Episode 07 - Gunnar Christensen

Gunnar Christensen is a seasoned sailor, yacht captain, and adventurer preparing to compete in the legendary 2026 Golden Globe Race — one of the world’s toughest solo, non-stop sailing challenges. With decades of offshore experience, multiple Atlantic crossings, and a background as an RNLI volunteer, Gunnar combines old-school seamanship with an extraordinary passion for life at sea. In this episode, we explore his journey, the mindset required for extreme endurance sailing, and what it takes to navigate the world alone using only traditional methods.

A big thank you to our sponsors YB Tracking - This wouldn't be possible without your amazing help! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Oceans Unplugged. I'm Lee Gallica, formal professional sailor, mariner, harbour authority, patrol officer, coast guard officer, and lifeboatman. In each episode, I'll be sitting down one-to-one with the people who push beyond the horizon. Ocean racers, explorers, rowers, and the leaders behind the world's most demanding expeditions. We'll expand on the guests as we get into it. Oceans Unplugged is proudly supported by YB Tracking, the global leader in race and expedition tracking technology, helping bring the world's toughest adventures to life in real time. This is our story, unfiltered and in-depth. Well, welcome to Oceans Unplugged. This is episode seven, and this week we are with Gunnar Christiansen, who is the 2026 entrant for the Golden Globe. Hi Gunnar. Good to see you, Lee. Thanks for coming. No, thanks for having us on board. Yeah. Beautiful boat. And uh yeah, it's it's you've obviously got a lot of work still to do. Um, but I want to ask you one thing, because obviously the Golden Globe race is sailing around the world non-stop without any electronic or digital navigation at all. It's purely sort of getting into the the nitty-gritty of astro and um uh solar navigation. Yeah. Um with that in mind, because it's just you on board and you haven't got all of these electronics. Uh what happens when you go overboard? I I've seen some training that you've done, but yeah, uh talk me through it. What happens if we end up abroad overboard?

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Don't go overboard. That's the number one thing, right? Try not to go overboard. Um hope you're clipped in. If you're not, you hope you die fairly quickly. So you don't want to be floating around for very long, do you? But um, it is uh if you've seen the training that I've done, uh in RNLI, your RNLI, um, we know how serious that is, isn't it? So we can discuss the nuances of it a bit, but I have double jack lines on each side. So uh, and a really good way to get on the boat from the transom because I've got lots of stuff. It's a double ender, so I've got hydrovanes and uh Remoran generator and whatnot. So I've got plenty of ways to get on board, you know, get to the back of the boat, be able to get onto the outboard jack line, which is a pretty unique thing. Not everyone runs an outboard jack line, so I run two inboard jacklines and two outboard. So if I fall overboard, I'd probably be stuck at the shrouds, won't I?

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

But I'll have double um uh double uh clip-on.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

So uh my tether, and so I can either cut or unclip from my other one, clip into the outboard uh line, my jack line, and it'll take me to the stern of the boat. It's stern of the boat. If I'm going six, seven knots, I can take the wind vane rudder and turn it and round either put it into irons or you know, make it come about and just stop the boat.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Anyway, so yeah, for the first question, sorry, there's probably No, that's fine.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

And just for clarification, yes, Gunner is R and L I. I was the independent lifeboat. If you want to know more about independent lifeboats, look at episode six. Um, but so you'll get round to the back of the boat and you've got your is it hydrovan you're gonna be running?

SPEAKER_01 3:12

I run um, I'm running two. So this boat came with a ScanMar Auto Helm, which is a bit obscure, but I've seen a few of them around. They stopped making them in the mid, it was about 2010 or so. Company in California. Thing is, that rudder that comes with a trim tab rudder that comes with the ScanMar, and this it went around the world already on this boat, it's um it steers this boat so well. But we all know if you follow the Golden Globe race, the most vulnerable thing is your wind vane. And if you lose your wind vane, you're out. That's why most people drop out of the race. So I have two of them. So alongside of that, I have a um a hydro vane. Uh so I've really, you know, my goal is if you can finish the race, you have a pretty good chance of possibly winning the race. But the goal is really, let's let's finish. So, yeah, to to get up on the transom and have also have redundancy. I have two wind vanes.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

As the old adage says, in order to finish, you must first finish. Exactly. Uh no, sorry, to finish first, you must first finish. Apologies. Yeah. Um, so this boat, uh as I've looked, you bought it in Brazil, was it?

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Trinidad. Not too far. It was just, you know, you're basically in Venezuela. Yeah. Um, when you're in Trinidad, it's just tucked right up in there in the Gulf. Um, it's the land of broken dreams for boats. So people have this dream, they probably prep a boat for um if you're from the east coast of the United States, um, you prep a boat with your wife, you're gonna live the dream and go down, sail offshore to Bermuda, down to the Caribbean, go down the island chain, and then it's time to haul the boat up because it's out of hurricane, the hurricane belt, so insurance companies allow it. But what happens is people get stuck and they just don't go back to their boats. This boat kind of was like that, although it'd gone through a major refit. Um, the original owners who had it for 20 years on the west coast of the United States sailed it around the world, you know, four or five years in the Pacific and then to Trinidad. He became ill, they sold the boat, a young couple bought it, and uh whatever happened, they decided they're gonna move on and do something else after a pretty extensive refit in Trinidad. And I had the list of what was done to the boat, and then it sat there for a year, and because it's the land of broken dreams, I went down and put an offer in. And that's a whole nother story is going to buy this boat and sailing it across. But that's um, yeah, I picked it up online that way.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

And when you got it, you sailed it across the UK, so there was a big sort of period of being able to sort of test the equipment that was already on. And did that help you sort of make up your mind of what equipment you needed further down the line with the Golden Globe? Or was the Golden Globe race even part of the dream?

