Gourlay forced to seek shelter to make repairs

by Julian Burgess on 21 Feb 2007 More rigging damage and a badly ripped mainsail have forced Tasmanian solo round-the-world yachtsman Ken Gourlay to seek shelter to make repairs.

With nearly two thirds of his epic 23,000 nautical mile circumnavigation completed, Ken is in the South Atlantic ocean about 2000 miles north-west of the Cape of Good Hope.

He is now nursing his crippled yacht to the nearest land, the Brazilian held Isle de Trinidade, where he will seek calm waters to fix his 12.5m yacht Spirit Silver Edition.

'This rig situation is getting very serious and there is an option to fit a stay from the starboard side to the port side to try and get this rig to Australia still in the boat.'

'I said I would as far as humanly possible do this trip and try and become the seventh Australian and the first Tasmanian to do it without assistance, solo and non stop.

'I still have 2000nm to go to Cape Town and then 6000nm across the Indian Ocean which is not an ocean to play with lightly,' he said in an email home.

Shortly after a violent storm near the Falkland Islands in January, Ken found three broken strands at the deck end of the portside wire rope cap shroud. The 19-strand stainless steel wire had broken where it entered the end swage.

A risky trip up the mast was made to rig very strong spectra rope to reinforce the damaged section of rigging.

He later discovered a fourth strand had snapped.

On Sunday, Ken again climbed Spirit Silver Edition’s mast and tensioned the reinforcing ropes. Later he found four broken strands in the wire of the inner shroud on the same side.

And while up the mast making repairs he was swung into the mainsail and ripped a one metre hole in the sail. He is carrying self-adhesive sail cloth which he hopes will fix the rip.

Isle de Trinidade is not inhabited but the shelter will reduce the risk of injury to Ken and damage to the boat while he works on the mast.

'I’m not giving up. I'm going to make a change in the rigging and we'll try and nurse this baby home. Don’t give up on me yet, it ain’t over,' he said.

Ken is sailing for a number of firsts:

• First Tasmanian solo, non-stop and unassisted circumnavigator
• Oldest Australian solo, non-stop circumnavigator.
• Fastest Australian solo, non-stop circumnavigator.
• Highest charity fund-raiser by an Australian circumnavigator.

His voyage is a major fund-raiser for the Launceston-based Clifford Craig Medical Research Trust. The charity is hoping to raise $100,000 to fund research into eye sight disorders and diseases in children.

His website – www.spiritsoloquest.com – provides daily reports of his progress.

Ken Gourlay is a Launceston businessman who with his family, wife Wendy and grown-up children Adam, Tristan and Carly, owns and operates Modern Living Carpet Court and is Immediate Past Commodore of the Tamar Yacht Club.

He has more than 50,000 nautical miles of sailing to his credit, starting with sabots at the Tamar Yacht Club in the early 1960s. He has since sailed several Sydney to Hobart races, crossed the Indian Ocean, the Tasman Sea and twice sailed the South Pacific.

He is a line honours winner of the Melbourne to Launceston yacht race and the Australian Three Peaks race.

If Ken is successful in his Round The World Solo Quest he will become one of a handful of Australians to have achieved the feat, including Jon Sanders in 1982, Kay Cottee in 1988, Jesse Martin in 1999 and Tony Mowbray in 2001.