During my last few years in the RAF I came across an adventure training opportunity, a call for people to crew a boat sailing across the Atlantic. I had always wanted to learn to sail – my previous but limited experience had been helping to crew but under the close observation of those who knew what they were doing - and crossing the Atlantic sounded like a great undertaking and learning opportunity. However, even if I got offered a place on the trip it would necessitate three weeks away from work which would be unlikely to get approval. On the one hand my boss, an Admiral, would no doubt be pleased that an RAF subordinate was taking a keen maritime interest. On the other, because of the work I did, the same boss had put his foot down with the RAF in the previous year, preventing them from sending me on an operational detachment to Baghdad; no mean feat.
As expected it was agreed that there was no point in
submitting an application and life went on.
However, as my time in the RAF drew to an end my friend Graham – not knowing
about my earlier hopes to do so - approached me with the idea of sailing the
Atlantic with his wife and a mutual friend (Mark Thorpe) after our time in the military had ended. And so a plan started to develop…
Driven largely by Graham we found and bought a boat (some work required), identified a three month sailing course – the Round Britain Experience – which would provide not only a great adventure but extensive training, and got ourselves booked onto the Atlantic Raleigh for Cruisers in 2008, an annually organised group crossing of the Atlantic for sailing boats. This blog attempts to capture that trip drawing upon blog entries by the crew and personal emails and diary entries.
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