St John's to Navortalic - Day 3 - 8/8/25 and about Adventurers and Jesters

Early morning on 8/8/25

I get up for my Watch at 0200. I've slept well. We have continued our slow northwards progress during George's Watch. But now the wind has increased slightly and I'm concerned that if it increases further it may be too much to continue to fly the cruising chute. I tend towards the enthusiastic end of the common sense spectrum when it comes to the question of how much sail it's sensible to carry (as I think Mick would testify) but I once got a bit too enthusiastic with the chute and had the devil of a job pulling the sock down over the wildly billowing sail and so I have since been rather more cautious and tend to douse it in anything other than very light winds. 

With George as my crew mate...

....I was for the first time sailing with someone who was further along the enthusiastic spectrum than me (at least when it came to cruising chutes and other forms of thrill seeking). He confesses to leaving his chute out until the wind gets up to 20 knots. He's clearly made of sterner stuff than me. Indeed only yesterday he showed me videos of two of his earlier adventures. 

One was of him skippering his boat and leading a team of 5 in the 'Three Peaks Challenge". 

A youthful George helming Good Report

Good Report under full sail off Bardsy Sound just after the start

That's an annual event to pay homage to one of my heroes, the mountaineer sailor, Bill Tillman. An eccentric ex army officer who fought in the second world war and who in the 1960s/70's sailed a succession of aged Bristol Pilot Cutters with a crew of climbers and others seeking adventure, often cobbled together at the last minute (the crew and the cutter) to the Arctic and other inhospitable places in search of snow covered peaks to climb. Tillman survived two shipwrecks in icy Arctic waters, before being lost at sea, when, way past his prime, he skipperd a sailing/climbing expedition into the south Atlantic. 

The Three Peaks Challenge is slightly less daunting than Tillman's adventures, but nonetheless is definitely not for shrinking violets. Each team of five has to sail their boat (the use of engines is not allowed) from Barmouth, first to Carnafon and send two of the crew to climb Snowden, then on to Whitehaven and climb Scarfell Pike, and then finally to Fort William to climb the highest peak, Ben Nevis. George, was one of the two climbers of that peak!

The second video was a three minute film that George and his brother made and which won first place in the 2005 Kendal Mountain film Festival.

Its name was "Thrill Seekers" and showed our two heroes undertaking a variety of outward bound pursuits including rock climbing and 'naked bracken sledging'!!!

George Bracken sledging' (fully clothed)

The film's a minor classic, the stars are clearly deranged and God help me, one of them is now my crew mate as we sail ever onwards towards icy waters! I am definitely not going skinny dipping in Greenland!

Perhaps he's no longer seeking quite the extreme thrills he once did but George is not done in the adventure stakes - not bu a long way. Just a few weeks before he flew out to join me, he was undertaking his latest adventure, a cycle ride from Lands End to Jon O' Groats with his wife, Kate and their dog Kelpe...

I first met George in 2019 when we both participated in that year's Jester Baltimore Challenge, the baby version of the Jester Atlantic Challenge. 

The Jester Emblem 

Established in the 1960s by another Army Officer, Blondie Hasler, who participated in the first solo transatlantic yacht  race earlier in the decade, but who became disillusioned with the excessive rules and regulations that came about and by the banning of boats under 30 feet in length, the now 3 Jester Challenges (the Atlantic - the JC, the Azores - thevJAC; and the Baltimore - the JBC, are open to anyone in a boat of 30 feet or under (or thereabouts).

No rules, no inspections, no fees. Each skipper is entirely responsible for themselves. It is definitely not a race. Its ethos is to maintain the Corinthian spirit in a society which is simultaneously becoming bland and superficial whilst also seemingly intent on its own destruction.

The absence of rules, regulations and inspections does not signify a disregard for safety; on the contrary safety is paramount, but emphasises what, in any case, is a universal truth, each skipper is responsible for his own safety. It's up to him or her how he or she goes about ensuring that, whilst not endangering the lives of others. 

The principle objective is not even to get to the destination (although that is of course an objective) but simply to practice good seamanship; to learn, to test and extend one's own competence whilst being aware of one's existing limitations.

