By this time a crowd had gathered. Word had spread of the Mzungu’s visit, always an opportunity for some quick cash. The sun was getting hot, excitement was rising, and the boat building advice was flowing fast in Swahili.

On Lamu, the values of Swahili culture are strongly attached to maintaining the traditional knowledge of dhow-building. The preservation of this traditional knowledge relates intensely to the conservation and sustainability of Swahili culture.

But the penny suddenly dropped. Moon-spaceship-boat-Iceland. I skyped John in Switzerland and not long after we hung up, he had the boat booked. All I had to do was organise a group of eight friends to fill the bunks and find good ski-touring gear. Where we were going there were no lifts.

After patching up the old boat, he'd drifted from Spain to the Canary Islands, thinking the climate there might be more congenial for working outdoors in winter.  In the Canary Islands, he realised it was easier to sail on to the West Indies than beat back against the prevailing winds to Europe. ‘After that,’ he said, ‘it just made sense to keep going.’

The small boats take five people about a month to construct. The planks are made from a timber from the Congo. It appears that the supply of this timber has dried up and many boats were on shore half finished with no work going on. A small fishing boat hull costs about 3 million Ugandan Shillings

Melbourne based SWS has a loyal readership of 200+ in Denmark each week. We hope its the sailing stories and not ‘Something about Mary’. We recently received emails from Jens and Klaus Toyberg-Frandzen. They asked if SWS could get a letter and photo to Bill.

Once, 42 days out of Sydney, while beating painfully to windward off the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island, en route to Nelson, he somewhat outrageously wrote that he was starting to like ocean sailing.  He’d sailed more than 70,000 miles at that point.

The finished yacht was exquisitely built, with fine dovetail joints and a beautiful interior, with the varnished red-cedar planks offset by white-painted frames and stringers, and lofty, varnished spruce masts. Less than 20 months after John laid the keel, he hoisted sail and set a course south, bound for Hawaii.

As the world becomes more and more risk adverse, and our weekly screen time reports go up and up, perhaps we can be advocates for stepping outside the commonplace and doing things a little differently.

After threading his way through the island-strewn Bass Strait, often running on ded-reckoning in thick weather, he made landfall in Kiama after 92 days, going on to Sydney a few days later.

He looked at his father and discovered he was ankle-deep in water. Then he looked over his shoulder to the vastness of the Pacific. “There were three orcas; a daddy, mummy and a baby in between. The daddy’s head was split open and bleeding badly.”

‘The run from Honolulu was a nightmare. In the last weeks of December I battled constant gales. The turbulent sea threatened to smash my boat to pulp. On two occasions the little boat was wallowing more than half full of water. My arms were so tired from constant bailing, I could not raise them above my shoulders. Once again, I strapped myself to the bunk and prayed. Providence has been kind to me.

Sir Ernest Shackleton died suddenly; so suddenly that he said no word at all with regard to the future of the expedition. But I know that had he foreseen his death and been able to communicate to me his wishes, they would have been summed up in the two words, “Carry on!”

The thing about old, iron-fastened, softwood timber boats like this, built in cold climates, is that once you take them into warmer waters it becomes an endless struggle to maintain them.  Patrick found it a losing battle, and the poor ship was starting to deteriorate again rapidly.  But Sandefjord has always been a lucky ship, and once again a saviour appeared.

If you don’t know something of Bill Nance, you should. Between 1962 and 1965 aged 25, Bill Nance completed a southern circumnavigation via Cape Horn in his Laurent Giles CARDINAL VERTUE. He was the first Australian to complete this journey singlehanded. In recognition, the Americans awarded him the Joshua Slocum medal, the International Award for Sailing Achievements. Australia hardly noticed, except for the die-hard yachting fraternity and the odd newspaper article.

Rules? Barely there. Engines? Forget ‘em. Outside support? Don’t count on it. It’s you, your craft, and the cold rush of the sea. We nail $10,000 to a tree in Ketchikan and dare anybody with a boat and basic common sense to come and get it.

It’s not recorded whether Dick was the sort of bloke who would have enjoyed a 420nm bluewater cruise to have an informal BBQ on the beach, but there are obviously plenty of sailors out there who do, as the Lord Howe Island BBQ plans for its 22nd iteration

Thanks to his 1895–98 solo circumnavigation in his 36′9″ sloop SPRAY and his 1900 book about the experience, Sailing Alone Around the World, Slocum would become a famous man, and he was called upon at times to sit for a portrait. When he did so, Slocum usually, though not always, presented his scar-free right side to the camera. One can only guess what Slocum thought about as he awaited the shutter’s click.

From its earliest days, the Ocean Cruising Club has celebrated those who dared to brave the ocean in small boats, and many of its early members are now legend.

“I’d like to live to be 100 and die at sea,” Peter Mounsey says. The way he's going he'll live well beyond that. And why isn't he a “National Living Treasure” I ask?