The second annual dinner of the Jester Challengers took place on Monday 14th January, again at The Master Gunner pub in the City of London.
Almost fifty of us, including forty or so Jester skippers, met again for an evening of conviviality, fun and endless discussion.
With two skippers from France and one from the USA, the growing internationalism of the Jester Challenge was evident. We were delighted once again to have Mike Richey with us, still in remarkably fine fettle.
Our other guest of honour was the inimitable and indefatigable Anne Hammick. A short talk and Q/A session from Anne wowed us with her encyclopaedic knowledge and deep affection for anything Azorean.
The real fun then came in the form of Jake (Kavanagh),cartoonist extraordinaire, who showed us he also does a fine line in stand-up comedy. He should be working at the Edinburgh Fringe (that’s a barber’s shop somewhere in Glasgow).
A great evening, that showed once again that the Jester concept has taken hold, and is here to stay.

Mingming's Northern Voyage
Left Burnham-on-Crouch 0915 22 June. Three days later we ran into a severe gale off the N Yorks coast. This was the storm that caused the first lot of flooding across the UK. I had to sail quite aggressively to maintain position. Winds were NE backing N then NW. I had the coast to the west, Dogger Bank to the east and the shallower waters of the Humber, plus the gas rigs, to the south. Fortunately I had had enough time to get Mingming into deeper water with reasonable sea-room.
Two days later, probably because of strains imposed during this storm, my top two battens broke. These were fixed with boathooks, brush handles and bits of spare wood. This patched up rig took me the well over 2000 miles. We had to ride out a less severe storm half way up the Scottish coast.
Eleven and a half days after leaving Burnham we rounded the northern tip of Unst, the most northerly island of the UK. Magical moment. Three days later we were off the east coast of the Faroes. Here we started running into strong northerly headwinds. The next day a third batten broke. More patching up. I was heading for NE Iceland but F7 northerlies kept forcing us further and further west. With the broken rig I could not sail too aggressively to windward.
Between the Faroes and Iceland we had a pod of 200 plus pilot whales with us for 5-6 hours. I took some amazing video of this.
The consistent northerlies finally put NE Iceland and the Arctic Circle out of reach. .............. read more

John Apps and Glayva finish the Jester Challenge 2006

After 410 days, 2 hours and 50 minutes - and in true 'Jester Spirit' - John Apps has finished the Jester Challenge 2006.
He arrived in Newport RI on 18th July 2007, being the third skipper to finish.
John wrote:
"Well we made it. I passed the Castle Hill Light at 1350[UTC] on 18 July 2007. Approximately 410 days, 2 hours and 50 minutes since the start of JC06. I think this might make me third on the podium.
Except for the last 200 miles when I had next to no wind I seemed to go from Low to Low with only a day in between. Even in sectors which according to the Routing Chart should never have anything above F7, I was encountering F9s. I was knocked down twice in a three hour period trying to sail under bare poles in an F10 NE, when I had crossed the top of a low. The first knock down was a bit of a disaster as I had just taken my top stormboard out to check on everything, when I was knocked down - ending up with about 2 feet of water in the cabin. I also lost my wind indicator from the top of my mast, broke my Babystay, flattened my Spray Hood and ended up with a Raincatcher Radar Reflector looking like a flower as it was bent out of shape.
Except for the missing wind indicator everything was more or less repairable. About 100 miles out of Newport I encountered very dense sea fog and unfortunatley no wind for a day and a half. I was caught in something called teh Great South Ship's Channel just south of Nantucket. Every hour or so I could hear a ship's fog horn going past. I was replying on my foghorn, but it sounded very puny in relation to the ships' blasts. Still I think my two radar reflectors are fairly effective [A Dutch ship, the NV Power, passed me one evening and told me they had had me on radar for an hour].
Because of the time it has taken me to get here, I will probably only stay a few days to resupply and head straight back"

John Apps (centre) enjoying a well earned beer with Robin Wallace and George Pike at the Newport Yacht Club

Pete Hill is awarded the JESTER MEDAL

The Jester Medal was founded by the Jester Trust in 2005 to "recognise and perpetuate the traditions established by Jester, her creator Blondie Hasler, and Mike Richey". The Trust, whose Chairman was Nigel Rowe, had been responsible for building the present Jester to replace the original that was lost at sea during the 1988 Ostar. The Trust was disbanded when the boat was sold to its present owner, Trevor Leek. A number of medals were subsequently struck and handed over to the Ocean Cruising Club which undertook to include the Jester Medal among its own annual awards. The qualification "for an outstanding contribution to the art of single- handed sailing" is deliberately general so that it could cover a wide range of achievements from, say, an outstanding solo passage to an invention of some kind that would be of particular value to single-handed sailing.
The Jester Medal has no necessary connection with the Jester Challenge, which indeed numbers "no awards" among it organisational objectives. Nevertheless it seems highly appropriate that the first award should have been made to Pete Hill who was one of the only two boats to finish the first Jester Challenge from Plymouth to Newport, Rhode Island in the summer of 2006. Pete's 19-year old Kingfisher 22 was almost certainly the oldest and second smallest boat in the fleet - the smallest being 21ft Mingming, sailed by Roger Taylor - in which he achieved the very fine time of just over 44 days. But the award took into account his record of short-handed and single-handed voyaging over the years, first of all in Badger, a 34ft junk rigged schooner, then in China Moon, a 38ft junk-rigged catamaran and finally in his present boat Shanti. The record reads like an explorer's Pilot Book: Brazil, Falkland Islands, Nova Scotia, Cape Horn, Deception Island, South Georgia, Tristan da Cunha...and so on.
In the Jester Challenge Shanti arrived second; but she also arrived last which, as Mike Richey was to observe, was the distinguished place so often taken by Jester in her numerous Ostars.

         Pete Hill and Shanti arriving at Newport after 44 days and 6 hours at sea

        Pete Hill and Eric Andlauer sharing a beer after their successful crossing

On Reflection - by Mike Richey

The JESTER MEDAL will be awarded each year by the Ocean Cruising Club for 'An outstanding contribution to the art of singlehanded sailing'