The Small Boat that Casts a Long Shadow
By Graham L Cox
This week as Graham was finishing the article below, he received the news that John Guzzwell had died on the 24th August. He writes…
My heart is a little sore today, but John Guzzwell left us a timeless gift with his example and beautiful writings, and his spirit will never be extinguished. Hopefully, Don McIntyre's Mini Globe Race, and the Class Globe 580 yacht class, will remind people of John's legacy for years to come. He helped to shape my destiny and I will forever be grateful.
The Cover of the First Edition
It is sometimes said that the difference between adventure and an ordeal is attitude.
Within this truism lies the essence of the matter, because the seeds of an adventurous spirit are more often than not sown by the stories we read or hear, which set our imaginations on fire and shape our destinies. For both Don McIntyre, founder of the McIntyre Mini Globe Race (MGR) for Class Globe 580 yachts, and myself, one of the stories that set our imaginations on fire in our youth was reading John Guzzwell’s book, Trekka Round the World, his account of circumnavigating the planet aboard his 20ft 6in (6.25m) yawl, Trekka, between 1955-9.
For me, the first inspiration came from an article in my local newspaper when I was 15, reporting the arrival in Durban, South Africa, my hometown, of 18-year-old Robin Lee Graham, aboard his 24ft sloop, Dove. The date was 21 October 1967, and I spent the rest of that southern summer following him around like a puppy dog, though we only became friends many years later. The second seed was sown a few weeks later, when I went looking for books about ocean voyaging in small yachts, and found Trekka Round the World in Durban library. Ever since then, small voyaging boats and open seas have been the lodestone of my existence.
I first met Don McIntyre after he sailed his 50ft (15.24m) sloop, Buttercup, to second place in Class Two, in the 1990-91 BOC singlehanded around the world race. When I met him again, at Cid Harbour in the Whitsunday Islands in 1997, he was aboard his 60ft (18m) expedition yacht, Spirit of Sydney, exploring the Coral Sea. And yet, when he came aboard my 24ft (7.3m) cutter, Arion, he wrote in my visitor’s book, ‘As silly as it sounds, I LOVE small boats! All you need is a good hull, rig and rudder. You’ve got it all.’
I then discovered that we both admired John Guzzwell, and that Don had cruised the South Pacific on a 29ft (8.84m) sloop, Skye, in the early 1980s. In 1997, he was still dreaming of small boat voyaging, although the next time I saw him, a few years later, he was aboard the 118ft (36m), 600 tonne, Sir Hubert Wilkins in Cairns. Fresh out of three summers in the Antarctic, they were headed for the Philippines. In 2010, returning once more to small vessels, he staged a reenactment of the longboat voyage Captain Bligh was forced to make after the mutiny on the Bounty. It was as authentic as you could make it – they didn’t even have toilet paper aboard, and they all lost a lot of weight!
Through all of this, Don was still thinking of Trekka, the small boat that casts a long shadow. He decided to create a new class of boat inspired by Trekka, and to stage an event that paid tribute to John Guzzwell’s grand adventure. Thus, the McIntyre Mini Globe Race (MGR), was born, in which a fleet of 19ft (5.8m) plywood / epoxy, Class Globe 580 yachts race around the world, along much the same course that Trekka sailed. The first certified hull of this new class was named Trekka, and will carry the class registration number ‘1’ during the circumnavigation. There have already been two solo transatlantic races in these boats, and the concept is well-proven. Don sailed his Class Globe 580, Trekka, into third place in the inaugural transatlantic race in 2021 (and came 1st in the senior’s division), fulfilling his dream of sailing in John Guzzwell’s footsteps. Due to the logistical challenge of running the McIntyre MGR, he will step back and take on a managerial role for this event.
The McIntyre MGR team are delighted that John Guzzwell has accepted the honorary position of Race Patron, and to know that he and his family are enthusiastic about the concept of the McIntyre MGR, and will be following the race closely.