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yeah, yeah, that's I bought the boat for the for the Golden Globe race. So, Lee, what would be the smart, prudent thing to do as a I'm a professional mariner, right? So I've done this my whole life. And I don't do this at home, kids. Um, I looked at a boat here in the UK. I looked at three over in Isle of Wight. That would have been the smart thing to do, wouldn't it? Go buy a boat there. One over at a Biscay 36 over in Wales. And then I sat with my, it's just about almost coming up on two years ago. I sat with my team here at the yacht club over a coffee, and they said, right, it's getting time for you to get a boat. What boat are you gonna get? I said, Ah, I'm gonna go find one. I found one in Trinidad. They said, Trinidad? Well, we're coming up onto hurricane seasons because it was already two weeks into June. And uh they said, What is it? I said, uh Hans Christian 34. And they went, Oh yeah, that's good. I've my team are mostly sailors, so they, you know, they're all sailors, so they know about the Hans Christian. What a great boat it is. And I said, Hear me out. It's no different than me flying in from New England to Antigua, getting on a boat that I've been on for maybe 24 hours, and if everything checks out, I'll take off and go up to New England. I'm gonna treat it the same way. It the boat I think is pretty well set. It's got multiple sails, you know, backup mains and things, even though they're beat up. And uh so they said, okay, that's not too incredibly crazy, but I said also I've never sailed solo in my life, so that's 4,000 miles that qualifies me um for the race. So, you know, that's uh that's what I did, and uh and as crazy as it was, it was a great way to go test the boat.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

So, what route did you do from there? Did you do the traditional go up towards the Azores and come across, or did you kind of decide to do a completely different route?

SPEAKER_01 7:44

I um, you know, one of the reasons why I knew I had a get out of jail clause if I I took off because it I had a clear run of no tropical lows coming across from Africa. And so I was down, I was in Trinidad for five days. Um I sailed it for an hour to see how the wind vane worked before, and then loaded it with food really quick. I was really in a hurry to get out because one, I was working building boats still, like project managing boat builds here locally, and uh and two, I had a clear run of of weather, and I knew if I could just get out of the Caribbean, and I'm damn lucky I did because seven days later came across a pretty serious hurricane that really um demolished the Grenadines, you know, not far from Trinidad. So I got lucky. But I knew I'd have three days of in the lee of the islands before I went up, and I knew I could pull in if I had to into you know one of the islands if I had to fix something. So that gave me a three-day test sale and then into the North Atlantic. Um just trade winds, um, you know beam beam winds all the way up to Bermuda, 300 miles east of Bermuda, and then uh bang to right, and just between Newfoundland and the Azores, and then hit some good, three good low pressure systems, which you think now it's late June, early July, you think it's it's the most benign time in the North Atlantic, but it's um I hit three good low pressures, which is great because I got to test out the storm sales and just to see how the wind vane worked in really tough conditions, and you know, you just sit right here. Once you get the sails all set, you come down, curl up in the fetal position, have a little bit of a cry and dream of a cheeseburger. And the boat just takes care of itself. So I love this boat. And you know, all these GGR boats are kind of similar, like that, where they will take care of you. So it wasn't a cheeseburger in paradise moment. There was no cheeseburger in Paradise. I I screwed up on my food. I had plenty of food, just no variety.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Uh actually, while we were on the cockpit just coming down, we noticed some of the food that you've obviously bought and you're loading up at the moment. Um now I remember when I'd done the BT Global Challenge, we went the wrong way around the world and there was a lot of freeze-dried, dehydrated um food with uh uh seven litres of Tabasco sauce. So talk me through. What's the food that you're gonna have on your trip? What are you gonna be eating? I did see some uh interesting bits up there.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Yeah, you'll probably know how expensive freeze-dried food is, but I think it's important because if you if you went with all wet food canned food, it's really heavy and it takes up a lot of space. So I have um expedition foods, so um, been dealing with them. They've gave me a decent discount on the food. It's still really it's quite expensive. A hundred days, they say it's a hundred days, but that's at 4,000 calories a day, which is come on, I'm not, you know, and when it's hot in trade wind sailing, I'm not gonna be burning, you know, maybe half of that. So you know, maybe in the southern ocean, I mean, I don't, yeah, there's probably days where I could burn a lot of calories. I'm really thinking that's 125 days of food. We're play you really need to plan on 300 days to be out there. You know, I hope it's not that 300 days. I'm hoping it's more like 220 or so, but uh you know, you you need to plan accordingly. So it's gonna be maybe 50-50 um wet food, what I call canned, yeah, and different types of food that's underneath here. All underneath, yeah, which is why we're sort of leaning this way over and us, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

