October 19, 2024 • 15 mins
In early 2022, famed solo sailor Andrew Fagan set off to attempt to beat a world record in a tiny 5.1m plywood yacht.
He aimed to use the yacht, Swirly World in Perpetuity, to beat the record for 'The smallest boat to sail solo around the world via the Great Capes'.
His mission didn't go to plan - but he managed to tell the tale in his new book Swirly World: Lost At Sea.
He says he'd managed to sail to Australia and New Zealand's Subantarctic Islands - so he thought this was a logical next step.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from news Talks EDB Right.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Early in twenty twenty two, solo sailor and kivy musician
Andrew Fagan set out on an around the world adventure.
Now this wasn't just any sailing adventure. It was an
attempt to set the record for the smallest boat to
sail around the world solo via the Great Capes. Now
I've seen the pictures and I'm telling you this yacht
(00:33):
called Swirly World and Perpetuity was insanely small to be
sailing the world.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
And well that this is my thoughts.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Andrew has written about his gorgeous boat and the trip,
and the book is called Swirly World Lost at Sea.
And Andrew Fagan joins me, Now, good morning, good morning,
so good to have you in here.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Great to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
This is quite an adventure and you have done quite
a lot of solo sailing before you head it off
on this. But was it a big leap to go
from sailing back and forward to Australia or to the
subantactic Auckland Islands. Was it a big leap to go
from that to circumnavigating the globe, I imagine the Southern
Ocean kind of prepared you a bit for this.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Yeah, it was a big leap, but it was also
something that I was I felt prepared for, you know,
because I've had the boat for thirty seven years. I've
done a lot of offshore sailing in it, you know,
like like you said, Australia and down the Subantatic organ Island.
So I felt in my own mind that this was
just a logical step, and apart from the amount of
time it was going to take, which I thought was
(01:34):
about you know, twelve a year. Really, you know, I
had food and water, food for fourteen months. But yeah,
it was I felt I was ready for it, and
you know that I aspired to sailing around the world,
you know, since I was a teenager. I mean I was.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Quite taken back at how compact thriller world is. I mean,
it's amazing what you managed to pack into it. She's
a five point one meter sleep Yeah, so that's.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
An imperial that's just under seventeen feet. Yeah, so it
it's tiny, cozy, cozy way to put it, franchis, how
do you prepare for a journey like that? Well, it
was about five years of accumulating everything. You know, you
have to mitigate for all sorts of possibilities, so it's
a lot. It was expensive, you know, well it was
(02:23):
expensive to me. About thirty thousand dollars worth of stuff
that was on board, you know, life rafts, a lot
of freeze dried food because weight's a big issue. You know,
you can't take canned food or normal stuff no refrigeration.
So and water. I had to take a water maker
with me because the weight of water. You can't act
fresh water. You can't actually have enough, you know, to
(02:45):
start with. Although I had two hundred liters on board,
but that's not going to get you around the world,
you know. So there was a lot of preparation, you know,
a spear kitset mast, basically every eventuality you know, you
had to think about. Then You've got you know, your
vitamin pills, You've got am I going to get toothache?
You know? Have I got enough toothpaste? Am I bringing
(03:06):
enough toothbrushes? You know, sun block, you know, toilet paper.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
It's quite a lot to think about, it is. I
noticed that Country Cuisine provided you with fourteen months of
free drives food I mean, that's that's just that takes
up a lot of space, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
It sure does, Yeah, at cost I ad. Yeah, it's
amazing how you can pack it down. Yeah, basically one
month packed down into about the size of a pillow case.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Well that's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Well because I absolutely, you know, strap it all up
in plastic. You know, it looks that, you know, it
looks like a big bale of contraband. Really, but I
had fourteen of those on board, so you know, it
was she was the boat was absolutely choker. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
What did it feel like to sail out of Auckland,
or maybe what did it feel like to sort of
see the the East Cape disappear in the distance.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Yeah, a bit melancholy when you know that your ambition
is to go away and you know, for such a
long time to start with, you know, sort of waving
goodbye to friends who were up on north Head there
sort of watch on a nice hot summer's afternoon watching
you go. I sort of felt it from their perspective,
you know. But I was excited because this was the
(04:20):
culmination of a lot of planning, you know, and I
was totally fixated on just sailing east and keep going
east east east, you know, for a year.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So how do you pass the time?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Well, most of the time you're occupied with focusing on sailing.