So, who is this extraordinary sailor, John Guzzwell? Although still revered by many small-boat voyagers, not everybody will be familiar with his story or his timeless book today. He was well-known in Durban in 1967, when I discovered his book, because he spent time in the region in his late teens, and had passed through the port 10 years earlier, in the course of Trekka’s circumnavigation. I was able to talk to people in my local yacht club who knew him. But it was his book that performed the magic for Don and I, and so many others. It is a perfectly-pitched and deftly constructed work of literature that sweeps the reader up in the author’s youthful enthusiasm and joie de vivre. It is a happy book that has inspired thousands of people over the course of the last 60 years.
John Guzzwell, left, in 2009, with Clifford Cain, who sailed Trekka around the world a second time between 1964-7. Photo courtesy Latitude 38 Magazine.
John Guzzwell grew up around boats. His grandfather had a fleet of fishing smacks in Grimsby, and his father was a marine engineer. When John was three years old, he sailed down the Atlantic to Cape Town on his father’s 52ft Brixham trawler, Our Boy, and he spent the rest of his childhood in the Channel Islands, where his father had swapped the trawler for an 18ft cutter called Try Me. John became an avid sailor, and enjoyed cruising around aboard Try Me, or with friends on their yachts to French ports.
This idyllic life was interrupted by the invasion of the islands by German forces in WWII. When John was 14, the family was interred in a German prisoner-of war camp for two and a half years, an experience that broke his father’s health, leading to premature death shortly after the war ended. During those years behind barbed wire, his father taught him celestial navigation to help pass the time and keep his mind active, and young John dreamed of sailing free on a long, solo voyage.
After his father died, John and his South African mother moved to Pietermatitzburg, just inland from Durban, where he completed his apprenticeship as a wood joiner. By the age of 22, he had migrated to Victoria, British Columbia, in Canada, with a view to building a small yacht like Try Me, and attempting that long, solo passage he had dreamed about in those miserable years behind barbed wire.
Having read the story of 19ft (5.8m) Sopranino’s transatlantic voyage, he wrote to Jack Laurent Giles, that boat’s designer, requesting something similar, but with a bit more heft to withstand possible collision with floating logs, which are prevalent in Pacific Northwest waters, and a yawl rig, to balance the sails more easily, since he planned to sail solo. The result was Trekka, a small yacht that has become one of the most recognisable cruising boats in history. It was also a very advanced design for the early 1950s, and still looks contemporary.
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. Being a modest person, he claims in the book that he worried about some of the less-than-perfect workmanship in the boat during his first spell of bad weather, but if there really was any, nobody else has ever been able to find it. Trekka is built with all the finesse of a grand piano.
Trekka under construction in Victoria BC in 1954. Photo courtesy John
Guzzwell.
Due to bad weather and a lost spinnaker pole, he detoured briefly into San Francisco, where he met Miles and Beryl Smeeton, with their daughter Clio, on the ketch, Tzu Hang, a vessel destined to become as famous as Trekka, and which was to profoundly change the course of John’s voyage.
I remember the story of Clio asking if she could go aboard Trekka for a look when alongside in Sausalito. After a while, she stuck her head out of the companionway and said, ‘Mummy, you should see his stove, it’s polished!’ In the way of 14-year-old girls, she soon developed a bit of a crush on John.
Trekka running downwind off the Oregon coast in September 1955. John said it was cold out there, and they also weathered a severe gale.
It was often noted during Trekka’s circumnavigation that the boat was kept in immaculate condition at all times.
John had no plans about what he might do after cruising Hawaii, but the trip down to Hilo, and cruising in company around the islands in company with Tzu Hang, was so pleasant that he decided to continue, and the two boats met up in various ports across the Pacific to New Zealand. John’s description of Trekka’s tradewind passage from San Francisco to Hilo is so lyrical that it left me with an incurable dose of sea-fever for the rest of my life.
Trekka departing San Francisco for Hilo, Hawaii, 5 October 1955. Photo courtesy John Guzzwell.
“It was really grand sailing, small puffy white clouds were all marching in order across a wonderfully blue sky, while down on the sea about us the waves flashed in the sunlight. Every once in a while Trekka caught a wave and surfed down the face of it, sometimes she slewed a little off course and I’d watch the tiller automatically correct her and bring her back again.