We were just talking that uh since I've come ashore, done my Coast Guard job and not racing or or sailing as much, that I've certainly put on a lot more weight. And uh I think when you come back from the race, everyone that I've spoken to in different events. I mean, as you know, I was speaking to Ella Hibbert, um, she came back having lost a stone or two in weight. Um, when I came back off of my round the world race and even some of the transatlantics, I've lost quite a bit of weight, and for most of my working career, um, people used to refer to me as a racing snake. I mean, I was 10 stone wet through size 30 waist, and now I'm edging on almost double that, but anyway. Um, but yeah, you're definitely going to be burning off. And it I it surprises me though that you say that you're only gonna be doing two to four thousand calories a day, because uh I mean, even when you're sleeping and resting, or yeah, as you say, curled up in the fetal position, your body and the core muscles and the joints are still moving around, you're still burning off energy.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Yeah, yeah, you are, and that's why you know I'll call it a hundred days of food for the for the freeze drive, and I'll definitely have air on the side of caution. Because it could be, oh man, I'm burning more than I thought. When I came across on this boat on the transatlantic, um clarity-wise and mentally, I had a lot of stuff going on. And I don't know, I never get seasick really, so it wasn't that. I just didn't really eat much. And I had to remind myself, I would sit down, I'd be here with my charts laid out, navigating going. I wonder, you know, filling in the log. I wonder when the last when when did I eat last? And wow, I think it was like 20 hours ago. And it was only probably like some crackers and a can of tuna.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

So yeah, I lost. I'm sorry, I'm not, I can't do stone because I come from the other side there. Um cross the across the pond. Um, but it was you know, I was 215 pounds maybe, and I was 185 pounds when I when I got back. I really, you know, it was great for my bumble profile, but it was you know what? I lost way too much weight. So I can't do that. I can't do that in the Golden Globe Bray, so I've got to think a bit more about the food.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Oddly enough, I met my other half on a bumble profile. And the only reason that we actually met was uh called I was teaching three girls how to sail. It turns out they were also on dating sites. Um, so they said, show me your profile. They had a look at it and they said, That's rubbish. We're gonna redo it for you. Took photos, and um, yeah, it was amazing. So, top tip, get someone else.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Bumble sponsor right here on the side of the boat. We've got a room, let's get the bumble on there. Come on, that's great. Well, yeah, it's funny because uh on a little side note, my my partner Jen, uh, who I met on Bumble, she uh I won't mention his name, but dated just before me, not successfully, quite a well-known offshore sailor. I think I know who you're like, she wrote, uh not another sailor, but you do look interesting.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Oddly enough, that was a similar thing that Deb said. Uh I think this guy might be fun, not quite sure if he's going to be a long-term prospect. So, no, our sailors are stable individuals. We are stable. Crazy. You've definitely got to be to have the uh the joy to go out on a boat without any electronics and go around the world. I mean, what drove you to decide to do this event or race, as opposed to just, as you say, live the dream. Why not just cruise around the world?

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Yeah, cruising for me, I just even if I had a bunch of money, and you know, obviously I I've done this my whole life being crew and captain on a boat, so I don't have a lot of money. Um, but I've had a lot of fun. But I just I need a I need a uh purpose. There has to be uh you know something higher that I'm going for. And going through the Panama Canal and going to Fiji, honestly, it doesn't sound I don't, I'm like, oh, what do what's the purpose? Uh has to be something, an adventure involved. So I'm now 59 years old, and I've just realized all I've ever done my whole life is sail on other people's uh you know schedule. So I've done some really cool things on some really cool boats, but it's always been you're taking the boat to here and you're doing this and that, never on my own with my own schedule in mind. So I had the chance um three years ago to basically I was given a Baltic 42, 1977 ex-admiral's cup Baltic 42, rescued it from Kingston, Jamaica. Another there's another story, you know, behind that. And I said that's gonna be the boat I'm gonna do something in. I was thinking of the Global Solo Challenge. Oh, right, yeah, yeah. But man, I don't I would need a sponsor for that. But with the Global Solo Challenge, you don't have the camaraderie. Yes, I mean the GGR is a solo race, yeah, but there's a camaraderie right now. I've you know I consider them family, all the skippers, and Don McIntyre, the organizer, you know, he's great. I feel like I'm part of a real family. And even though we'll be out and by ourselves, um, you still have this really great following. The Global Solo Challenge, not so much, because it's you you'd leave at different times depending on your handicap. And then I thought, how am I gonna get a sponsor to go redo my Baltic 42? And then I have a client um that I did a lot of sailing with uh in the last two years. He loved the GGR, and he said, Why don't you do the Golden Globe race? I'm like, I don't have a boat for the Golden Globe race. And he's he went ahead and he said, I'll help you out, I'll pay your the first entry fee, which was 7,000 euros or something like that. So I'm like, wow, he paid that. I'm like, I guess I'm into the Golden Globe race. And then it just steamrolled from there. Once I get stuck into something, I'm like, right, full on. Listen to all the podcasts of the past competitors, figured out what they did, you know, what's involved with getting the boat ready, what makes a good boat for that. So that's that's kind of why the GGR, you know, came into effect, because it's there's a real good purpose behind it because it's a it's a family. We all leave at the same time and you know, sob de la on. If you look at the the videos of the past events, it's you know, tens of thousands of people watching, watching it. They're not there's you know, with everyone watching the the YB tracker during during the race and waking up with their coffee going, Oh boy, I'm glad I'm not on that boat.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

