Adventures of the Dix 38 Pilot "Spailpin"

In December last year I wrote about the voyage that was being undertaken by Barry Kennedy in his Dix 38 Pilot "Spailpin" to Antarctica, their second in a year. Read that post here. Since then a lot has happened. If you think that you have had it tough on land through the COVID-19 pandemic, you may change your mind after hearing Barry's story.

The photos below show some of the incredible scenery that they visited. Barry was not alone, he had two crew with him. Together they visited places and had experiences that very few people in the world will ever appreciate. It takes much hard work and dedication to get to these places and very few boats manage to receive permits to even go there.

This time the weather was much more mild than the previous year. But it is a very dangerous place and the weather can turn very fast, changing an apparently safe anchorage into a deathtrap. That is when an able boat and capable crew combine to bring all involved back to safety. Always being aware of every aspect of the surroundings, i.e. terrain both above and below water, ice and weather is imperative to certainty of completing the cruise plans and getting home again.

Even the most carefully laid plans can go wrong, for totally unexpected reasons. It was on the voyage back from Antarctica that exactly that unexpected situation dumped itself on, not only "Spailpin" and her crew, but on the entire world. They sailed from Antarctica to Tierra del Fuego, then to South Georgia. From there the next stop was to be Tristan da Cunha, approx. 1450 nautical miles away. They arrived there to find that COVID-19 was hammering the world and everything was shutting down. That included Tristan da Cunha and they were not permitted to land, despite having been at sea in the most extreme of self-quarantine conditions for a month, with zero chance of having contracted the virus.

So, they headed back out to sea, target Cape Town, South Africa, another 1500 miles away. But two days after leaving Tristan South Africa closed down, shutting off that option. They changed course for Jamestown on the island of St Helena. After being in the Southern Ocean for more than a year this leg can be a bit of a doddle through or around the South Atlantic High but 1300 more miles to get to a destination that they did not want.

They arrived off Jamestown to another closed port. One of the crew needed to return to Cape Town and was allowed to go ashore on St Helena through diplomatic intervention. He was to fly to Cape Town while "Spailpin" voyaged further, next stop Georgetown, Ascension Island. This was to be a relatively short hop of 700 miles but ended the same way. Barry was able to go get fuel before they coninued on their way, now headed for USVI in the Caribbean.

By then Barry was urgently needing to get back to work, so flew off to take care of that while his crew sailed "Spailpin" from the Caribbean to Chesapeake Bay, where she is now in Annapolis, MD.

Barry needed to move up to a larger boat for his future voyaging and contacted me before this recent voyage to ask if I knew of a suitable candidate built to one of my designs. No suitable boat was available but he has found a boat from another designer and bought it. That brings "Spailpin onto the market at a very attractive price for a quick sale. There can be no doubt that this boat is well-proven for voyaging to the harshest oceans on our planet. If you are interested in buying her, contact me by email so that I can put you in contact with Barry.

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Dix 38 Pilot "Spailpin" Antarctic Voyage

The yacht "Spailpin" is a steel Dix 38 Pilot, owned and skippered by Barry Kennedy. She is currently in the Antarctic, on her second voyage to that wild and very remote part of our world.

She was built in South Africa by Luke Fisher as his family cruiser, named "Bryana". He competed in the 1700 mile Governors Cup Race from South Africa to St Helena Island in 2012, with his wife and two teenage children as crew. Barry Kennedy bought her from Luke, renamed her "Spailpin" and made upgrades to ready her for more vigorous sailing adventures than she had done with Luke and family.

As "Bryana, when Luke Fisher owned her.

Wikipedia defiles a spailpin as a wandering landless labourer, an itinerant or seasonal farm worker in Ireland. Others also offer a rascal or layabout as alternatives. Seeing where she is now and how hard she and Barry have worked to be there, I don't think that the "layabout" handle will fit. That said, she did hang out for most of 2019 in the Falkland Islands between her two voyages.

"Spailpin" hanging out in the Falkland Islands this year.

Prior to her Antarctic voyage a year ago, Barry and "Spailpin" cruised the fjords of Patagonia. These photos are from that voyaging to some of the most incredible scenery in the world.

Look carefully and you will see "Spailpin" in the middle of that sea of ice.

Moored to ice.

Serene but very cold near to the bottom of the world.

