Solo Atlantic crossing UK-bound Puffin left Bermuda on May 7 at 08.30 in an 18- to 22-knot southerly breeze. I could expect a real solo ocean crossing in splendid isolation due to my inoperative satellite phone and HF radio. However, my navigation was supported by the B&G Chart Plotter still onboard (which wasn’t [...]
Today is June 21, 2019, and Puffin crossed the GGR finish line just 3 months ago, but the events of the 263-day nonstop ocean marathon are fading in my memory with an unexpected pace. The daily filtering and boiling of water is history now... ...And it's nice not to have to worry [...]
I have been working on Puffin’s race prep around the clock for almost three years now. It has taken far more time and labor than my first circumnavigator boatbuilding, because I have less money and professional help. I have not gotten the chance to step back and coordinate/supervise the boatbuilding from a managerial position, since [...]
The start of the race is only 164 days away, and there is no time for winter hibernation now! Speaking at the GGR Presentation at the 2017 Paris Boat Show Gathered with the other GGR 2018 skippers at the 2017 Paris Boat Show Final Pre-Race Conference In early December, the [...]
Puffin in Willsboro Bay Marina, late summer 2015 Puffin finally looks like a puffin again! Puffin’s launch on October 10 was an exciting milestone, but the celebration was literally short-lived since Puffin had not been in the water for the last decade. She was kept on the hard after her owner [...]
On October 10, 2017, after over two years of extensive refurbishing, Puffin was finally relaunched. This marked the first time the yacht had touched water in a decade. Johanna and Matt Nally--the widow and son of Puffin's original skipper, John F. Nally--made the long drive from upstate New York to take part in this special [...]
Dateline: Les Sables d’Olonne, France. The 2018 Golden Globe Race, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the original event back in 1968/9 which led to the first solo non-stop circumnavigation, will now start from Les Sables d’Olonne France on Sunday July 1st 2018. Les Sables d’Olonne, which also hosts the start and finish of the 4-yearly [...]
If— “…If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’…” —Rudyard Kipling The opening of my first book features Kipling's complete poem, which has been the main [...]
Don Casey has a chapter with this title in one of his books, This Old Boat, which has served as my bible in Puffin's restoration. But it somehow skips the most serious difficulty in the hose replacement, which is snaking the heavy, stiffly reinforced hoses through the labyrinth of an old full-keel sailboat’s bilges and [...]
Dateline: Plymouth 30th June 2017. One year from today, up to 30 sailors will set out from Plymouth UK to recreate history at the start of a solo circumnavigation in small traditional long keeled yachts using just paper charts, a sextant and wind up chronometer to navigate by. The Race marks the 50th anniversary of [...]