It was under the stewardship of yet another army veteran, Ewen Southby-Tailyour, that the original Jester (Atlantic) Challenge was expanded to include the shorter Azores Challenge and subsequently the Baltimore Challenge. Ewen recognised that not every aspiring would-be Jester could manage their lives in order to sail across the Atlantic and many of those that one day might be able to, would benefit from testing slightly less demanding waters and from the comradary of doing so with other like minded sailors.

I bought my first boat, a clinker built Nordic Folkboat, Zoetje, 

inspired by the experiences of the early Jesters such as Blondie Hasler and Val Howles who sailed their Folkboats in the original Jester Challenge. 

Although my participation in the 2019 Jester Baltimore Challenge on my then Elizabethen 33 ...

Arctic Smoke sailing up the River Medway after the 2019 Jester Baltimore Challenge 

....(slightly longer than the official entry requirements) was the only time I have participated as a Jester, I like to think that I continue to sail in accordance with the Jester spirit and ethos and that's why, inspired by Tillman's adventures and wonderful story telling, I'm sailing on this adventure to the land of ice and polar bears and appropriately enough, am doing so with a fellow Jester, George.

He has sailed both the Baltimore Challenge and the Azores Challenge and has the blue ribbon Atlantic Challenge event in his sights. George personifies the Jester spirit. Not only did he go to the aid of a fellow Jester on the Azores Challenge and tow him for hundreds of miles under sail in often extremely testing conditions (for which he was awarded the Ocean Cruising Club's Outstanding Seamanship Medal) but he also sails and personally maintains his beautiful wooden sailing boat 'Good Report'.

Anyway back to the present, even with 2 Jesters on board, I draw the line at 15 knots, when flying the cruising chute is concerned. It's possible that it may blow that much over the next few hours so I give George a choice. Either we leave it up for now, but in the event of the wind increasing I call him to help get it down, or we hand it now before he goes below. The prospect of being yanked from his deep slumber is too much for George. He finds it quite traumatic to be woken prematurely and decides to humour me rather than face the prospect of experiencing an additional yank, so we get it down. 

In the event the wind does not increase noticeably but with the genoa in place of the chute we are able to sail closer to the wind - a better course for now - closer to North in order to maintain a longitude that's west of Cape Farval. The prevailing winds are generally from the west of south and north in these parts, so we need to avoid the possibility of being set to the east of the Cape. Beating against strong winds in even these moderately high latitudes would not be fun especially in the region of the notorious Cape.

My Watch continues in the same way as George's - we continue to amble slowly northwards. 

The night is overcast and so there are no stars to wonder at, but the full moon puts on another splendid orange show. 

It's pretty cold and so I am spending most of my time down below only going out into the cockpit every 20 minutes to check the radar for icebergs. The Canadian Ice Reports...

....show there may be a few in these waters, but I see none by eye or on the radar during the rest of the day.

My Watch runs its course without significant event.

I hand over to George at 0700 (rather than the standard 0600 because the sail change ate into his sleep time) and then get a couple of hours sleep before cooking breakfast. 

I decide to award the whole ship's company an increase in rations and so each man gets 3 rashers of bacon instead of just 2 and 2 eggs each, instead of just one. Some may regard that as overly generous but a hungry crew are more likely to mutiny than one stuffed to their collective gills and I must remember that George has a secret stash of biscuits in his cabin and so I need to keep him happy 😁!

During breakfast we hear a bang. George pokes his head out to investigate but sees nothing to alarm him and so we continue eating. Later when I go outside, I discover the cause of the bang. The block on the end of the boom through which the clue line runs (the rope that pulls the back corner of the mainsail out to the end of the boom) has broken apart. We find and rig a replacement and reset the mainsail which takes longer than it should due to a couple of tangles.

After that George works on his presentation to be delivered to the great and good of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

The rest of the day somehow slips away as Bonny ambles slowly northwards sometimes completely becalmed for an hour or so.

I cook dinner - sausages and mash. With the prospect of increasing wind overnight we hand the cruising chute once again. George even suggests it!!

I go off watch as soon as that's completed

By midnight we have covered another 60 miles and have another 606 miles left to run. We are also 60 miles closer to "The place of Polar Bears" than we were 24 hours previously.