So because you haven't got you know, an engine that
you're allowed to use, because it was about a sailing record,
you've just got to keep that boat moving far as
fast as possible. And of course, you know, being that small,
you know, fast as six knots, but average is about
(04:54):
three or four knots, you know, in reality. So I
was doing about ninety miles a day, which was really
good going because the wind was behind me and it
was you know, I was quite pleased about that. But
most of the time the boat sailing itself, so it's
got a wind vane self steering system. So a lot
of the time I'd just be lying in bed. It's
not really a bed, is it, but I'm inside reading
(05:15):
my kindle or you know, at night you could get
radio reception and I used to, you know, listen to
Bruce Russell. He was there and in the evening sometimes
when I had radio reception. And then the further away
you get from New Zealand, obviously you start picking up
other countries radios. But you know, really your whole focus
is on the speed of the boat.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
How long does it sort of take you to get
into that rhythm Andrew, because I imagine it becomes quite repetitive,
but I imagine you sort of just have to take it.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Takes a few days. And also I get seasick, you know,
when I start like, you've got to get used to
the motion. It takes a few days. But then after
about a week it just becomes timeless because you know,
there's there's there aren't the normal reference points that you
have in your life on land, you know, So it's
all about and you're also because you're by yourself all
(06:05):
the time, you're and you're tuned into what the wind's
doing and how and you can hear by the sound
of the water outside how fast you're going, you know,
and so you're just trying to keep that boat sailing
as quickly as possible. So you know, you are occupied,
you know, but just in a different way.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
What does the solitude do to a person, It.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Depends on who the person is. I like it, you know,
I don't have any issue with it. Whatso we have
and solitude is the right word. It's not loneliness. It
is solitude. But I you know, I'd be there right now, Francesca,
if I could by myself out in the middle of nowhere.
It's just something that some people gravitate towards. And again
it's because of the sailing. I wouldn't want to be motoring,
(06:49):
you know, having which I do in my professional life
a lot. Now. You know, it's the sound of engine
noise and all that sort of stuff, But when you're sailing,
it's it's it's it's a different frequencies that you're listening to,
and it's a different feeling. You know. It's like when
a boat is sailing itself. It's quite a magnificent feeling
just being inside or being on deck and watching the
(07:11):
boat sailing itself. You know.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Is that essentially what you love about endurance sailing?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah? Absolutely, yeah, And endurance sailing is the correct well done.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I read the book, I learned a lot. Look, you
experienced some heavy gales and that led to the really
the end of the bedroom sailing, didn't it. Can you
tell us what happened to the boat in those gales?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah? So essentially the boat got beaten up quite badly,
but it was nothing that I wasn't expecting. Except we
did have quite a bad run. So I got halfway
to South America Cape Horn, which is about two and
a half thousand miles across the Pacific, and on the
way there we had gale after gale, you know, storm,
(07:54):
you know, big big, you know, eight meter sometimes ten
meter breaking waves. But it was again, it was anticipated,
and that was part of the excitement that I was
looking for. And also just to have a look at
what it's like down there. You know, we're talking the
northern edge of the Southern Ocean around about forty two
degrees south, you know, so that's only sort of like
christ sort of timrou that's latitude, you know. So yeah,
(08:18):
it's it's it's great. What was the question again, Oh,
what happened to the boat? Oh yeah, okay, damage, Yeah,
we got damaged. We got damaged big time. Basically the
boat kept getting smashed by these big breaking cross seas.
