The Journey

Making our expedition possible is “Pèlerin”, an aluminium OVNI 435, built in 2007 at the Alubat factory in Les Sable D’Olonne, France. Pèlerin had a sucessful debut at the London Boat Show in January 2008, and was launched the following month in Plymouth. We have developed and modified her specially to be both a floating home and base camp for exploration - our floating "4-by-4", office and home.

The sails of s/v Pèlerin are set for both local and international waters, as we aim to visit a variety of destinations on our journey. Our preliminary route and schedule is noted here, but plans can/do change, especially where weather is concerned...

Spring / Summer 2008	Coastal sailing around the UK, shaking down the new boat, fixing problems, installing gear and getting used to how she sails.
Autumn / Winter 2008	Coastal sailing in France, whilst undertaking a variety of consultancy assignments in the UK and Africa, and provision of WiSe courses.
Spring / Summer 2009	France, Ireland & western Scotland. One last chance to explore again the beautiful sailing waters of the Sea of the Hebrides, Small Isles and Outer Hebrides.
Autumn / Winter 2009	Cornwall, Channel and Brittany, France. Weeks of southerly winds resulted in a challenging route south from Scotland. Now, avoiding the worst of the winter, and working like bees.
Spring / Summer 2010	Brittany including the Morbihan, Bay of Biscay, northern Spain including the Ria's of Galicia, Atlantic Portugal - however consultancy work hampered our south-bound progress.
Winter 2010/11	downtime in Southern Portugal and non-boat work/travel to Congo-Brazzaville, Canada, UK and Kenya.
Spring / Summer 2011	Southern Portugal, south-western Spain, and Morocco, plus non-expedition travel back up to the Scottish Hebrides for ongoing basking shark surveys.
Winter 2011/12	Canary Islands plus non-boat work/travel to Papua New Guinea, UK and France.

WHERE ARE WE NOW? Click the Google Maps logo below to view our progress so far:

S/V Pèlerin, Sound of Luing, west Scotland

(kindly supplied by Hubert Perier, S/V Brecqhou)

Prior to 2008, our terrestrial base was Falmouth, UK.

From here we enjoyed summers aboard s/v Forever Changes, searching for and photo-identifying basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus). This involved sailing the western seaboard of the UK, from the beautiful coasts of Cornwall and Devon, up through the Irish Sea to the Small Isles and the Sea of the Hebrides, in western Scotland.

Forever Changes, a much loved boat on whom scores of people learned to sail and discover a passion for marine conservation, has now completed her scientific research work, and has gone to a good home (and warmer waters...).

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