When I got back from my Pacific Adventure, I stumbled across an opportunity to invest in a fledgling boat building company called Voyaging Yachts. That happened in Feb 2012. Over the last couple of years we have built two Wylo 35.5 steel gaff rigged cutters. Due to ill health, thankfully not mine, we are not moving the company forward. I have learned a lot about the process of building and owning a boat. The Wylo had never previously been a production boat. To own one, you had to find the designer Nick Skeates who lives on his boat, buy the plans and then make it yourself.Despite these obstacles there are around 40 Wylos out there cruising the oceans. Apart from the designer who has completed numerous circumnavigations the other most famous Wylo is Iron Bark owned by Trevor Robertson who built his in the Southern Hemisphere and went to Antarctica to overwinter it there in the ice as his maiden voyage.
Trevor went on to sail up through the Caribbean when the ice released him and over wintered the next winter in Greenland. His most recent voyage was from Newfoundland to Freemantle in Australia single handed and non stop via the Cape of Good Hope. I have no plans to do anything quite as adventurous as Trevor but his exploits show what the Wylo is capable of in good hands.
I am hoping ,if all goes well , to sail from the UK across Biscay, down the coast of Spain and Portugal across to Maderia and then South to the Canaries before the end of October having left the Isle of Wight on 1 Sept 2016. Subsequent blogs in this series will document the adventure and keep me in touch I hope with friends and family. Should that part go well, the plan is to cross the Atlantic in Jan 2017, move through the Caribbean to Panama by Feb and transit the canal to the Pacific in March. Thence forth, pick up my previous track via the Gallapagos and the Marquesas through the Tuamotos to Tahiti and on via the Society Islands to Tonga, Fiji and ending up in New Zealand by end Nov 2017.
This is ambitious and there is a part of me that hesitates to say it out loud. I have found some great crew to help me and share the adventure although I am hoping to get better at picking crew because my success rate is not good enough yet as witnessed by some others.
Look out for additional posts and if you would like to be notified when a new post is uploaded, please put your e mail in and hit subscribe. Also feel free to leave me comments. I am hoping to get the first update out pretty soon.
Willie
Trevor went on to sail up through the Caribbean when the ice released him and over wintered the next winter in Greenland. His most recent voyage was from Newfoundland to Freemantle in Australia single handed and non stop via the Cape of Good Hope. I have no plans to do anything quite as adventurous as Trevor but his exploits show what the Wylo is capable of in good hands.
I am hoping ,if all goes well , to sail from the UK across Biscay, down the coast of Spain and Portugal across to Maderia and then South to the Canaries before the end of October having left the Isle of Wight on 1 Sept 2016. Subsequent blogs in this series will document the adventure and keep me in touch I hope with friends and family. Should that part go well, the plan is to cross the Atlantic in Jan 2017, move through the Caribbean to Panama by Feb and transit the canal to the Pacific in March. Thence forth, pick up my previous track via the Gallapagos and the Marquesas through the Tuamotos to Tahiti and on via the Society Islands to Tonga, Fiji and ending up in New Zealand by end Nov 2017.
This is ambitious and there is a part of me that hesitates to say it out loud. I have found some great crew to help me and share the adventure although I am hoping to get better at picking crew because my success rate is not good enough yet as witnessed by some others.
Look out for additional posts and if you would like to be notified when a new post is uploaded, please put your e mail in and hit subscribe. Also feel free to leave me comments. I am hoping to get the first update out pretty soon.
Willie
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