Yeah, I mean the Sab de Laon or France, because recently I was down in uh Lorient for the start of the Plastomo Mini 650 series. And I don't know what the community is like in uh America, because you're you're from New England, I don't know what what the sailing community is there, but here the start of a major event, yes, there are a few thousand people and they're really on it, but you go to France and the the schools come out with the kids, everything that it's like you are full-on celebrity. They really embrace sailing in France.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah, yeah, it's it was amazing. So I my first taste of it was um I was traveling with uh Cam Lewis, who is I uh uh he's done a lot of the uh he had the Jules Verne trophy for a while. He's from Maine. You know, I knew him growing up in Maine, and I happened to be over in I think it was an airport, we're in we're in France, and just he had to go over, we were over there together, and we're walking along, and people were stopping to get photos and his autograph, and I'm like, what's this cam? He goes, Yeah, it's France. And then when I was there for the skippers um meeting in November, uh we had the mandatory press conference with all the skippers, 16 of us. So some of the skippers um had you know done the Pat Wallace was there and a couple um a couple of the other skippers. So they're already well known to the community in La Sabdelon. And um I'm walking down the street with them, and they always stopping to say, Oh wow, good to see you. And we're having coffee, and everyone comes over to chat with them, and you know, they're they're celebrities, it's which is kind of amazing. It's kind of cool, you know, because it just makes you feel like you're really part of something big, and you know, it's really cool that uh people find uh it it's kind of neat, you know. Honestly, here in Lymington, it's like whatever.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

While you're over in France and or even over here, as part of the Golden Globe, are you do you have any sort of educational content or link with schools and stuff like that? Yeah, because um I know a lot of um what Don does is a lot about education at the ocean. So is there anything specific with you that kids can sort of get involved in or follow?

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Yeah, so one thing you I I think you do probably know about this is it's just come up that we're gonna have some boats, six of us, will have Starlink on board. Now, Starlink keeps the whole ethos of the race because it's only transmit. So there's a black box, Starlink. We only can plug into it. Um, you know, we get two hours a day, which is gonna be a huge look into the what we're doing as Golden Globe sailors. And every boat is it's mandatory to be associated with a school. And Priestelins here, the local school, um, I'll be doing a talk there in a couple weeks when they're done with their exams. And it will be great because they can call in. We they'll call Dawn. Yeah, and we're allowed a satellite phone that's up there. We're allowed a satellite phone that's only to race headquarters, so Dawn can ring me and say, right, tomorrow, depending, it does it doesn't matter what it is, it could be priestelines, it could be BBC, you know, but they can then patch in live and see what's going on, and I can talk to the kids about what I've seen, you know, whales and all sorts of different, you know, the weather or the geography where I am around Cape of Good Hope or something.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

And talking about a bit of the sea life as well, what you've seen.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

And yeah. I think that's really fantastic, and I love the fact that we'll be associated with schools.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

When when I did uh my race, I had one school. Yeah, I had one school in particular, so you've got priests, and they'd turned their classroom into a boat. So the front of the class was the bow, port, salved and and they'd all drawn pictures and stories, and every time I'd sort of contact them, and you'd get it all back. And in fact, we were doing a bit of a clear out of the house, and I've still got a stack of the pictures that the kids done, and this is 25 years ago, yeah. So it's like, yeah, it it it's great to educate. And I I following um Ella, because where I'm her designated person ashore and first of all. Oh, worry, I didn't realise that great. Yeah, uh, to to which um I missed a phone call once, she's never gonna let me live it down, um, but yeah, even in her project, she's got so many kids that she's working with around the world, and the more that we can educate and inspire people about the ocean, um, because it I think a lot of People just it's past the horizon. It we don't know about it.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

So Yeah, it is the it's the final frontier here within, you know, below thirty thousand feet. Yeah. It's great. Yeah, and well, Ella's um yeah, that that's a great challenge uh to circumnavigate the Arctic, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So that's going to be really uh really cool to follow.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

She's done half it. She's got a lot of things. Yeah, she's in Alaska, right? Uh St. Paul's Island. So where deadliest catches known for. Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Uh I mean she's um a Mustang survival and she's a Mustang survival.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um so they obviously like adventurous projects and uh getting through the ice. Uh or or getting married. Yeah. Well, there's certainly going to be some uh uh icebergs and stuff down there, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Well hopefully we're just at the above the ice limit. You know, we they keep it at 46 south. Oh yeah, they're you never know. For adventure sake, I'll say possibly. You know, when you look back at the old whip bread races, because I used you know, I love the whip bread talking about ice. Yeah. And um uh, you know, Tapio Leightinen who who is doing the he did the global uh sorry, the ocean globe race, and he obviously did the last two Golden Globe races not very successfully, unfortunately. But he's a great sailor, great guy. And um there's a great video of the 73 whipped, I think it is, where he's on Scotbank of Finland, a Baltic 51. Maybe he's a little bit later in that 78 or something, but in the 70s. Yeah, and those guys are screaming down the Southern Ocean with a spinnaker up, going by icebergs. Now that's during the day. At night, they're still in the Southern Ocean screaming by icebergs at night. Going, yes, they have radar, but you can't see the bergie bits and things, so wow, it's just amazing.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

I Ella has shown me some photographs and videos of the burgs, and obviously, like you, I've watched a few podcasts and stuff of other adventurers that are up there, and the size, the enormity, it's it's like an entire Isle of Wight drifting by you.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

And then imagine what's underneath, which is what, three times the size, probably.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

A bit sticking out.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

A friend of mine is going, uh, he's going transatlantic again. Yeah, he's just sent a photo from uh off of Newfoundland of yeah, big iceberg right next door. I'm like, whoa. Good luck, can you get through the iceberg zone? He's had a he's gonna be up by Iceland here pretty soon.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Well, touch wood that you're not gonna get any of those. Yeah. So you s talking about radar, uh, looking at what electronic equipment have you got that you are allowed to use?