Two weeks ago Barry and I exchanged emails when "Spailpin" was in port in Ushuaia, Argentina, the most southern city in the world. Barry was preparing and stocking her for her voyage back to Antarctica while waiting for two crew to join him. Since then they have reached Antactica and are anchored in the sheltered waters of Enterprise Island.

Wind patterns over the Southern Ocean on Christmas Day 2019, showing the track of "Spailpin" from Ushuaia, at the top, to her location at the red dot, at Enterprise Island.

Their crossing last year was very rough. This year they had much calmer weather, with only a few hours of gales. When passing Cape Horn it was calm enough for them to anchor and go ashore to visit the lighthouse and memorial. You can follow the travels of "Spailpin" at https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Spailpin.

See more about the Dix 38 Pilot and our other designs on our main website or our mobile website.

Sailing in Extreme Weather

There have been some extreme weather systems around the coast of South Africa in the past week or two. The weather around this very inhospitable coast, from Cape of Good Hope (aka Cape of Storms) through to Richards Bay, teaches the locals to be very hardy sailors who are able to handle their boats in sometimes wild conditions. This is justifiably one of the three Great Capes of the world and many circum-navigators tell of their passages through these waters being the most scary periods of their voyaging.

The first storm was from a deep depression and cold front that had come in from deep down in the South Atlantic. It hit the Cape Town area and produced very intense gales and heavy rain, unfortunately not enough to break the long-lasting drought that currently plagues the Western Cape.

The other storm was from a cut-off low in the Indian Ocean off Durban, 1000 miles from the first storm. It produced gales that broke numerous large ships free in the port, with a large container ship lying broadside across the entrance channel. It also wrecked the marinas in the yacht basin, with some yachts sinking on their moorings.

Two boats of our design sailed through these two storms. Both were in the hands of very capable skippers. Survival of any boat and crew in extreme conditions is through the partnership between a capable boat and an equally capable crew. Put the most seaworthy boat in the hands of an inexperienced or irresponsible skipper and that good boat may be doomed. On the other hand, a capable and experienced skipper has the best chance of bringing an inadequate vessel through tough conditions.

The yacht in the first storm was the steel Dix 38 Pilot "Spailpin" (ex "Bryana"), on delivery by Jeremy Bagshaw. Jeremy and wife Anita own the bigger sister Dix 43 Pilot "Jerrycan" and have sailed many thousands of miles in her in the Indian Ocean. Jeremy has written of his experience in this storm on his blog entry titled Some Thoughts on Big Weather.

Dix 38 Pilot "Spailpin" in much calmer waters under her previous owner.

The yacht in the storm off Durban  was the fibreglass Shearwater 39 "Ocean Spirit". Her owner, Neville Bransby, was out sailing on her in that storm by choice, single-handed. He wanted to prove himself and his boat in storm conditions. He did that effectively, losing only his anemometer in the process, when it blew off the masthead. Meanwhile, the catamaran moored right next to his normal berth sank on its moorings. You can read of it in a blog post authored by Richard Crockett, titled A Case of Sound Seamanship.

Shearwater 39 "Ocean Spirit" racing between Durban and Port Elizabeth in less extreme conditions.

All of us who go to sea in small boats have to accept the strong chance that sooner or later we will be caught by extreme weather. That chance goes up with every mile that we sail. If we sail trans-ocean or long coastal passages with safe havens separated by miles of rocky coast then we have to know how to handle our boats to come safely through whatever it is that is being thrown at us by Mother Nature in a foul mood. We cannot learn how to handle these conditions only by reading how in books and magazine articles while snug in a soft armchair next to a winter fire. We have to experience these things to know what we need to do to safeguard boat and crew, to have confidence in the abilities of ourselves and our boats.

I don't mean that you must go sailing in the meanest weather that can come your way, I mean that you must not only sail on those idyllic days when it is all sunshine and cocktails on flat seas. Those conditions teach us nothing, unless we are novices just getting into sailing. If you have plans to sail across oceans or offshore coastal then you really have a need to go sailing in 35 knots, to know that your reefing systems work in strong winds, that you know how to set your storm jib and storm tri-sail, that your jackstays allow free movement from bow to stern while always tethered in your safety harness, that you know what your boat likes if you have to heave-to or lie ahull, how it will behave, how fast it will drift or at what speed and direction it will sail under different sail combinations.

There are so many things to be learned by doing this, things that will stay logged in your brain as experience rather than knowledge, to be called into use with confidence when needed.

Lets go sailing but lets also be safe.

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