The Ancient Mariners Sailing Podcast

This week Brad is away on his boat in Portugal after an eventful sail down the coastline from Spain. Andrew is about to head off racing. We hope you enjoy the episode.

A different episode this week as the cruisers goes cruising and the racer goes racing. Brad joins us from Muros in Spain after sailing single handed across Biscay on his Rustler 36. Andrew is just back from racing to Roscoff on the second race in the COGS Offshore Series.

This week Brad and Andrew are joined by one of the legends of offshore sailing, Pete Goss, and the race director of the AZAB Sarah Hancock to talk about preperations for the 2027 race. Pete is racing on a Dazcat, built in Plymouth, but despite his circumnavigations and famous exploits has never done the race before. Organisers are working to raise the profile of this classic Cat 1 Ocean Race and Pete is helping to give things a push along with his envolvment. We talk all things AZAB, about Pete's own dramatic rescue of Raphael Dinelli after his yacht sank in the South Atlantic, and about a forthcoming film about the rescue. Sarah talks about her own sailing story and how she got involved in the race.

This week Brad and Andrew are joined by Amanda Ayliffe. Brad is just about to set sail for Portugal on his Rustler 36 this week if there is enough wind. Andrew is back into racing with COGS and the weekly series. They are joined by Amanda to talk about her interesting life of sailing, from Hong Kong where she was born to parents in the military and where her love of sailing began. With her husband Martin who she met at university, the couple returned to the water with a Lark dinghy sailing at Wraysbury, near Heathrow, before moving to Cornwall and sailing in Falmouth. Amanda is about to join an all female crew with eXXpedition to study ocean plastics in the Bay of Islands in New Zealand and then on to Tonga. Amanda has a degree in Psychology and Masters in Sustainable Business Management and is interested in how teams interact.

Just Brad and Andrew in the studio this week (and Bertie the dog), talking weather and the sailing season so far.

This week Brad and Andrew welcome the co-designer of Wharram multihulls Hanneke Boon, and Pilot-Cutter skipper and academic, Rebecca Sykes, for a fascinating conversation. We chat about Hanneke's extraordinary life of designing and sailing these revolutionary traditional vessels, founded right here in Devoran. Rebecca is the skipper of the Pilot Cutter Tallulah, and has a list of accomplishments too long to list here, both academic and afloat. We chat about bringing traditional sailing methods and construction back to life in the more than 10,000 sets of plans sold by Wharram. Hanneke and Rebecca are about to embark on a voyage home with the original Spirit of Gaia back to Falmouth, aiming to arrive to be part of Falmouth Classics this summer. Enjoy this episode, it's a real treat!