NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Peter Fogg
Date: 2008 Oct 22, 12:57 +1100
In November 1854, a wooden boat called Mystery set sail from Cornwall, south-west England, bound for Australia with seven Cornishmen hoping to escape their lives of poverty and dig for gold Down Under, a trip that eventually took 116 days.
"After the long months of building, training and preparation it is great to be finally underway," said Pete Goss, a former royal marine, who has said the Spirit of Mystery project began "with an idea and a chainsaw."
His crew of four is made up of his 14-year-old son Eliot, brother Andy and brother-in-law Mark Maidment, while the boat has been built from wood taken from the area around Cornwall.
They will navigate using only the stars, just as the original Mystery did, on their 17,700km journey, and the boat is fitted with a satellite tracking device so others can view its progress on Goss's website.
Goss came to prominence in 1996 when, in the midst of the Vendee Globe single-handed race around the world, he changed course to rescue a stricken rival.
Four years later, he and his crew had to be evacuated from a STG4 million ($A9.7 million), 120-foot Catamaran during sea trials because of a storm in the Atlantic ocean.
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