particular interest in classic boats, having spent six years rebuilding the family cruising yacht Torhilda (left, Perry in the red lifejacket). She is a 28' gaff cutter originally built in Looe in 1933 and was found abandoned in an east coast boatyard. Torhilda is now based in Milford Haven where she is sailed by Perry, his wife (Claudia Myatt, author and illustrator of a popular series of sailing books for children for the RYA) and son James.
With his merchant navy background Perry has sailed most waters of the world including a sailing /climbing expedition to the Arctic with Sir Robin Knox-Johnston and Chris Bonington on board Suhaili in 1991. Perry is also rather useful in the office and computer literate, having spent nearly 20 years in a suit in the city after leaving the merchant Navy."
So he's got a lovely boat and he's sailed with Robin Knox-Johnston, the first man to solo the world non-stop (a personal hero, if you haven't read his book 'A world of my own', go and do so at once) and who has just completed a solo round the world race on an Open 60 ocean racing yacht aged 68. Not really envious.
5 Comments:
What a fantastic boat!
'Boat' - that is the correct nautical term, isn't it?
Indeed. Boats just have to float, ships have to be found to have three masts. Things that float but have no masts, but are instead infested by large, vulgar engines are correctly termed 'stinkpots'.
Could you imagine HMS Beagle replica rounding Cape Horn?
Yes, Albatross I can imagine the replica Beagle rounding Cape Horn as the original did, and it will be fantastic for many reasons. We'll have built it, we'll have given Darwin the 200th birthday party he deserves. We'll have got up the noses of a lot of nay-sayers, and people for whom Darwin is not a great man and a role model. We will have launched her, sailed her to Devonport where the 1831 voyages started, to Woowich near London where the origial was built and launched, to Esssex where the remains of the original lie 30 ft down in best British mud. We'll have had our first crews of young scientists and sail training cadets aboard, they'l have been all at ea, sick as dogs. But they'll have got it. We'll have set out across the Atlantic, and sailed for days, weeks making the boat work, fixing the glitches. Young crew will be laying alft to reef sails, gettng the hang of navigation, working out just how good those young brave mariners were 170 years ago. They'll be trawling, getting the samples, freezing them for later DNA analysis. The shit will hit fan at some point, we'll have to do some storm sailing: the boat will come through it, so will the crew. They'll make landfallls as Darwin did: Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina. Some will set off on shore trips in Darwin's footsteps, measuring, sampling, observing, recording. Then, at some point, they'll round Cape Horn. Maybe they'll have seen the 'sorely pressed' painting of Beagle rounding the Cape, whether or not they'll know it by reputation. When, when they've sailed round it, the crew members will know they've done one of the hardest passages in the world, eligible to get the tattoo of a full-rigged ship (a Beagle, please, anything else would be ungrateful) to show they've done it. And when they get into the southern ocean, surely they will have D. exulans following the boat? So, yes. I can imagine it. Thankss for provokingg the reverie...
Great!
See you in Cape Horn.
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