So it went on, hour after hour, trekking across the ocean towards the distant islands.
…On 2 November, my twenty-eighth day out, we were only 120 miles from Hilo… I woke up the next morning with the sunbeams dancing across the cabin. I stretched rather lazily and switched on the radio with my big toe. ‘Let’s see,’ I thought, ‘one hundred and twenty to go at noon yesterday. From the sound of her she’s doing about three now. Yes, if it’s clear, I should be able to just see the top of the mountain.’ I promised myself that if the island was in sight, I’d have a can of peaches for breakfast. Sure enough it was peaches for breakfast, because when I looked out of the hatchway, there, right ahead, but still low down, was the 13,825-foot peak of Mauna Kea. I viewed it with mixed emotions. I was pleased to see it, yet the passage down from ‘Frisco had been so enjoyable that I felt a little sorry that it was almost over.”
Trekka running under twin staysails in the NE tradewinds, en route to Hilo, Hawaii. John looks more comfortable here! Photo courtesy John Guzzwell.
Once they reached the tradewinds on this first ocean passage, Trekka began to achieve consistently high noon-to-noon average speeds, something that was to be a remarkable feature of John’s circumnavigation. In one week, they ran 741nm, with a best day’s run of 134nm.
It should be said that this was an era before windvanes and autopilots proliferated on cruising yachts. With the wind forward of the beam, John could usually get Trekka to self-steer, sometimes with the tiller lashed and sail reduced. If the wind was astern, as it was for much of the passage to Hilo, and indeed, around the world, he set his twin jibs, with sheets led back to the tiller. With fore-and-aft canvas set, he hand-steered all day, before reefing down at night to balance the boat. Then he went below, made dinner, and turned in to his bunk for the night, except for the very rare occasions when bad weather kept him on deck.
An isometric drawing showing Trekka’s snug accommodations. Photo courtesy John Guzzwell
In Miles Smeeton’s book, The Sea Was Our Village, he recounts the day he saw John boarding Trekka at Ala Wai Yacht Basin in Honolulu.
As usual, there was a crowd on the dock looking down at the small, immaculately-presented, pale-blue yacht that had come so far across the ocean. As John slipped his large frame in through the hatch and went below, a girl called out excitedly, ‘You see? He fits!’
From Honolulu, the two yachts sailed south to Fanning Island. The weather was unsettled on the way down, but the island gave them sweet respite. There were no other yachts, and they enjoyed the solitude for several idyllic days, broken only by occasional visits from friendly staff who manned the Cable Station and a copra plantation on the other side of the lagoon.
The two yachts left Fanning Island together. They were bound for different islands and did not expect to see each other again until they made landfall in New Zealand.
There was little wind, and a sloppy sea running outside the pass. In these conditions, light-displacement, easily-driven Trekka had the legs on Tzu Hang, and slipped away, leaving the large, heavy ketch wallowing and banging around in the swell.
At sunset, Miles Smeeton could just make out Trekka’s stern light ahead. He went below to drink a cup of cocoa, during which time the breeze freshened a little. He came on deck, sipping the last of his drink, to find Tzu Hang overhauling Trekka, so close that he could have thrown his cup across onto Trekka’s deck. Trekka’s hurricane lamp, lashed to the backstay, was alight, and there was an oil lamp burning in the cabin, but there was nobody on deck.
“Trekka ahoy! Trekka ahoy!’ Miles called out, but there was no reply, and Tzu Hang surged ahead, leaving the little boat behind. It was a time when small yachts did not carry two-way radios or radars, and things like AIS were still the stuff of science-fiction. Miles had an uneasy night, thinking of the near-miss, but Trekka was always a lucky ship.
After catching up unexpectedly in Vavau, Tonga, the vessels rendezvoused as planned in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, where John laid Trekka up and joined Tzu Hang for the Smeetons’ ill-fated attempt at Cape Horn, where they pitchpoled in a terrible storm on their approaches to the cape, wiping off both masts, the doghouse and the rudder.