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Yeah, I just rewired the whole boat and I had to put some antennas in on the transom. Actually, I'm I can't believe how much I had to rewire the boat, you know, for the race. There's a there's not much, but safety-wise, there's quite a bit. And uh, you know, it's state of the art. So it's racing like it's 1968 from you know, the first Golden Globe race from the Sir Rob Knox Johnson one. But safety-wise, it's all it's very modern. And uh Dawn, when the race first this the the new race in 2018, the 50th anniversary, the French Sailing Federation and World Sailing was really going, wow, amateurs and on these old boats, slow boats. They looked at Dawn's safety requirements on the notice of race, and the notice of race is yay thick, 60 something pages. It's really comprehensive, and they actually took some of Dawn's um ideas and incorporated them into these offshore sailing races. So I have a lot of antennas, but what can I use is um a taffrail log for speed, no no through hole transducer for that. Oh really? Yeah, so just you know, I've got three taffrail logs. You actually can find them on eBay fairly, you know, um at a good price. So that um multiple sextants. I'm really lucky. I have my uncle's sextant that from the 1970s, a sea plath from Germany that I use as a kid. You know, luckily I'm old enough, I'm pre-GPS, and I used to go out with my dad and my uncle, and um, and it's I have that same sextant, which it will be great to have a go around the world. And uh, yeah, what else? There's um single sideband radio. Um the mast isn't in yet, so tomorrow, Wednesday. Wednesday I'll start by the end of next week and the week after, I'll start to figure out single sideband radio, getting that all tuned in. Um Weatherfax, I'll go to Weatherfax up there. I've got two Weatherfaxes. I've had some good luck tuning it in, and now I don't know if solar flares or something going on, but I haven't had much luck. But that would be, you know, the the other thing is, you know, with all these you know modern conveniences as they would have been 30 years ago, single sideband weatherfax, uh a lot of countries are just doing away with the broadcast, which is a bit of a hassle. I love weatherfax. Looking at a you know, when you did BT challenge, you probably were do analyzing synoptic charts from Weatherfax, which is great. I love it, you know, and it's really hard to get them now, um, apparently. So I've picked up a few stations here, um, and then single sideband. I have an HF radio that came with a boat. Really, it was hard to get even BBC across the Atlantic because they're just doing away with the with those broadcasts, which is disappointing.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Yeah, so I have to bring more books. I mean, there's a lot of um islands and countries sort of in the South Pacific that rely on BBC single side band, BBC World Service and the like. Um, so I'm surprised that's going.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

I think, yeah, so the good thing is there's a New Zealand um uh radio operator, I've got I can't remember his name, I'll have to give him a shout out. But um he does it by donation only, and uh I'm you know, we're all as skippers very happy to give him a donation.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

And he by about the time you're around Cape Horn, get into the Indian Ocean, you can probably start to pick up his weather broadcast, and then you can carry that almost to Cape Horn. So that'll be good. And I know the last the last two races they the competitors were able to the ones who had the radios set up properly, yeah, were able to do that and and keep keep the weather going that way. But I mean, let's face it, it is what it is, isn't it? You're not gonna dodge a low pressure system. You might you might get out of the absolute you know, worst, get out of the semicircle on the swirling low, but you're really still gonna get hammered because we're going six, seven knots on a good day.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

That was one of the the pieces that I spoke to Pip about. I was like, oh, when I did my race, we went through a storm and it was 60 knots sustained, and we had 86 knots, I think was the highest gust. And she she was saying the new mockers, because they're foiling, they're going so fast they're ahead of the systems. Yeah. Which boats like this, you there's no way you're gonna dodge them unless you're doing a lot of planning way ahead. But yeah, which we still never predict them.

SPEAKER_01 28:51

Yeah. You know, this is why I you know I have so much respect for all these new sailors. And my local yacht club here, they uh I think maybe that's why there's not a there's not a lot of interest possibly here in this in the Golden Globe race. They love all the new shiny foiling, and I'm not poo-pooing, I'm not gonna be the old curmudgeon that says, oh, you know, forget that stuff. It's really cool, it's amazing. But, you know, let's face it, this Golden Globe race is the hardest sailing event there is. And I have all sorts of respect for these people that go foiling around the world, but you can have all the weather uh analysis, you can call, everyone can call in and say, this is what this is where you should go, you can analyze it yourself, and uh you know, you just have to make sure the boat doesn't fall apart, you know, and and get around in 60-70 days, and we're getting around in you know 230 to 280 days, so it's a it's it's uh I think it's a bit harder of a challenge. So yeah, it is. And I think it's important though to because people people love following those other races, right? And it's great. I I follow them too. But I think people also who you know were here at Yachthaven Marina, they most of these boats go seven or eight knots. And I think people can follow this race, especially now that we have um onboard cameras where people can watch it live 24 hours a day, they can then see what's going on with this boat and and probably relate to the fact that wow, he's gotta go up and take a reef and whatnot, and he's going six knots.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Yeah, yeah. One of the things that really, really interests me about the Golden Globe race now, and I think you'll really appreciate this, we we spoke about the seamanship side of it earlier, and your own or primary navigation source is using your sextant astro and solar navigation. Years ago, I started sort of saying to many students is don't just keep relying on your chart plotter because they're not as accurate as you think. There is an error of margin, and now, obviously, given uh world politics and world situations, GPS is being blocked and ghosted. And do you think there's gonna be a regen or a regrowth of people wanting to learn traditional seamanship and and uh uh navigation?

