TOINFINITYAND
RISKY SEA VENTURE IS ANDY’S NEXT GOAL
when the storm was at its height. “The footage in the documentary is actually the aftermath,” Andy added.
“We were sailing in gale force conditions for two months. By the time we arrived in South America the engine was limping and we’d torn every sail. We were down to our final few sails. Hundreds of hours of that trip were spent patching the sails.”
Andy, who was brought up in Anniesland, Glasgow, comes from a family of landlubbers. When he was 10, his family took him for a week’s sailing in Tighnabruaich, on the Argyll coast. Big mistake.
He recalled: “My brother wasn’t fussed. My dad wasn’t fussed. But I loved it. I was obsessed.”
Despite the pelting rain and the midges, young Andy had the fever. Next year, he was back for more. He persuaded a neighbour to let him crew on his little boat. Soon he was spending summers helping out at a sail training charity on the west coast.
The minute he finished his Highers, Andy left school. “I had an ambition to sail across the Atlantic before I was 18,” he said. “So, aged 17, I flew out to the Caribbean, found a yacht that was looking for crew and sailed home.”
Thirteen years later, Andy has notched up an impressive number of nautical miles. He returned to Glasgow, reluctantly, and has the degree to prove it. But when exams were over in 2009, he was off again.
He said: “I was studying for my finals. My mind would wander to more exciting things.”
Instead of revising, Andy would flick through findacrew.net. He said: “Instead of boring academic theories I’d think about sailing, surfing and swimming in Micronesia. A couple of days after my last exam I hopped on a plane to Borneo.”
That was his first trip on Infinity, which is the permanent home of the captain, Clemens Oestreich.
It is not the usual ocean-going yacht. Clem is a sarong-wearing, heavy-smoking sea gypsy, who has brought up five kids on board and puts together shoestring voyages with multinational crews of rum-drinking, bread-baking thrill-seekers.
“Infinity is a floating commune,” Andy said. “It’s tough. Everyone’s mucking in, you’re on a rota 24-7, there are 20 people you take it in turn to cook for, you’ve mechanical things to work out, plus the responsibilities of running a big sailing boat.
“But it’s a huge amount of fun. You’re working in a team, crew are coming and going, you’re meeting lots of people and hearing all their stories, not to mention you’re normally in some remote south-east Asian or south Pacific location.”
When that first trip was over Andy stayed at sea, crewing for the mega rich. “I was working on a Texan billionaire’s yacht up in Rhode Island,” he said. “The job was just a joke. The captain and I and all the crew quit.
“Clem asked what I was up to. When I said nothing much he asked if I wanted to come to Antarctica.”
It turns out Andy had dreamed of going to Antarctica since he was a tiny. “I’d never seen penguins outside a zoo. It’s almost like going to another planet. “I booked a flight the next day.” Since sailing to Chile three years ago, Andy has been back on the billionaire circuit. It beats working in a call centre but it’s not enough.
Which is why he has signed up for Infinity’s biggest challenge yet – a trip through the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic in July 2018.
It’s 1000 miles through a labyrinth of icebergs along the sea route connecting the northern Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
It was the graveyard of many explorers in the 19th century, including the 1845 Franklin Expedition in which all 129 men perished as they tried and failed to find a way through the sea ice.
Norway’s Roald Amundsen was first to traverse the passage, in 1906, five years before he became the first person to reach the South Pole.
More people have stood on the top of Mount Everest than have sailed through the Northwest Passage.
Andy said: “The last trip was three years ago, I’ve forgotten the misery involved. Now I’m going to see the polar bears.”