16 months later, John was back aboard Trekka with a new plan to go on and circumnavigate the world. While limping up to Coronel in northern Chile under jury-rig aboard Tzu Hang, he had passed many pleasant hours planning the modifications he would make to his little yacht. During a refit, he fibreglassed the glued-seam western red cedar hull, and fitted a Braine self-steering gear, copied from model yachts, that made it easier to get the boat self-steering in a wide range of conditions without reducing sail. (The Braine system consisted of an adjustable arc athwart the tiller, to which the mainsheet is attached.)
He also built a 5ft 6in dinghy for Trekka, with a removable transom, which stowed upside down on top of the doghouse. Every proper cruising yacht needs a dinghy. He said that when he could squeeze in and out of the cabin with his oilskins and seaboots on, while the dinghy was lashed over the companionway, he felt he was close to qualifying for the Olympics. The dinghy could just carry two adults in smooth water, provided nobody sneezed, but little kids loved it!
Trekka leaving Russell, Bay of Islands, New Zealand, 19 April 1958. Note the dinghy with removable transom on the coachroof, a new addition. Photo courtesy John Guzzwell.
After a stormy, frustrating, late-autumn passage across the Tasman Sea to Coffs Harbour, which John bore with his usual good humour, man and boat were lucky to survive an out-of-season cyclone off Point Danger, just south of Brisbane, in June 1958. Being the great, courageous seaman that he is, he chose to drive the yacht offshore when he discerned an ominous onshore swell developing, rather than run for dubious shelter, a decision that undoubtedly saved his life.
Trekka drives to windward to gain searoom as the cyclone approaches. Image by Yachting Magazine, courtesy of John Guzzwell.
If there was ever any doubting Trekka’s seaworthiness, there could be none now. John’s account of his passage up the Queensland coast, inside the Great Barrier Reefs, is possibly the most lyrical ever written, and burned its way into my teenage consciousness. Later in life, I was to spent 23 years wandering the islands and ports of that coast, reenacting Trekka’s traverse time and again, never tiring of the thrill of being anchored in the same spot as Trekka, all those years before.
Trekka sailed much of the way up the Queensland coast in company with a large, old, gaff ketch from England, Diana. One day, while Trekka was surfing along in Diana’s wake, John discovered that if he ran up onto the foredeck at just the right moment, as if Trekka was a giant surfboard, he could make the boat stay on the wave quite a bit longer. After catching a wave and nearly disappearing down Diana’s companionway, he roared past the old ketch and left them far astern.
Anchored at Moreton Island after surviving the unforecast cyclone. Photo courtesy John Guzzwell.
Trekka’s legacy lives on in Queensland waters. Even in these post-Slocum-era days of large production catamarans and monohulls, you can still find simple little boats sailing this coast, and they always seem to be having the most fun. The thrill of small-boat cruising, captured so well by John Guzzwell, will never entirely disappear.
Trekka could never be considered a slouch, but the boat’s Indian Ocean crossing was to prove the beginning of some astonishingly fast ocean passages. John was in the groove by now. He knew how to get the best out of Trekka, and the boat’s capabilities really came to the fore. Once out of the lee of Australia, a steady SE tradewind developed, and Trekka began eating up the miles, 118m one day, followed by 125, then a whopping 133nm, to which were added a few miles by the current, bringing the daily total to 146m that day.
John hand-steered during the day then reduced sail at night so the boat would self-steer and allow him to sleep.
Trekka departing Cocos Keeling Atoll on 14 October 1958 for Rodrigues Island. Photo courtesy John Guzzwell.
On the 2000-mile passage between Cocos Keeling Atoll and Rodrigues Island, Trekka averaged 111m a day, knocking it off in just over 17 days. One week they ran 858nm, with no help from the current, and a worst day’s run of 115m. The twin staysails, main and mizzen were the usual sails set, with the leeward twin not poled out. If the wind eased, John set the mizzen staysail to keep up the speed. At sundown, he furled the mainsail, hooked up the twin-staysail sheets to the tiller, and then retired below to cook dinner and spend the night in his bunk.
