Frank Dye - what an inspiration

I know it is some time ago since Frank dye sadly passed away but I’ve started to re-read one of his books again. I met him and Margaret once at a boat show and spent a pleasant 15 minutes chatting to them. I felt like a school boy who has just met his top all time favourite sports person! Margaret’s book on dinghy cruising is always on my bedside table – I’ve read it countless times and I still find something new hidden away in its pages.


How many of us have been spellbound and in awe of Frank’s adventures in his Wayfarer......crossing the North Sea; reaching Iceland (11-days, 650 miles from Scotland), sailing through near hurricane conditions? He actually sailed across the Arctic Circle.....in a 15’ open boat! And here’s me being proud of myself because I’ve ventured outside the Plymouth breakwater twice...........I need a reality check don’t I?

I love this book - it has taught me so much!

In fact I think Frank and his boat covered some 30,000 or more nautical miles and it’s now found in the Falmouth Maritime Museum in Cornwall. It’s genuinely mind boggling statistics and adventures stuff. When reading his books I’ve actually found myself being taken back to when I was a kid and I used to read about the adventures of the transpolar explorers....and I so wanted to be one. It seemed so exciting; and I’ve found myself thinking like that again........for the first time in a very long time! Frank and Margaret have an ability to inspire you to want to get out and have mini adventures. Well they’ve inspired me .......taking into account that my experience levels in an open boat border on negligible; but only through small adventures comes learning, wisdom and understanding.

Anyway back to Frank........I think I read that such have been his exploits that the British Wayfarers have written a ballad about him which they are very fond of singing after a few jars! If it’s true I think that is a very fitting memorial to an astonishing man.

Frank and Margaret Dye

One of my heroes is Shackleton...for obvious reasons. When I think back to what he and a few brave others went through in the James Caird.....it makes you realise what an amazing voyage Frank did from Scotland to Iceland......similar conditions and equipment...compass, sextant, small cockpit tent, soaking wet, freezing cold, permanently hungry, constantly sea sick, huge gales.......both voyages were feats of extraordinary human endurance and fortitude.

I get terribly excited and terrified in a masochistic kind of way when I’m shifting along at 5.5kts in a force 4...........inside Plymouth breakwater........Frank and others sailed through force 9 storms, got de-masted, had broken rigging, got capsized and ploughed through 30’ waves crossing to Norway! When sailing the USA East coast.......he experienced a jammed genoa and actually sailed at 20kts!

I’m beginning to feel VERY small and unadventurous!

I am about to re-read one of his books Sailing to the Edge of Fear -the story of Frank's adventures sailing the coast of North America and the Great Lakes, over the next few months and whilst on holiday......I’m really looking forward to it.

It will give me more courage to dream, plan and do some mini adventures, to build up my experiences. Steve Early and the Log of Spartina make me do that as well; as do the members of the John Welsford builders Forum. To Frank and to all of you I say.....thanks guys...you’ve made me stretch my horizons, ambitions and achievements...thanks to all of you and my mate Dave (who pushed me into boat building in the first place)...in the last three years I have learned to build a boat (from no carpentry skills or experience whatsoever); learned to sail; and started to plan small adventure voyages in my own locality.

If you’d said to me four years ago that I would achieve that in three years – I’d have politely laughed in your faces! A thirst for Lifelong learning........an amazing thing isn’t it!



Steve