Liberdade year 2000 Voyage
UK- Brazil - USA
David Sinnett-Jones
David was born in 1930 of an English mother and a Welsh father, both singers. He attended sixteen schools whilst touring with his parents, joined the Merchant Navy at sixteen as a deck boy and then emigrated to Canada on a passage.
On his return he was called up for National Service in the Royal Signals after which he designed and built the scenery for a stage musical. The next two years were spent at Wimbledon Theatre as Chief Electrician. He started motor racing at Brands Hatch in 1957 and competed in saloons, formula and sports racing cars. He was accepted as a Formula One trainee driver by Cooper Cars. He had three major crashes in competitions but was uninjured.
In 1968 he was thrown through the windscreen in a road accident losing the sight in one eye and therefore his International Racing Drivers License. In 1970 he bought a farm in Wales and built up a dairy herd until advanced cancer was confirmed and he lost a lung and part of the wall of his heart. Not being able to continue working the farm, the cows were sold to finance the building of a 26ft sailing boat, for which he designed and made self-steering gear. In 1981 he sailed to South Africa via Brazil, a voyage that inspired him to write his first book "TO THE CAPE OF STORMS" planning the next voyage as he went. He then spent the next three years constructing a steel version of Joshua Slocum’s "SPRAY" in which he completed a three-year solo circumnavigation via Cape Horn, becoming the first disabled solo sailor to do so. This was the subject of a one hour documentary, "IT'S NOT ALL PLAIN SAILING" twice shown on TV. He has written a book of the same name. He also completed a water-born circumnavigation of Wales in a small open craft, which HTV made into four half-hour films called "TWO MEN IN A BOAT".
In 1992 David sailed in his first major race, the solo Transatlantic from Plymouth to Newport, Rhode Island, USA. Although he finished last in his class he completed the race in 40 days to equal Sir Francis Chichester’s winning time in the first race.
In 1995 "Zane Spray" was the safety vessel for the Aberaeron girls rowing team in the Celtic Challenge, a rowing race across the Irish Sea. He is the Vice Commodore of the Slocum Spray Society and was awarded their 1995 centennial award. He was to sail to the Azores to arrive at Horta on the 20th July to celebrate Joshua Slocum’s arrival 100 years earlier, but "Zane Spray" sank in 300ft of water, 34 miles off the south coast of Southern Ireland. For the past year HTV have been filming David’s plans to raise Zane Spray, to restore and sail her to the USA to celebrate the finish of Slocum’s voyage, when he became the first man to solo circumnavigate.
The final loss of "Zane Spray" after numerous salvage attempts and sailing 58,000 miles in her, has stopped his plans to race her across the Atlantic in 1998. He has decided to do what Slocum did when he was shipwrecked. He built a boat called the "Liberdade" on a beach in Brazil from what was left of his wreck. Then he, his wife and two sons sailed it 5,000 miles back to Boston. David managed to get sponsorship in materials to build a modern version of the "Liberdade", 35ft x 7ft 6" epoxy plywood, flat bottomed, internal ballast, aerofoil bilge boards, three low aspect, unstayed hollow wood masts, junk rigged, with bamboo sponsons. It will be a fast modern version of the "Liberdade" in modern materials, closely resembling Slocum’s boat, and then he will sail to Boston in 1998 for the centennial celebrations of his return.
David has been awarded the 1997 Captain Scott, Terra Nova award and in 1998 the Voss trophy by the Joshua Slocum Society.
Back to the Guide to Sailing and Cruising Stories