single-handed sailing - only in solitude can true freedom be known

These wonderful pictures of Jester were taken by Dr. Herschel C. Gore Jr. at the US Coast Guard boat basin of the US Quarantine Station Staten Island, NYC after the 1960 Single-handed trans-Atlantic race. Dr. Herschel C. Gore Jr., worked at the nearby Marine Hospital in the late 1950s and early 60s as US Public Health Officer and took the opportunity to take these pictures. The lower right image shows Dr. Gore’s daughter Mary Jane sitting proudly in front of Jester.

Storm Tactics for Jester
Blondie Hasler’s brilliant and revolutionary design of Jester, as is the case with most designs , was not without its drawbacks. One such example of this is the need to venture on deck in severe weather...... read more

"From the days of Joshua Slocum there have been many interesting accounts by ‘single-handed’ sailors of their adventures on the high seas. This one differs markedly from most of them, in its intensely personal exploration of how it feels to be alone in the unremitting partnership of sea and boat during a long ocean voyage. The emphasis is far more on the inner man, than on the usual outward events.
Such a book takes a lot of doing, and it is Howells frank, searching introspective that gives it its unusual content, and sheer ability to write entertainingly, penetratingly, and originally that pulls it off.
Val Howells is over six feet tall, with a large beard. His boat was a Folkboat, twenty-five feet overall, little more than nineteen feet on the waterline, with the cabin space offering no more than four feet ten inches of headroom. By any standards, a small boat to embark on an ocean passage; yet he and four others in widely assorted craft, set out from England to race across the Atlantic to New York.
The circumstances that befall them are peculiar enough, but what will enthral the reader the most are the things that go on in this man’s imaginative mind and very human body."

Click here to visit Val's web site and buy his book.

Jester's Ultimate Storm
by Mike Richey

In Heavy Weather Sailing, Adlard Coles defines a survival storm, as distinct from a full gale, as those conditions in which, the wind at Force 10 or above and perhaps gusting at hurricane strength, wind and sea become the masters; there is little the unfortunate mariner can do. It is impossible for anyone in a small boat in the middle of an ocean storm to judge wind-speed or sea-state accurately, if only because the height of eye will be too low to see enough of the sea surface. However, an experienced observer will be able to distinguish between storm-force and gale-force winds............read more

A TRIBUTE TO MICHAEL RICHEY
MBE, Hon FRIN (1917-2009) by Kai Easton
Newport
26.viii.2010

I suspect I am the only one here who didn’t know Mike in his transatlantic sailing days with Jester, but our lives have circled around each other for years, since I grew up, as it happens, not very far from Newport, just across Narragansett Bay in Barrington.

We met very soon after his 90th birthday in Brighton when my husband Robert, our rough-haired Jack Russell terrier Harry, and I moved into the same regency house where Mike had lived since his early days as the Director of the (Royal) Institute of Navigation.  He was still cycling his 10-speed Peugeot bicycle along the undercliff, a daily exercise of some five miles, and he still kept his classic ....read more

Start off western end of Plymouth Breakwater at 1200 (to be confirmed) Sunday 27th  May 2012
(1.5 hours after HW Devonport - neap tides)

The Jester Azores Challenge is run on a ‘gentlemanly basis’ within the following guidelines:

• for sailing vessels between 20 and 30 feet (including multi-hulls)
• human power is the only acceptable alternative propulsion to that of the wind: rowing or clubhauling, for instance, are permissible..... read more
  
  74 Entries so far Jester Azores Challenge Entry List