Dix 43 Pilot on BBC Treasure Islands

BBC 4 (British Broadcasting Corporation) is currently airing a series of programmes about the various islands around the world that are British territories. Titled Britain's Treasure Islands - Ocean Odyssey, one of the episodes features a sailing trip by explorer and naturalist Stewart McPherson on a sailboat to Chagos Archipelago, the largest atoll in the world. Chagos is 310 miles due south of the Maldives Archipelago in the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean and is the world's largest marine reserve. See more about the series of programmes.

Dix 43 Pilot "Jerrican" sailing alongside a Chagos reef during filming.

The sailboat in this program is the steel Dix 43 Pilot "Jerrican", launched in Cape Town in December 2013. "Jerrican" is owned by Jeremy and Anita Bagshaw and has logged considerable mileage in ocean voyages to participate in this programme. This has been a shakedown cruise for "Jerrican"and her crew, in preparation for long-term voyaging to faraway places. On the scale of shakedown cruises this is a big one, requiring 6 weeks of sailing just to get to the Maldives to pick up the film crew, then sailing back home again to the Cape of Good Hope after three weeks of filming had completed. Their cruising was planned to be in the other direction, into and across the South Atlantic until a chance meeting with Stewart McPherson at the False Bay Yacht Club set the gears turning to send them east instead of west.

"Jerrican" launch at Royal Cape Yacht Club in December 2013.

Jeremy writes a blog, SVJerrican - The Travels of a Robust Steel Vessel. It has some interesting writings, including how they came to be sailing to Chagos and the pressures of squeezing many months of preparation into a few weeks to meet their commitments for filming the program.

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