So what happens is that the wind always shifts. It's
exactly the same as here we are in New Zealand,
where a gale, a depression as we call them, a
(08:41):
low pressure system traveling around the globe in the Southern
Ocean will the leading edge will come in with a
northwesterly wind, that wind will back to the west and
then to the southwest, and as it backs you get
a leftover cross swell, and the leftover cross wells keept
on smashing into the boat and filling up the cot.
But you know, big, heavy, substantial blows, and because the
(09:03):
boat was so heavy, because it was full of you know,
forty an float, a lot of food and everything else,
and it basically cracked what we call the skeg the boat.
Underneath the boat, you've got a keel, and you've got
a rudder, and this boat has a or had a skeg,
which is which provides what we call directional stability, keeps
(09:23):
it sort of tracking in a straight line. So the
glue line on the on the skeg, at some stage,
quite a few weeks I think, before it came off,
it broke and then the skeg worked and I could
hear these sort of grunching noises, but I was being
a bit delusional, thinking that everything was okay, might just
go away, yes, And it didn't. So this gg broke off,
and then the boat was incapacitated and I couldn't ye.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
And you're in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Is that overwhelming?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Not really, because I was still floating. So the boat
started taking on water, you know, sort of ten to
fifteen liters a day, you know, which which isn't bad
because I'm still there. So I'm sponging it out, I'm
bucketing it out over the side, so I'm still I
still felt in control. But once the boat wouldn't steer itself,
I knew I couldn't carry on and I had to
(10:13):
go somewhere else to make a new skig to repair it.
So the nearest land was one thousand miles north of me,
which was pit Cairn pitt Kern Island, and so I
decided to sail up there, aim for there. So until
you know, so without a SKG, the boat's still floating
and you're still functioning, but you have to hand steer
(10:34):
all the time, which when you're by yourself, you know,
it's not a very good option.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
You used an interesting expression in the book called you
know that you were now sort of negative sailing?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah? Was it negative attitudes? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, it just.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
It was a great way of sort of summing it
up where all of a sudden it had I presume
your mind is being challenged as to how to deal
with the situation and stay positive.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
And I think, yeah, what I enjoyed, well not what
I didn't enjoy it at all, but what I found
within myself was that one has a capacity to cope,
you know, when things go wrong like that. To me,
it was I just had to look at what was
the next thing I had to do to achieve my objective,
you know, So it wasn't really about freaking out. It
(11:20):
was just about adapting to a new set of circumstances,
you know, another form of.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Bad Andrew it wasn't a good outcome.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
No, you had to abandon an unfortunate outcome.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
And it was an unfortunate outcome. You had to abandon swearly.
And I mean, these are amazing chapters in the book.
You're just going to love reading the story, but by
this stage when it comes to abandoning having to make
that decision. As a reader, I was really invested in
this journey and also really invested in this yacht that
you'd had for thirty seven years. I mean I was
devastated reading this process that you had to go through
(11:59):
and everything. What was it like for you to abandon
swoarly well.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Again, at the time and the heat of the moment,
it came down to self preservation. So I sort of
put put to one side the melancholy feelings and just
had to get on with what was the next problem
I had to solve, essentially, And it didn't really kind
of dawn on me the enormity of it until I
(12:25):
had been inverted commas rescued.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, so how easy is it to be plucked out
of the ocean by a container ship?
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, well it wasn't good. Yeah, it was. It was
the most dangerous part of the whole voyage. And I mean,
you know, it was it was. It was. It wasn't
a foregone conclusion that I would get away with it.
Put it that way, you know. So, so essentially what
happened after the skig broke off, I was trying to
sail to pick Ken Island, and then then the rudders
snapped off because that must have got fatigued as well.