SPEAKER_01 31:18

I think we're already seeing it. So I did um 2024 when I bought this boat. I did two transatlantics, I did another transatlantic to the arc in the um autumn and November with a client and came across. And uh, I just think uh so I was doing celestial. Well, on my way north on this boat, I had the wrong tables because I was in such a hurry to leave. And wow, so I didn't do celestial on that. Coming across, I did celestial on uh Southerly 42. Wow, it took me luckily we had Starlink on board because I had to go remind myself how to do the site. And I said, you know what, let me do a refresher this winter. So uh Jojo Pickering, Island uh Swift Sailing, she does some work with 59 North and uh she's great. She does an online um celestial class, so I did that and with one other Guido Cantini, who's also a GGR skipper, and three others who were, you know, a couple of them were young, young people who are either skippers or aspiring. And I thought, well, that's great. You know, there's a lot of I I think she's got a, you know, she's doing quite a bit of teaching. So I think there's that interest because if we start, you know, we've gotten rid of Loran Towers. I think that's kind of a mistake, you know, just as a backup, you know, whoever, whatever powers that be pushed the button on blowing up satellites, which could happen, then uh, you know, what do we have? You know, people are really going to be stuck. They can't even make it on the M3 to London, probably.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

I must admit, I've started relying a lot more on Waze recently for that. And it's not just a navigation, it is traffic updates, but it it yeah, there are people that literally will blind blindly follow the sat nav and end up on some farmer's track.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Yeah, and I you know, I find uh so when I'm on watch on a boat, this boat in the cockpit has nothing. Even in my even my compass light didn't work, it works now. So when I was out there doing the transatlantic, I would, when I could, just sleep up there in the cockpit and poke my head up, look for any any shipping. I I did a you know, we've got AIS and everything, so I, you know, we're safe that way. But just it's you know visual, visual, visual look around and the stars. And then I had no, you know, it could pitch black. I you can still see once your eyes become accustomed. And then I get on this Southerly 42 with these guys who are they're great, they're fun, you know. They but every modern convenience in the cockpit with the bimini that's up and so I come on watch. The first thing I do is off, off, off, off, off, off, off, off, off, bimini, back. Yeah, and because what you don't need, why do you need a plotter offshore? You don't need a plotter offshore, you know, compass just getting it. Compass, yeah, or start like you know, I would look up in the cockpit and stick my head up and go, uh oh, the Big Dipper's still over there, all right.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Yeah, yeah. It's the same with modern cars, I think, with these new um LCD screens and everything. There's so much brightness coming off of it. Yeah, um uh the car that I've got it's like that, and I keep covering up the screen on that side with the navigation on it because it's just too much. Um, when I was on the patrol boat, we used to go up to boats in the middle of the Solent to say that there's a ship coming, you're in a shipping lane, just be aware, and they'll be like, Where? But there's so much brightness coming off their their uh chart plotter that their night vision was completely ruined. And then once you kind of go, there it is, and they go, and it's like didn't you chart plotter?

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Yeah, yeah, we say that all the time on the lifeboat here. Don't forget to just look around. Mark one eyeball. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

Yeah. So seeing you mentioned lifeboats. Um, you've been a crew here for a number of years, haven't you?

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Yeah, for coming up on four years. So I started, I moved here ten years ago from the States, uh, lived in Teddington, and so there's uh, you know, it was a Thames lifeboat. Yeah. And what you know, you train uh even though D-class boats, we uh you train just every every lifeboat station trains the same, so you could you can go to different lifeboats, which is great because I was able to just move down here in maybe two weeks of just local knowledge and you know, veering down on an 80 85, the uh inshore lifeboat. And um it's probably similar to when where you are um when in the Hamble. It's I call it the RLI mafia. You just it's instant family. And uh, you know, you need any help with anything, um, you need to move, need a babysitter, it's they're there for you.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

But it's you know, it's fantastic. I think any sort of voluntary work and teamwork that you're you're involved in, I think there is that family element. There, you're all sort of a like-minded individuals and you're all going to support each other no matter what it is, um, from sort of helping homeless on the streets or or lifeboat station. Yeah. Um if someone was uh interested in getting into working with a lifeboat, do they have to have a uh sort of background in navigation or marine?

SPEAKER_01 36:11

No, not at all. I think that's a really cool thing. You could be an accountant, you could be the butcher, and you'll what's cool is you'll get trained, you know, with all even if you're an inshore, you know, D class up on the Thames. I had a I had one of the crew members up there said, we're doing you have to pass navigation, coastal navigation basically, probably the equivalent of that. He said, Why do we need this? We're just that we don't even have uh, I'm gonna say, uh being my American buoys, the boys. Boys, yeah, yeah. That's a funny story about a uh search we did, but anyway, I digress with that. And uh with buoys versus saying boys, so yeah. And uh there's a boy in the water. We're doing a search for a boy in the water, and our second lifeboat said, Um, yeah, we see something, we're gonna go over. And uh he said, uh, no, it's just a boy. I said, Can you please clarify? Because we're looking for a boy in the water. Was that a buoy or a boy? And he went, Oh, yeah, it's a buoy. Anyway, yeah, so that's what's great. You know, anyone can join the lifeboat. And uh being Limington, we get we do have a probably you know majority are maritime related, or if they have other jobs, they probably race on Thursday nights and weekends and whatnot. So they're they're quite proficient in it, but there's absolutely no way do you have to have that qualification of having something to do with water.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

