The exploits of intrepid voyagers gain official recognition
Leading cruising clubs recognise the most meritorious voyages of the year
Two of the leading cruising yacht clubs have awarded their top trophies to intrepid sailors who have made remarkable voyages in small yachts.
The Ocean Cruising Club (OCC) has awarded its Barton Cup to Australian solo sailor Bill Hatfield (right). As we reported in our March issue, he recently completed a single-handed circumnavigation which, the citation notes, ‘included a particularly difficult and protracted passage around Cape Horn’.
Hatfield, 79, was sailing his Northshore 38, L’eau Commotion, and returned home to Australia after 414 days at sea. He made one stop in the Falkland Islands after rig and steering damage before rounding Cape Horn and crossing the Pacific to return to Sydney.
The OCC’S lifetime cruising award was made to American and Canadian sailors Lin and Larry Pardey in recognition of over 50 years of ocean cruising, including the publishing of a dozen famous books about their voyages in the 24ft engineless cutter Seraffyn and later the 29ft Taleisin. Their motto was to ‘go small, go simple, go now’ and their voyages all over the world were done without engine or sophisticated electronics.
The Pardeys settled in New Zealand some years ago and, sadly, Larry now has dementia and is unable to sail, though Lin continues to write about sailing. Their website is at landlpardey.com
Meanwhile, the Royal Cruising Club (RCC) gave its Medal for Seamanship to Trevor Robertson for a solo voyage in Iron Bark, his 35ft Wylo steel gaff cutter, from New Zealand to Ireland. The club’s Tilman Medal for an outstanding voyage to remote places in high latitudes involving exploration and mountaineering went to RCC member Mike Jaques who took his Dykstradesigned Bestewind 50, Umiak, to the east coast of Greenland into Scoresby Sound, Liverpool
Land and further up the ice-bound coast to King Oscar’s Sound.
The club notes: ‘The expedition was carefully planned afloat and ashore, including rehearsing dinghy operations, ice axe arrest and crevasse rescue… With a great deal of climbing, skiing and snow-shoeing they achieved a tally of 16 peaks that are believed to be previously unclimbed.’