MAIDEN VOYAGE

Extract from Roving Commissions 2019, published by the Royal Cruising Club. To order email: rovcom@rcc.org.uk

“In 2017-18, sailed from New Zealand to the Antarctic Peninsula by way of Cape Horn (60 days). Spent three weeks pottering around old haunts in the Peninsula then north to the Falkland Islands to reprovision. Departed Stanley on 4 March bound up the Atlantic. Arrived Bantry, Ireland, on 8 June (96 days).”

For Trevor Robertson, a single-handed epic such as that is taken in his easy stride. His boat of over 20 years has been Iron Bark, a 35ft steel gaff cutter drawn by Nick Skeates on the lines of his own Wylo II, a boat with too many distinguished passages astern for most of us to count. With Iron Bark Trevor has racked up an impressive list of achievements, but the time comes to nearly all of us when a change is called for.

This story, taken from ‘Roving Commissions’, the journal of the Royal Cruising Club, tells of a highly experienced mariner finding a suitable replacement for his well-tested vessel. On the face of things, the yacht Trevor buys would seem a perfect long-range cruiser, but his pithy comments as he jockeys her down to the Caribbean for