The passage to Durban, and on around the bottom of Africa to Cape Town, provided the usual mix of weather. Approaching the southern tip of Madagascar, with a fresh easterly and a favourable current. Trekka ran 155m one day from noon to noon. The rest of the passage to Durban was so unsettled that he frequently had to go on deck at night and change sails. Fortunately, as he said, he was so used to his gear by this time that he could handle it on the blackest night without getting things into a tangle.
Trekka in Durban. Beryl Smeeton once observed that when people asked John questions while he was working, he disappeared below and started banging with a hammer. Photo courtesy John Guzzwell.
They encountered no serious difficulties on the notorious passage between Durban and Cape Town, where many yachts have been damaged, and a few lost, but it was by no means an easy passage. South of Durban, they lay ahull during a strong SW change for a few hours, and were set 50 miles to windward by the Agulhas current during that period. As John said, no wonder the waves were steep! He kept the boat very light during this leg, carrying the barest minimum of water and stores. He reported that the motion was violent at times, but only the crests of the waves struck Trekka, and the boat just danced over the seas.
After stops at Port Elizabeth and Plettenberg Bay to avoid strong headwinds, the easterly wind build up to gale force south of Mossel Bay, and Trekka broad-reached before it under storm jib alone, with John hand-steering all night. The boat was making tremendous progress, but he was exhausted by the time dawn began to glimmer on the eastern horizon. He climbed stiffly below, continuing to steer with one hand while making coffee and toast with the other. It was, he said, the sort of boat in which you could do that!
That evening, Trekka passed Cape Agulhas, and John thankfully altered course for the Cape of Good Hope, which brought the wind astern. Conditions were easing by then, although it was still blowing 22 knots. This was a little strong for the twin jibs, but he set them anyway and retired to his bunk, while Trekka skidded and surfed to the west. At dawn, they were 18 miles off the Cape of Good Hope, and the Atlantic Ocean lay before them.
The passage from Cape Town to Saint Helena Island was so easy that John was able one day to varnish the cockpit cleats, which were not in use, since the twin jib sheets were fastened to the tiller, and Trekka was waltzing along unassisted. It was during this passage that he thought up another way to make Trekka go faster. Whenever the wind eased a little, he set the small spinnaker above the twin jibs, with the sheets led aft through blocks at the end of the jib poles. He also noted that this cut down on Trekka’s rolling.
They completed the 1700-mile passage in 16 days, despite the boat being heavily loaded with stores. Besides stuffing every locker full of cheap South African tinned food, John had been given six two-gallon water containers by the Royal Cape Yacht Club, which increased Trekka’s water capacity from 25 gallons (90.8L) to 36 (136.3L). After a brief stop at Ascension Island, they worked their way through the doldrums, once again showing how small, light boats can wriggle through areas of light winds and calms, then had a fast, wet, beam reach to Barbados.
Trekka and John Guzzwell in Barbados. Photo courtesy John Guzzwell.
I have long held a vision in my mind of Trekka on this passage, slashing its way across the NE tradewinds, with John sitting in the cockpit all day, one hand on the tiller and the other holding the paperback book he was reading, with wave crests frequently splashing aboard and wetting the pages. At night, he dropped the mainsail and went along self-steering under mizzen and staysail while he slept. He made it all seem so easy, so normal, so much fun. They completed the 3000nm from Ascension to Barbados in 37 days, not bad for an overloaded, 20ft 6in (6.25m) boat with a foul bottom, and having to work through the doldrums on the way.
Eric Hiscock once wrote that Wanderer III had spent more time running under bare poles in the Caribbean Sea than anywhere else in the world, but once again Trekka proved to be a lucky ship. They covered the 1200mm between Barbados and the Panama Canal in 14 days, experiencing a mixed bag of weather. John saw lots of debris in the water, including a large plank, which he thought about when Trekka was sailing fast at night. He also saw a lot ships, and thought he’d better hang his hurricane lamp on the backstay, even though he doubted its efficacy. However, he did not think a ship would hit Trekka with all that ocean out there!
