Single Handed Sailing

[singlehanders]

Sailing my Sigma 33 Graphix from Suffolk Yacht Harbour out to Gunfleet Sand.

[singlehanders]

Spirit Of Amport II

Couldn’t find out much info on this boat, just some folk boat class race results.

[singlehanders]

1984 Sigma 33 OOD

This is my boat Graphix, purchased in January this year. She’s a deep fin keeled fractionally rigged sloop designed by David Thomas introduced in 1978. 

[singlehanders]

Francis Stokes 1980

Outtakes from the film "American Challenge" about the 1980 OSTAR race.

[singlehanders]

Joshua

Bernard Moitessier's 39 foot steel ketch in which he embarked on his legendary circumnavigation. After rounding Cape Horn he passed up a chance at instant fame and a world record, and sailed on for three more months setting a record for the longest nonstop passage by a yacht. A total of 37,455 nautical miles in 10 months. He contemplated rounding the Horn again. However, he decided that he and Joshua had had enough and, on 21 June 1969, put in at Tahiti.

[singlehanders]

Alone Together

An account of Christian Williams solo voyage from California to Nawiliwili Harbor in Hawaii on his Ericson 32-3 yacht, Thelonious. 

Christian has since written a excellent book entitled "Alone Together: Sailing Solo to Hawaii and Beyond" about his adventure. Here.

[singlehanders]

Mingming

Roger Taylor's junk-rigged Corribee Mingming at the start of the 2006 Jester Atlantic Challenge. Roger has since aquired a new boat, an Achilles 24 on which he has made extensive modification for high latitude sailing.

He has documented many of his voyages as well as the making of Mingming II on his youtube channel here.

[singlehanders]

Contessa

An advert for the iconic Contessa 26 and 32 from the 1972 OSTAR brochure.

[singlehanders]

Herbert "Blondie" Hasler DSO, OBE

Hasler is known as the father of single-handed sailing, owing to his invention of the first practical self-steering gear for yachts: many sailing vessels continue to rely on systems substantially based on Hasler's work.

In 1960, Hasler competed in the first Observer Single-handed Transatlantic Race (OSTAR), from Plymouth to New York. The race, originated solely by Hasler, did not include any "half a crown" bet as the myth suggests with Francis Chichester the fourth of the five competitors to enter the race. Of the fifty yachtsmen who sent letters of intent to compete, only five eventually started. Hasler himself sailed one of the smallest boats in the race, his heavily modified Nordic Folkboat Jester (above), and finished second in 48 days to Chichester's much larger Gipsy Moth III. Jester was equipped with Hasler's self-steering system.

[singlehanders]

John Guzzwell And Trekka.

Perhaps not everyone has heard of John Guzzwell. Born 1930 in England but some-time living in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, he has only a passing acquaintance with Queenscliff in Australia; he entered and departed Port Phillip on the ketch Tzu Hang in November - December 1956. 

In mid 1953, John, while working as a maintenance carpenter in Victoria for the Canadian Pacific Railway Ferry Service, decided to build himself a sailing boat. For fifty pounds sterling, the English yacht designer Laurent Giles planned a 20ft 6in yawl which John built mostly unaided and with hand tools in a rented shed behind a fish and chip shop. He launched his dream, Trekka, in August 1954, and in September 1955, he sailed for Hawaii. Over the next four years he completed a circumnavigation in Trekka, then the smallest vessel ever to do so, and finally returned to Canada in 1959. He wrote a book of his adventures, “Trekka Round The World” which he re-published in 1999. 

Trekka completed two more circumnavigations with different owners. She is now held by the Maritime Museum of British Columbia. At present she is being re-furbished for the Museum by Tony Grove, a Canadian craftsman and boat builder.