That's quite a good um uh week evening or weekday evening racing scene here, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

With uh Limington Town and Yeah, Livington Town and the Royal Limiting, yep. Really good Thursday night series, which I I get out with um I've got five team members and I I know them from racing on their boats.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

Before I you know got a boat here. So you're gonna put any of those sort of skills into sort of winning the Golden Globe? Well, here's it doesn't really translate too much on a boat like this, which is you know, big bow sprit and kind of a traditional full keel, but um I don't know how I'm gonna do because it's it's a good boat, it's a long water line, yeah, but it's 34 on deck, and you know, Kirsten Newschoffer had a uh Cape George 36, which is fairly similar to this. Fairly similar, but two feet longer, you know, again with a bow sprit, a faster boat on paper. Um can I sail my boat better than a couple of the other skippers? I hope so, because it's what I do. Yeah. And when I get on boats, even on the delivery, I'm I'm not pushing the boat necessarily, but I won't tolerate anything that's not optimal as far as the sail plan goes. I'll I'll take the time and change, you know, change the sails. This boat had Hank Don's sails coming across the Atlantic. So you can imagine what a ball ache that was, going, oh god, I've got to go change, get out into the bow sprint and change the number four to a number three and number three to a number two and back up to a number four. You know, it was a it was a real workout, but I did 4,000 miles in 32 days with old sails and not really pushing it. So, you know, I I do keep the boat moving, which I hopefully will work.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

So if you change it to furling, yeah, we'll have furling.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

So by you know, hopefully the end of next this week, I'll have the the yeah, the outer stay on the bow spread will be a big Genoa. Um might as well talk sailplan. Yeah, yeah, go for it. So yeah, out on the bow spread I'll have a roller furler, large Genoa.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

Um, and I can drop the Genoa and then pop on a Yankee because you know, I've a stasel obviously inboard that's a hang ton sail. The stasel has a boom. I've kept the boom. A lot of people get rid of them. I've kept it because I can downwind have a preventer, and that's kind of a nice option to have with a reef as well. Um, and then I've got two Yankees actually, so I can go up the two luff grooves with um pull out two Yankees, Southern Ocean, you know, or heavy weather, or you know, anything over 15 knots with rather than a spinnaker, I can pull that out, and uh that's a nice option to have. So that'll we'll see. I think it'll be a good a good rig to have.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

And a full baton main. Um a I have a cruising uh asymmetrical that came with a boat. Uh I'll probably just keep that, and then a symmetrical, a new symmetrical, lightish, you know, maybe going across the equator doldrums type sail. Yeah, yeah. That's good up to 15 knots. But I don't, you know, things can break pretty easily if you keep the spinnaker up and you're by yourself, why push it? Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

So you've got all your sail plan there. What other kind of bits are you going to be using to for either performance or for safety going along that on deck?

SPEAKER_01 40:56

Um, yeah, we talked about the jack lines. Um I've chosen to reef from the mast. So safety-wise, it's probably not as safe as reefing in the cockpit, but every boat I've been on that seems where you're reefing from the cockpit, something happens, and you've got to go up on deck anyway. Yeah. And um, it's just a lot more line. It's just tons more line that has to run aft. It's it's a bit of cost and time as well. Um, I'm a little late. I've thank goodness I found it. I have a sponsor who came on board for a mental health charity, and they've been helping to get the boat going. Oh, okay. But it's it was kind of late in the game, which meant that um I could have gone with my old mast, but it's great to have a new mast, but it just means that we're now coming up into June. So as little things as I can change to just keep it simpler. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, you know what, let me just I can go up to the mast and and reef.

SPEAKER_00 41:51

It's not the end of the world. So when we're talking about sort of reefing from the mast, a lot of sailors may know the modern equivalent of being a single-line reefing. So reefing at the mast, we're basically lowering down and putting an island onto a uh ball horn and tightening up there, and then using your reefing line at the outer edge, just for those that don't know. Um so all of your reefing is there, all your halyards are there, or or have you got the halyards and that back here?

SPEAKER_01 42:20

All the halyards, only thing going back are um well do a double main sheet system like a lot of boats, will just two block and tackle, and you can you can change it as you go out with the sail. It makes a nice little A-frame preventer type type thing.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

So there's that as well as um stasel comes back as well. It's a single line stasel for the uh stasel boom. That's really about it.

SPEAKER_02 42:44

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

So fairly simple. It is. Yeah, I think simplicity is the key to it. You know, uh 4,000 miles on this boat on the transatlantic, you think how many times have you been offshore and you can just every day this broke, that broke, this broke, I've got to fix this, I've got to do that. I broke the stasel boom on this boat. Um, what else? Nothing, nothing went wrong on the boat, which is why? Because it's it doesn't have refrigeration and water maker and all this crazy stuff.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

Well that's an interesting point, saying you mentioned water. I mean, 230 days. Yeah. How are you gonna like preserve your water? How are you gonna generate water? Have you got a way of or is it literally catching rainwater?