(12:53):
So then I was completely incapacitated. And then it was like, well,
what are you going to do? Well in the old
days if you weren't talking to anyone, because I was
talking because I had a satellite text you know. Thing
letting people know what was going on. If you weren't
talking to people, you just would have drifted for three
until you hit South America. And I could have done
that because I had all the food and water. I
would have kept bailing the boat out. But these days
(13:13):
it's not quite like that. You know, when search and
rescue find out that you're in trouble, it's a red
flag and they want to save you, you know. So
a three hundred meter container ship turned up diverted unfortunately
for them, and you know, Lord of the Sea came
and saved me. And I had to get onto that
in the night and it was just up to me
(13:33):
to get on board. So I had to get my
sailing boat alongside. And there was a big sea running
and the boat, you know, it's a ply withoud little
plywood boat, you know, sheath and fiberglass, but that's not
it doesn't make much difference. And the boat was like
being thrown against the side of this steel containership like
a tennis ball, because there was quite a big sea
(13:55):
store running. So it was very difficult and I had
to Basically the crew were English as a second language,
so the communication was difficult and I had to essentially
just leap for a rope ladder that was dangling down
the side of this ship. Just picked my moment and
make sure I held on held on. So that was
(14:15):
you know that that was quite a challenge really at
the time.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Andrew is swearly replaceable? Will you would you like to
give this another go?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I'd like to give it another go. But I looked
into you know, replacing the boat, but it's very expensive,
you know. I think, you know, if I, if I,
if I had a wish list or you know, one lotto,
I'd probably get an aluminium version made, you know, but
it's a it's at least seventy thousand dollars, you know.
And then I started It makes you think, well, you know,
(14:44):
why was I doing Would you would you want to
do it in that boat again? And I was really
only doing it in that boat because that's the boat
I've had, you know, for thirty seven years and done
a lot of sailing in New.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
And yeah, you know, I loved Hey, look really quickly
before you go. I know that you've been working a
lot sort of as a as a commercial master captain
and things like that. Is that the world that you're
in these days?
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yeah, Yeah, I'm a marine. Yeah, I work in marine
what do you call it? Marine construction. I work on
tugs and things, and we tow barges up and down
the coast, that kind of stuff, and I do all
sorts of roles. Really, you have a lot of deck
work too.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
No, it's fascinating. And of course you'd worked on pit
Can Island as well, taking the supply ships and tourist
ships up there, and that's also in this book as well,
which adds another whole dimension to the story. Hey, thank
you so much for joining us. It's an incredible tale
and it's beautifully told.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Thank you for having me, my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Swirly World Lost at Sees is in stores this week.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks It'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from news Talks EDB Right.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Early in twenty twenty two, solo sailor and kivy musician
Andrew Fagan set out on an around the world adventure.
Now this wasn't just any sailing adventure. It was an
attempt to set the record for the smallest boat to
sail around the world solo via the Great Capes. Now
I've seen the pictures and I'm telling you this yacht
(00:33):
called Swirly World and Perpetuity was insanely small to be
sailing the world.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
And well that this is my thoughts.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Andrew has written about his gorgeous boat and the trip,
and the book is called Swirly World Lost at Sea.
And Andrew Fagan joins me, Now, good morning, good morning,
so good to have you in here.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Great to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
This is quite an adventure and you have done quite
a lot of solo sailing before you head it off
on this. But was it a big leap to go
from sailing back and forward to Australia or to the
subantactic Auckland Islands. Was it a big leap to go
from that to circumnavigating the globe, I imagine the Southern
Ocean kind of prepared you a bit for this.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Yeah, it was a big leap, but it was also
something that I was I felt prepared for, you know,
because I've had the boat for thirty seven years. I've
done a lot of offshore sailing in it, you know,
like like you said, Australia and down the Subantatic organ Island.
So I felt in my own mind that this was
just a logical step, and apart from the amount of
time it was going to take, which I thought was
(01:34):
about you know, twelve a year. Really, you know, I
had food and water, food for fourteen months. But yeah,
it was I felt I was ready for it, and
you know that I aspired to sailing around the world,
you know, since I was a teenager. I mean I was.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Quite taken back at how compact thriller world is. I mean,
it's amazing what you managed to pack into it. She's
a five point one meter sleep Yeah, so that's.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
An imperial that's just under seventeen feet. Yeah, so it
it's tiny, cozy, cozy way to put it, franchis, how
do you prepare for a journey like that? Well, it
was about five years of accumulating everything. You know, you
have to mitigate for all sorts of possibilities, so it's
a lot. It was expensive, you know, well it was
(02:23):
expensive to me. About thirty thousand dollars worth of stuff
that was on board, you know, life rafts, a lot
of freeze dried food because weight's a big issue. You know,
you can't take canned food or normal stuff no refrigeration.
