STOP PRESS!
Day 31: Nearly There!
JULY 01, 2014
Last night was another of non-stop sailing in chilly conditions, but once the sun came out this morning and after a few sandwiches and a can of Greene King IPA things morale improved enormously. By midday Hafren was past Brighton, and the aim was to head for Lymington. By 18:00 they were passing Bembridge on the isle of Wight – but still a way to go to get to Lymington, and they finally arrived at midnight. The current plan is to head for Lulworth Cove tomorrow, and arrive back at Castle Cove sailing club in Weymouth for Wednesday afternoon. That will make it 33 days, breaking the current record by 44 days. When we set of, 60 days seemed like a reasonable target!
June 30th – Hafren is well ahead of schedule! At the time of writing this Jeremy and Phillip are passing Cowes and may stop over at Lymington tomorrow before completion of their circum-navigation at Weymouth on Wednesday. Fantastic progress! Do log on to their website www.xtremedinghycruising.com and add to the funds they are raising for RNLI and Paddy charities.
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Starting Saturday May 31st, two sailors from Thornbury Sailing Club in Gloucestershire, Jeremy Warren and Phillip Kirk, aim to sail a Wayfarer, Hafren, around mainland Britain in record time. The current best is 78 days and the target is 60 days. The team intend to demonstrate self-sufficiency and good seamanship, and in the spirit of sailing adventurer Frank Dye (1928-2010), reaffirm that a Wayfarer dinghy can undertake extended offshore passages safely. Phil and Jeremy seek to foster good will between sailing clubs and leave a trail of TSC pennants in clubhouses around Britain.
The direct distance is 1500 miles and the plan is for approximately ten hops of 200 miles. Each “hop” is three days, with two nights spent at sea. Going clockwise from Weymouth, up the Irish Sea, west of the Isle of Man, they’ll drop into Northern Ireland (it’s on the direct route) then off up the west coast of Scotland. This will take in the formidable headlands of Cape Wrath and Duncansby Head, sandbanks of the Thames Estuary, and the familiar headlands of the south coast. They will be raising money for the RNLI and for the charity Jeremy’s Wiltshire village supports, which provides healthcare and education in ultra-poor southern India.
Hafren, sail number 10022, is a ten-year old “Plus-S” fibreglass foam sandwich hull, which is stiff and inherently buoyant. The interior is modified to allow one crew member to sleep whilst the other drives, with simpler controls than a typical racing Wayfarer, but all specified for durability.
In addition to the standard rig of mainsail, genoa and spinnaker, Hafren has an outsize spinnaker, a longer carbon pole to fly it on and then there is “big yellow”, a monster spinnaker taken from a cruising yacht which flies from the masthead.
They will be carrying a Frank Dye stove, have ditched the thwart for a much higher carbon tube to facilitate sleeping, added spray covers to the front half of the boat, have had custom masthead light and storm trysails made up!
At the heart of their venture is the aim to reaffirm what a great sea boat the Wayfarer is.
Their website is www.xtremedinghycruising.com and the Twitter account will be set up this week. Do follow the blog and look out for them as they pass by! Also please support the two charities they are fund raising for. Details on web site.