SPEAKER_01 43:23

Yeah, it's catching rainwater. So I I didn't need to on the transatlantic because I have 400 liters centerline here, so centerline tank. Why, gosh, I mean, these are the things that can go wrong, right? Yeah, luckily it happened to me a few weeks ago. I had one of the crew clean out, one of my team clean out my tanks. Nice stuff stainless steel tanks. A little bit of a 12 volt pressure washer, right? Shouldn't be an issue. It blew out a the seam was about to get let go, so seam like luckily the tank came out fairly easily. And um I replaced it with a plastic tank in there, luckily. But yeah, you'd imagine if that happened in the race. I'd I'd still have other tanks, but I'd really be trouble. So I've got some other jugs here, you know, I'll have those strategically placed. Um, you put a reef in the mainsail to collect water, and then um with a funnel, which I did with great success coming across, just to say I've done it. So I got a 20-liter container mostly filled in ten minutes of a you know a Caribbean squall.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

Yeah. Well that should uh keep you going anyway.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

It should, because they they say in the Southern Ocean, I haven't sailed down there, but it's quite dry. You know, it's it's quite, you know, it blows a lot. You do get some driving rain, but you'll probably have other things on your mind than collecting rainwater if you're in the blow in the Southern Ocean. So they say make sure you you collect it um before you get into the Indian Ocean, Southern Ocean.

SPEAKER_00 44:46

So talking about uh Indian Ocean uh or Southern Ocean and you get into those blows, have you got any sort of um drogue system in particular that you're gonna be using to sort of keep the boat under control?

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Yeah, only once have I used a warp. So on a boat delivery for one of these new Genaux coming down to the charter fleet in the Caribbean, hit just massive, long waves, but very, you know, it was a sunny, beautiful day, but blowing 40 knots and um ended up bare polled, still was going too fast on these waves. So I took a long part of the anchor warp and took a cockpit cushion and wrapped it around there. And that's that's the only time I've ever tried it, and it worked. But this boat, um having gone around the world, just even right here, I have um, this is all laid out. This is I haven't even counted. It's a really long warp that I can use with with some chafe gear underneath uh where Connor is over there. There's another length of it all coiled up underneath the cushion. So that's two warps I can run out. Just I'll just run them straight out from here.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

So no actual like uh power drone. Yeah, like a Jordan series.

SPEAKER_01 45:55

I've never used a Jordan. You know what? They're quite pricey. If it's in if it's in the um budget, I'll probably try to get a Jordan series drone. But the problem is I've never used it in anger. I guess I could use it in anger and s you know, Susie Goodall had an issue with it. Uh they come back. Um when you stall in a wave, this is what happens. There's a uh interesting report. Um, a friend of mine who um Johnti, I'll give him a shout-out, who uh at the Royal Livington Yacht Club uh sent a report. Yeah, it was the 2018 finding that Sir Robin Ox Johnson and a and Jean-Luc Vandeheed, I think. They they went why were there so many dismastings? Well, they left early, so they hit the Southern Ocean, you know, probably too early. Um and some of the issues were with drugs. Yeah, they came up and then they would they would break the they would get caught on your self-steering and then um wipe out your self-steering. Susie Goodall um had a bowl in that probably went or something, and then once that went, she pitchbowed because it was boom, it went. Probably catapulted her forward. It's a really it's a sobering read. It's about 10 pages. Oh, yeah, I'll have a look for it. I'll send you a link to it. Yeah, it's it's an interesting read. I the what I get from that is it's 50-50. Yeah, it's good to be able to slow yourself down, but it's also can be bad. Yeah, you can really get your boat wiped out, you know, wave breaking wave because you're slowing yourself down. Whereas Bernard Mautisier was famous for cutting his his drugs and his warps and just going and off and just sailed fast. So, what's cool about my boat is I can sit in my companion way, um, enclosed, right up there by the stairs coming down. Because I have a really large rudder on centerline for my Scanmar auto helm, I have lines coming back on a block and tackle, and Tapio Leitoden did this in on his boat in the last two races. I can sit with stirrups and steer the boat. I can just sit and look out my two little ports enclosed into my little bubble and and steer the boat down the waves. Oh right. As long as the rudder stays the rudder stays by the way. And I'll have the hydro vane as well if I have to do that. Or I'll, you know, so so I've got options, and I really I think I'll try to go with speed, but of course I'll have the the warp says options too. I might just go, oh man, I need to slow myself down.

SPEAKER_00 48:31

It's really interesting you saying about that because um uh guy Willing, who's the uh Coxam at Bembridge Lifeboat Station, well he used to be, I don't know if he still is, uh, he did the Jester Challenge. Uh he had a Francis 26, I think it was.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

My team manager has a Francis 26 in there.

SPEAKER_00 48:48

Lovely boat stop blenders, and as you say that.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

Um it's um God who's the designer. Chuck Payne.

SPEAKER_00 48:55

Yeah, Chuck Payne. Yeah. Um and he really did sort of um endorse the Jordan series drugs for the the event that he was doing in some heavy weather. So um to be really interested.

SPEAKER_01 49:07

Yeah, you know what? I I I've heard and I think there's somebody in Lymington who makes an equivalent to a Jordan series drug, so I'm I might try to look him up.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Cool. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us. Uh good luck on getting the rig in and and prepared. And obviously, from YB tracking, we're we'll be putting your uh YB trackers on that obviously you can't see the position on it.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

I can just have this one today, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:33

That's one of our rights. But thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

Yeah, thanks so much, Lee. Great to great to see you. Thanks for having the report. Yeah, see you later.