So and water. I had to take a water maker
with me because the weight of water. You can't act
fresh water. You can't actually have enough, you know, to
(02:45):
start with. Although I had two hundred liters on board,
but that's not going to get you around the world,
you know. So there was a lot of preparation, you know,
a spear kitset mast, basically every eventuality you know, you
had to think about. Then You've got you know, your
vitamin pills, You've got am I going to get toothache?
You know? Have I got enough toothpaste? Am I bringing
(03:06):
enough toothbrushes? You know, sun block, you know, toilet paper.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
It's quite a lot to think about, it is. I
noticed that Country Cuisine provided you with fourteen months of
free drives food I mean, that's that's just that takes
up a lot of space, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
It sure does, Yeah, at cost I ad. Yeah, it's
amazing how you can pack it down. Yeah, basically one
month packed down into about the size of a pillow case.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Well that's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Well because I absolutely, you know, strap it all up
in plastic. You know, it looks that, you know, it
looks like a big bale of contraband. Really, but I
had fourteen of those on board, so you know, it
was she was the boat was absolutely choker. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
What did it feel like to sail out of Auckland,
or maybe what did it feel like to sort of
see the the East Cape disappear in the distance.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Yeah, a bit melancholy when you know that your ambition
is to go away and you know, for such a
long time to start with, you know, sort of waving
goodbye to friends who were up on north Head there
sort of watch on a nice hot summer's afternoon watching
you go. I sort of felt it from their perspective,
you know. But I was excited because this was the
(04:20):
culmination of a lot of planning, you know, and I
was totally fixated on just sailing east and keep going
east east east, you know, for a year.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So how do you pass the time?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Well, most of the time you're occupied with focusing on sailing.
So because you haven't got you know, an engine that
you're allowed to use, because it was about a sailing record,
you've just got to keep that boat moving far as
fast as possible. And of course, you know, being that small,
you know, fast as six knots, but average is about
(04:54):
three or four knots, you know, in reality. So I
was doing about ninety miles a day, which was really
good going because the wind was behind me and it
was you know, I was quite pleased about that. But
most of the time the boat sailing itself, so it's
got a wind vane self steering system. So a lot
of the time I'd just be lying in bed. It's
not really a bed, is it, but I'm inside reading
(05:15):
my kindle or you know, at night you could get
radio reception and I used to, you know, listen to
Bruce Russell. He was there and in the evening sometimes
when I had radio reception. And then the further away
you get from New Zealand, obviously you start picking up
other countries radios. But you know, really your whole focus
is on the speed of the boat.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
How long does it sort of take you to get
into that rhythm Andrew, because I imagine it becomes quite repetitive,
but I imagine you sort of just have to take it.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Takes a few days. And also I get seasick, you know,
when I start like, you've got to get used to
the motion. It takes a few days. But then after
about a week it just becomes timeless because you know,
there's there's there aren't the normal reference points that you
have in your life on land, you know, So it's
all about and you're also because you're by yourself all
(06:05):
the time, you're and you're tuned into what the wind's
doing and how and you can hear by the sound
of the water outside how fast you're going, you know,
and so you're just trying to keep that boat sailing
as quickly as possible. So you know, you are occupied,
you know, but just in a different way.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
What does the solitude do to a person, It.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Depends on who the person is. I like it, you know,
I don't have any issue with it. Whatso we have
and solitude is the right word. It's not loneliness. It
is solitude. But I you know, I'd be there right now, Francesca,
if I could by myself out in the middle of nowhere.