It was on the 5400nm passage from Panama to Hawaii that Trekka really strutted its stuff. After working their way out of the difficult Gulf of Panama, with its light winds and contrary currents, they slipped past the Galapagos, leaving those enchanted islands to port, then headed west before the SE tradewinds, riding the Pacific South Equatorial Current. Once they were far enough west, they’d turn north and reach across the NE trades to Hawaii.
John Guzzwell at the helm of Trekka Photo courtesy John Guzzwell.
There were many lovely days west of the Galapagos Islands, with moderate winds, blue skies, and a calm sea. John spent his days reading on deck, sitting on a sail bag without a stitch of clothing on. During this period, he celebrated his 29th birthday with a feast of tinned steak and onions, followed by an Australian Christmas pudding with custard, his favourite desert, finishing off with a cup of coffee. Sitting with his back to the dinghy, sipping his coffee and watching the sun set, as Trekka self-steered into the star-studded night, he felt deeply at peace, and reflected that these were the days he’d remember after the voyage was over.
Plotting Trekka’s position as they trek across the ocean. Trekka has the perfect layout for a small yacht, with galley opposite the chart table aft, and two bunks forward. Photo courtesy John Guzzwell.
John often had Christmas pudding and custard as a treat on special milestones. He also cooked up hearty meals, which he called Trekka stew, in his pressure cooker. The recipe consists of potatoes, carrots and onions, to which are added a can of meat and a can of baked beans a little later, a spoonful of marmite, some flour to thicken the gravy, and salt and pepper to taste. That’s a hearty meal, but John was famous for his large appetite. He also used the pressure cooker to make cakes, though he said they never came out quite as well at sea as they did ashore. In the worst-case scenario, he filled up the hollow in the middle with custard and turned it into a pudding. McIntyre Mini Globe Race participants take note, you have culinary standards to live up to!
On this long leg, John went over the side twice to scrape goose-neck barnacles off the hull, looking warily around him for sharks while he did so. Once the hull was clean and the SE trades picked up, Trekka began to eat up the miles, with the assistance of a strong favourable current. On 29 June, they ran 147nm. The wind was fresh and steady, so John decided to see how fast he could drive the boat in 24 hours, and hung onto the spinnaker, which was once again set above the twin jibs, all the following night. They covered 132 miles through the water, according to the DR, but the noon-to noon run, established by sextant sights, put the total distance made good over the ground at 175m.
A few days later, despite taking the spinnaker down for a few hours during the night to get some rest, Trekka covered an astonishing 192nm over the ground in 25 hours. John said the sheets were stretching like rubber bands, and Trekka was surfing and skidding down the waves, occasionally collapsing the spinnaker, which then refilled with a bang that shook the entire boat.
Once they reached the NE trades, Trekka was able to lay the course for Hawaii on a close reach. On 12 July, at 13°N, they encountered a storm that was almost certainly a Mexican hurricane. Trekka, lucky as always, was south of the storm’s destructive quadrant. They made landfall on Maui 60 days out from Panama, continuing on to Honolulu for a total passage time of 62 days and 5400nm.
Another hurricane, named Dot, brushed past while they were in Honolulu. John waited a few days after it had passed, which was fortuitous, as it doubled back for a while, as he suspected it might. Trekka eventually left Honolulu on 8 August 1959, for the last leg home.
After a vigorous beat against the NE tradewinds, they spent several days drifting along in light winds. They ran into fog above Latitude 42°N, and the weather became cold and damp. John missed the balmy tropics, but he was looking forward to seeing old friends at home. One day, sailing at about 3.5 knots with the twins and spinnaker set, they ran into a large, barnacle-encrusted log, fortunately without suffering damage.
On 3 September, Trekka was once again lying ahull in a strong gale. John mentioned that he never got used to gales at sea, every one seemed different, and he was always deeply relieved when conditions eased. He was sitting on Trekka’s curved companionway seat, looking out through the doghouse windows, marvelling at the buoyant way the boat rose to meet the seas, getting little more than spray across the decks.
