Isn't the Internet wonderful?
www.bruceroberts.com/public/HTML/JUNK-2.htmLiberdade Sails from Menemsha on Adventure Across Atlantic
By C.K. WOLFSON
This week, Welshman David Sinnett-Jones was in Menemsha to watch his hand-built, Joshua Slocum-designed, junk-rigged sea canoe, Liberdade, depart on what will most likely be its final Atlantic crossing.
"The most exciting thing in life is nearly losing it," Mr. Sinnett-Jones said with a laugh. "And sometimes I go home after I've been away for three years, and have seen fish leaping out of the water, native people, coconuts floating around the beaches and things like that - and I go home and I see people standing on the street corner who have been standing there since I've left. And that's all they've done, is have a chat with their neighbors."
The 73-year old adventurer added, "So I'm a great believer in ‘The world is your oyster.' Go for it."
Mr. Sinnett-Jones is renowned among the followers of seagoing legend, Vineyarder Joshua Slocum, for having built the Slocum replica, Zane Spray, and the 1887, Slocum-designed Liberdade (which was kept anchored at the Vineyard); for his record-making sails retracing Slocum's voyages; for his sailing books (To the Cape of Storms; It's Not All Plain Sailing), and the televised documentaries of his sailing exploits, including his three-year solo circumnavigation around Cape Horn in Zane Spray.
He brought the Liberdade to the Vineyard in 2000, where she was kept in the Chilmark barn of his friend, Dr. Ed Rothschild (they met in Newport at the Joshua Slocum centennial celebration), while a buyer was sought. Now it was time to return to Wales.
Early this week, the 35-foot, three-masted, junk-rigged, seagoing canoe, which draws two feet, six inches, was tied snug in Menemsha harbor while a month's worth of provisions - canned food, apples, potatoes, onions, rice, 30 gallons of water, books, CDs of classical music and Irish shanties - were being maneuvered below deck (with little more than an eight-foot beam, there is about three feet to move around in inside). A checklist of equipment and machinery was being taken: no major problems, pumps working, diesel filter replaced, sail catchers "a bit tattered."
The Liberdade is being skippered by 59-year-old Nigel Wells , on leave from his job as harbor master in Aberaeron, West Wales. He'll make the sail with engineer Gary Amies, a former machinery contractor who owns a trailer park in Wales and was busy seeing to "a slight problem with the diesel inlet. There's a bit of a leak. You spend a lot of your time fixing things on a boat."
Neither has made the 3,000-mile Atlantic crossing before.
"I've always thought it was something that needed doing," said Mr. Wells, who has solo-sailed back and forth from the United Kingdom to the Mediterranean. He recalls sitting in the yacht club in Aberaeron, talking with Mr. Sinnett-Jones, and mentioning he wanted to sail the Atlantic. Mr. Sinnett-Jones said, "Well, I have a boat."
Mr. Sinnett-Jones, who suffered a heart attack three years ago, will fly back and await its arrival. He plans on confining future adventures to land, driving hill climbs and sprints in a single-seater, Formula 2000 race car.
"I said to Nigel today, I'm pleased that I'm not going," Mr. Sinnett-Jones said, describing himself lightly as "a bit decrepit."
Once a Formula One race car driver, until he lost his right eye in a road car accident; then a dairy farmer, until the late 1970s, when he was diagnosed with cancer, he has had a lung and part of his heart removed.
"I told the surgeon, ‘Just do the operation, send me home, and I'll just carry on and just use my time the best way I can.' "
That's when he became a sailor.
"I was in a very fortunate position: When I had lung cancer I had the time to do what I wanted. Most people have to carry on trying to earn a living, and I suddenly had run out of time. So I thought it quite urgent to have a few adventures in my life."
Mr. Sinnett-Jones bought a 26-foot bilge-keeler in 1981, and sailed to South Africa via Brazil for a visit with his daughter. "Thought I might as well get that in," he recalled.
When he returned to Wales, his doctor said he was in better shape than before he left.
He has sailed 17,500 miles in the six-year-old Liberdade. Its plywood construction has been sheathed in epoxy resin inside and out and strengthened with Kevlar. The cross-timbers and bulkheads have been built into, not fitted in the hull. There is a steel shoe along the keel, and six inches of solid lead along the flat bottom. Half the vessel's weight is in its water ballasts, which can be pumped from one side to the other as needed. The stabilizers are aerofoil bilge boards, which like lifting dagger boards, go through the hull and can be adjusted according to wind. "Surprising how stable," Mr. Sinnett-Jones said.
The boat combines Slocum's 100-year-old design with 21st century technology. With the ham radio antenna camouflaged in the stern mast and the radar hidden in a handmade wooden box at the center of the deck, it includes an auxiliary Mitsubishi engine, auxiliary Honda generator, a water maker and a global positioning system (GPS).
All the controls lead to the cockpit for single-handed sailing. It has wind-vane steering (a connection to a secondary rudder through a gear system with ropes tied to the tiller). "So you set the course and if you go off it will make the correction, so you don't have to sit up there holding the tiller. It does a better job of steering than we do," Mr. Wells said.
"One of the beauties of the Chinese junk rig is it's very forgiving. You can sail it with holes in it because it doesn't rip right across. It can only go as far as the next batten."
Inside, where there is full-standing headroom, there's less than three feet of walk-around room. The engine hold is behind steps to the companionway; the galley is on the port side, with berths on either side and lockers underneath and behind. The head is aft, along with a double-bunk berth and more lockers. Not a cubic inch is wasted - even the small salon table has storage compartments.
On Wednesday, Mr. Wells was getting anxious to be under way. "With prevailing winds and currents from the southwest, it should blow us home to Wales," he said.
Under the flags of America, Wales and Joshua Slocum, the sailors will follow a "classic route from New York to Fastnet Rock, a landmark close to southern Ireland." Mr. Wells explained they will stay slightly south to meet the Gulf Stream and avoid the Labrador current.
And Dr. Rothschild, in a conversation from his home in City Island, New York, commented, "This is the sort of thing that the world has to witness and understand that individuals can accomplish wonderful things if they set their mind to it, and they can do it and honor great adventurers."