It's just something that some people gravitate towards. And again
it's because of the sailing. I wouldn't want to be motoring,
(06:49):
you know, having which I do in my professional life
a lot. Now. You know, it's the sound of engine
noise and all that sort of stuff, But when you're sailing,
it's it's it's it's a different frequencies that you're listening to,
and it's a different feeling. You know. It's like when
a boat is sailing itself. It's quite a magnificent feeling
just being inside or being on deck and watching the
(07:11):
boat sailing itself. You know.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Is that essentially what you love about endurance sailing?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah? Absolutely, yeah, And endurance sailing is the correct well done.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I read the book, I learned a lot. Look, you
experienced some heavy gales and that led to the really
the end of the bedroom sailing, didn't it. Can you
tell us what happened to the boat in those gales?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah? So essentially the boat got beaten up quite badly,
but it was nothing that I wasn't expecting. Except we
did have quite a bad run. So I got halfway
to South America Cape Horn, which is about two and
a half thousand miles across the Pacific, and on the
way there we had gale after gale, you know, storm,
(07:54):
you know, big big, you know, eight meter sometimes ten
meter breaking waves. But it was again, it was anticipated,
and that was part of the excitement that I was
looking for. And also just to have a look at
what it's like down there. You know, we're talking the
northern edge of the Southern Ocean around about forty two
degrees south, you know, so that's only sort of like
christ sort of timrou that's latitude, you know. So yeah,
(08:18):
it's it's it's great. What was the question again, Oh,
what happened to the boat? Oh yeah, okay, damage, Yeah,
we got damaged. We got damaged big time. Basically the
boat kept getting smashed by these big breaking cross seas.
So what happens is that the wind always shifts. It's
exactly the same as here we are in New Zealand,
where a gale, a depression as we call them, a
(08:41):
low pressure system traveling around the globe in the Southern
Ocean will the leading edge will come in with a
northwesterly wind, that wind will back to the west and
then to the southwest, and as it backs you get
a leftover cross swell, and the leftover cross wells keept
on smashing into the boat and filling up the cot.
But you know, big, heavy, substantial blows, and because the
(09:03):
boat was so heavy, because it was full of you know,
forty an float, a lot of food and everything else,
and it basically cracked what we call the skeg the boat.
Underneath the boat, you've got a keel, and you've got
a rudder, and this boat has a or had a skeg,
which is which provides what we call directional stability, keeps
(09:23):
it sort of tracking in a straight line. So the
glue line on the on the skeg, at some stage,
quite a few weeks I think, before it came off,
it broke and then the skeg worked and I could
hear these sort of grunching noises, but I was being
a bit delusional, thinking that everything was okay, might just
go away, yes, And it didn't. So this gg broke off,
and then the boat was incapacitated and I couldn't ye.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
And you're in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Is that overwhelming?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Not really, because I was still floating. So the boat
started taking on water, you know, sort of ten to
fifteen liters a day, you know, which which isn't bad
because I'm still there. So I'm sponging it out, I'm
bucketing it out over the side, so I'm still I
still felt in control. But once the boat wouldn't steer itself,
I knew I couldn't carry on and I had to
(10:13):
go somewhere else to make a new skig to repair it.
So the nearest land was one thousand miles north of me,
which was pit Cairn pitt Kern Island, and so I
decided to sail up there, aim for there. So until
you know, so without a SKG, the boat's still floating
and you're still functioning, but you have to hand steer
(10:34):
all the time, which when you're by yourself, you know,
it's not a very good option.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
You used an interesting expression in the book called you
know that you were now sort of negative sailing?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah? Was it negative attitudes? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, it just.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
It was a great way of sort of summing it
up where all of a sudden it had I presume
your mind is being challenged as to how to deal
with the situation and stay positive.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
And I think, yeah, what I enjoyed, well not what
I didn't enjoy it at all, but what I found
within myself was that one has a capacity to cope,
you know, when things go wrong like that. To me,
it was I just had to look at what was
the next thing I had to do to achieve my objective,
you know, So it wasn't really about freaking out. It
(11:20):
was just about adapting to a new set of circumstances,
you know, another form of.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Bad Andrew it wasn't a good outcome.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
No, you had to abandon an unfortunate outcome.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
And it was an unfortunate outcome. You had to abandon swearly.