He decided to make a cup of tea, and had just lit the stove when he glanced once more out of the window. To his horror, he saw an enormous, steep wave bearing down on Trekka. For a few minutes, he thought it was going to be Tzu Hang all over again, but Trekka rose confidently up, flicking the transom over the crest as the wave broke noisily behind them. He switched the stove off and climbed back into his bunk, his famous appetite temporarily diminished.
Another gale followed on the heels of the first, but eventually conditions eased and the anchor went down in Neah Bay on 10 September 1959, exactly four years after Trekka departed Victoria BC. There were still 50 miles to go up the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Victoria, where John stepped ashore two days later, after a voyage of 33,000 miles, to a rapturous reception from 3000 onlookers, and a permanent place in the history of voyaging under sail.
John Guzzwell steers Trekka the last few yards to the berth where it all began, Victoria BC, 12 September 1959. Photo courtesy John Guzzwell.
Coming home after 33,000 miles, four years and two days, to a rapturous reception from more than 3,000 people. Photo courtesy John Guzzwell.
John Guzzwell made it all look so easy, and Trekka’s passage times speak for themselves. It was a class act, and one that the participants in the McIntyre Mini Globe Race will have to work hard to emulate.
The Australian media once reported that John Guzzwell was mobbed by teenage girls when he arrived in that country. It was, alas, not true, John noted, but his arrival in Victoria BC at the end of his circumnavigation certainly stirred up some excitement. Photo courtesy John Guzzwell.
Trekka Round the World is now available as an ebook from Amazon. Limited numbers of print copies are also available from various sources online.
John Guzzwell at the age of 75, sailing Trekka in the harbour at Victoria BC, accompanied by Clifford Cain, who sailed Trekka around the world a second time between 1964-7, accompanied by his wife, Marian. Photo courtesy John Guzzwell and the Maritime Museum of British Columbia.
Postscript
After returning to Victoria, John made one more cruise on Trekka, to the Hawaiian Islands and back, with his bride, Maureen. Later, after the birth of their twin sons, John and James, he built the 45ft Jack Laurent Giles cutter, Treasure, in England, before sailing out to Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii, where he remained for six years, before eventually settling on Orcas Island in the Pacific Northwest. Some years later, single once more, he met Dorothy Saunders, and married for the second time.
Together with Dorothy’s son, Jono, and – on the first leg to Hawaii – John’s old friend, the skipper of Tzu Hang, Miles Smeeton, they sailed Treasure down to New Zealand and back. Later, John and Jono raced Treasure from Los Angeles to Osaka, cruising home via the Aleutian Islands. John also built a cold-moulded, modified version of Trekka, named Dolly in honour of, and for, Dorothy, which featured in Wooden Boat Magazine, and was named 1993 wooden boat of the year.
After years of sailing Treasure (which he still owns) John decided he wanted to build himself a small, simple, oceangoing yacht that reflected all he had learned during the years sailing Trekka. The result was the 30ft (9.1m) sloop, Endangered Species, that he successfully campaigned in the 1998 and 2002 Singlehanded TransPac Races the latter when he was 73 years old.
John Guzzwell on Endangered Species at the start of the 1998 Singlehanded Transpac Race. Photo courtesy Latitude 38 Magazine and John Guzzwell.
After John sold Trekka, the little boat went on to circumnavigate a second time in the mid-1960s, with Clifford and Marian Cain, between 1964 and 1967, along much the same route as John’s voyage. They lost the rudder off northern Australia, but otherwise the brave little boat performed as flawlessly as ever.
After another voyage out to Hawaii, and several years among the islands, Trekka was eventually acquired by the Maritime Museum of British Columbia (MMBC), where it has become a permanent part of their collection. In recent years, it was restored by well-known BC shipwright, Tony Grove.
Trekka is maintained today by the Maritime Museum of British Columbia. Note the original spars and sheet blocks. Photo courtesy of the Maritime Museum of British Columbia.