Global Solo Challenge entrant Lloyd Davey: A team of one
by Dave Proctor 11 Mar 2023 02:04 PST
Lloyd Davey © Lloyd Davey
Generally, the organisers of the Global Solo Challenge (GSC) prefer that entrants make use of second-hand yachts or boats that they already own.
This preference makes the challenge more affordable and egalitarian, but more importantly, it comes from the organisers' desire to make the whole challenge as environmentally sustainable as possible. This is relevant given the large amount of materials and the emissions that are involved in building a new boat, especially when that boat is built specifically for a particular race or challenge.
However, British entrant Lloyd Davey is actually sailing a 'new' boat in the 2023-2024 challenge. His boat, Taqua II, is a 13-metre (42-foot) fast cruising boat designed by Warwick Buckley of Buckley Yacht Design.
This boat, a B42, is built of an epoxy strip plank construction with a 2.4-metre draft and a fractional rig, and although technically it could be called a new boat, the construction of this boat has actually taken him twenty years to complete.
Lloyd's passion for boats and sailing comes from his early reading of the likes of Joshua Slocum and the stories of the original 1968 Golden Globe Race. It sparked his sense of adventure and interest in the human side of the challenge when he was a young man. He originally sailed a windsurfer, but after he was introduced to sailing a cruiser by a friend, he was hooked.
The story of Taqua II started way back in the early 2000s, when Lloyd completed a 9-month course in boatbuilding at The Lyme Regis School of Boat Building (which is now the boat building academy). He then worked in a number of boatyards in England and then in Brittany, France, where he still lives today, in a converted old sawmill on the banks of the River Rance.
He created his 'Bonehead' boatyard within the mill, and then, as a hobby, he started to build his own yacht whilst working full-time in building renovations.
And, in the main, Lloyd built this yacht without the assistance of a team. It's really amazing when you compare this to the number of people involved in some of the yacht builds used in other races.
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