Wanderer III and Felicity Ann

  • 17 Nov 2021 20:00
    Reply # 12133921 on 12107913

    I suspect that dear little Felicity Ann didn't even look as good as that on the day she was launched!  Before the days of the Internet when fact checking was so much easier (as long as you use Google and Wikipedia, rather than Facebook and YouTube), it seemed that I was constantly telling people that no, Clare Francis was not the first woman to sail single-handed across the Atlantic.  Another woman had done it two decades earlier!  And of course Kiki and Thies are some of the best small-boat sailors on the planet, although poor Thies still has to put up with people asking "is that Eric Hiscock's old boat?".

    Reading Around the World in Wanderer III tends to bring me close to tears: it was all so different then.  Even (again!) two decades later, when I first crossed an ocean, things had changed, but all the places we visited were definitely 'foreign' and exotic, most boats were wooden, many were small, few had reliable engines and everyone knew how to navigate with a sextant, even if it was a case of just taking a noon sight, hoping the log was accurate and keeping a damn good look out towards the end of the passage.  All so different now and, to my mind, so much has been lost along the way.

    Old women are allowed to be nostalgic, so I make no apologies.

  • 08 Nov 2021 02:57
    Reply # 12108767 on 12107913
    Deleted user

    Thank you Zane for sending those story links through. I think we can forgive both of those boats for been bermudan rigged. After I  moved on from reading the Swallows and Amazons books as a child I moved on to real cruising stories, and Eric Hiscock's book 'Around the World in Wanderer 111 was one of the first I read, and then over the years I owned a great many, and have probably read all of Eric Hiscock's books. Wanderer 111 must be way up there for ocean miles sailed over a very long career of cruising the world including multiple circumnavigations, and high latitude sailing. But the really great thing is that she is a very traditional wood boat, and at only 30 feet in length not a big boat at all by today's cruising standards. Which just goes to show that an awful lot can be achieved with a small simple boat. I think definitely in the spirit of junk rig.

    I don't know much about Felicity Anne, although I think I have probably read the book about Anne Davidson's trans Atlantic voyage. What a plucky lady Anne Davidson was, overcoming very difficult odds to live a life of adventure. An even more minimal cruising yacht and I see synthetic standing rigging, and of course an outboard, the application of modern technology to a traditional craft.

    Last modified: 08 Nov 2021 03:06 | Deleted user
  • 07 Nov 2021 18:47
    Message # 12107913

    I don't subscribe to WoodenBoat, but I get sent the odd free article emailed to me by them here and there by the Mag along with promotions etc.  Two of the recent free articles they sent me were full on write ups on two famous English Yachts, with some great photos.  

    Not Junk Rig, but I know for a lot of you the stories around these two yachts were probably of some inspiration growing up.  For a non-wood boat owner like me, it was still fascinating to read both the back stories of both these famous yachts, and also the restorations of each.
    Click on the links below and enjoy.

    Wanderer III  

    Felicity Ann

       " ...there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in junk-rigged boats" 
                                                               - the Chinese Water Rat

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