And I mean, these are amazing chapters in the book.
You're just going to love reading the story, but by
this stage when it comes to abandoning having to make
that decision. As a reader, I was really invested in
this journey and also really invested in this yacht that
you'd had for thirty seven years. I mean I was
devastated reading this process that you had to go through
(11:59):
and everything. What was it like for you to abandon
swoarly well.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Again, at the time and the heat of the moment,
it came down to self preservation. So I sort of
put put to one side the melancholy feelings and just
had to get on with what was the next problem
I had to solve, essentially, And it didn't really kind
of dawn on me the enormity of it until I
(12:25):
had been inverted commas rescued.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, so how easy is it to be plucked out
of the ocean by a container ship?
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, well it wasn't good. Yeah, it was. It was
the most dangerous part of the whole voyage. And I mean,
you know, it was it was. It was. It wasn't
a foregone conclusion that I would get away with it.
Put it that way, you know. So, so essentially what
happened after the skig broke off, I was trying to
sail to pick Ken Island, and then then the rudders
snapped off because that must have got fatigued as well.
(12:53):
So then I was completely incapacitated. And then it was like, well,
what are you going to do? Well in the old
days if you weren't talking to anyone, because I was
talking because I had a satellite text you know. Thing
letting people know what was going on. If you weren't
talking to people, you just would have drifted for three
until you hit South America. And I could have done
that because I had all the food and water. I
would have kept bailing the boat out. But these days
(13:13):
it's not quite like that. You know, when search and
rescue find out that you're in trouble, it's a red
flag and they want to save you, you know. So
a three hundred meter container ship turned up diverted unfortunately
for them, and you know, Lord of the Sea came
and saved me. And I had to get onto that
in the night and it was just up to me
(13:33):
to get on board. So I had to get my
sailing boat alongside. And there was a big sea running
and the boat, you know, it's a ply withoud little
plywood boat, you know, sheath and fiberglass, but that's not
it doesn't make much difference. And the boat was like
being thrown against the side of this steel containership like
a tennis ball, because there was quite a big sea
(13:55):
store running. So it was very difficult and I had
to Basically the crew were English as a second language,
so the communication was difficult and I had to essentially
just leap for a rope ladder that was dangling down
the side of this ship. Just picked my moment and
make sure I held on held on. So that was
(14:15):
you know that that was quite a challenge really at
the time.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Andrew is swearly replaceable? Will you would you like to
give this another go?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I'd like to give it another go. But I looked
into you know, replacing the boat, but it's very expensive,
you know. I think, you know, if I, if I,
if I had a wish list or you know, one lotto,
I'd probably get an aluminium version made, you know, but
it's a it's at least seventy thousand dollars, you know.
And then I started It makes you think, well, you know,
(14:44):
why was I doing Would you would you want to
do it in that boat again? And I was really
only doing it in that boat because that's the boat
I've had, you know, for thirty seven years and done
a lot of sailing in New.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
And yeah, you know, I loved Hey, look really quickly
before you go. I know that you've been working a
lot sort of as a as a commercial master captain
and things like that. Is that the world that you're
in these days?
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yeah, Yeah, I'm a marine. Yeah, I work in marine
what do you call it? Marine construction. I work on
tugs and things, and we tow barges up and down
the coast, that kind of stuff, and I do all
sorts of roles. Really, you have a lot of deck
work too.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
No, it's fascinating. And of course you'd worked on pit
Can Island as well, taking the supply ships and tourist
ships up there, and that's also in this book as well,
which adds another whole dimension to the story. Hey, thank
you so much for joining us. It's an incredible tale
and it's beautifully told.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Thank you for having me, my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Swirly World Lost at Sees is in stores this week.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks It'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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