Dududududu....was the noise of the Kango hammer that dominated my life that winter working on the Royal Exchange construction site in the city of London. It paid well which was all that mattered. Julie meanwhile was on the Handbag counter in Oxford Street's Marks and Spencer.

London was grey and wet, a far cry from our summer life in Scotland, our Shetland boat and the dream of ocean cruising. But the money had to come from somewhere.

Meanwhile all our spare time went into planning the Aegre voyage and completing a navigation course. Reading the Hiscock's 'Voyaging under Sail', surely one of the best primers for anyone planning an Atlantic cruise, our plans evolved. John Ridgway's Madeira proposal started to look less silly. The best way seemed to get away from the dangers of the British coastline as quickly as possible.

We started to plan a non-stop voyage from the North of Scotland to Madeira, off the west coast of Africa, following a route which would take us directly westward from the north of Scotland, straight out into the North Atlantic, until we were well to the west of Ireland, then turn south for Madeira, 1500 miles to the south. Nothing like being ambitious.

From Madeira we thought that all being well we could go on to the Canary Islands a few hundred miles south, and then perhaps, maybe, if we felt really good about the boat, on across the Atlantic via the so-called 'Southern route', pioneered by Columbus and still today the most popular with small boat voyagers due to the prevailing warm north east trade winds and westerly flowing currents, to the West Indies, 2,500 miles to the west.

Early spring came and eager to get started on our preparations back in Scotland we borrowed an old Morris 1000 stationwagon from our good friend Jamie Young and drove back north, laden with chandlery.

Back in Scotland our high anticipation quickly turned to disappointment upon finding Bob Macinness, the boatbuilder, hadn't started work on The Aegre. But he eventually did and we worked together. I would spend every free moment up in Bob's boatshed.

Timber was ordered. Larch for the 2"x2" deck frames (at 2ft centres) and knees, marine ply for the deck itself. The plans extended to the back of a second envelope. Bob steadily progressed, fighting a constant battle with his rheumatism.

Often I would arrive at his boatshed to find him sitting on his stool puffing on his pipe and contemplating the hull of The Aegre before him.Peering at me over the top of his glasses he would say, "And how are you going to cope with.....this or that? Which would lead to discussion about just about anything to do with the voyage.

One time it was about measuring distance run. 'But Bob, we've been through this, we can't afford a log, and anyway we'll being going pretty slowly, we'll get fairly regular sights of sun and stars, we'll estimate and record our average speed every hour, not the best but .... He shook his head, "I think you need a log" he said, and pulling himself up walked to the wall of his shed where he reached up and unhooked a very elderly patent ships log. It looked even older than Bob."Here, my grandfather used to use this until he got a new one, I think it needs a run. Why don't you borrow it. But I want it back mind" he said passing this ancient treasure into my young innocent hands. What do you say? "Thank you ...and what can I bring you back Bob? It was clearly an unexpected question and food for thought. Another chuckle "A bottle of rum from the West Indies, that would be just grand." And so the deal was done.

The new Aegre emerged and was launched in late May. Summer is short in the North Atlantic and we knew we had to be on our way before the end of July, or wait another year. Two months. Could we do it?

The Aegre was now a very different vessel. A curved whaleback deck extended from stem to stern, the only holes in it being for the mast, and a 2sq ft cockpit and hatch the same size. Built into either end was 16cu ft of expanded foam polystyrene, enough to float all our ballast and therefore the boat.

Down below we had removed the slate ballast, replacing it with 7cwt (356kg) of lead, (allowing us to lower the floor) and built in stowage for 50 gallons (227 litres) of water in 2.5 gallon (11 litre) jerricans to make up the remainder of the ballast. We had also built in a double berth (becoming a single at sea with the addition of a leeboard or rather 'aftboard'), lying athwartships, just aft of the mast.

On our first day off after the launching we were determined to go out for a trial sail, but the day proved to be foggy with no wind. However by mid afternoon a light breeze had picked up and despite a heavy swell coming into the Bay, we slowly sailed out, semi hypnotised by the huge breakers on either shore. Just outside the Bay we were totally becalmed, the sails slatting from side to side as we rolled heavily in the steep short sea. Julie began to feel ill and was soon seasick. I began to feel rather worried that this might put her off the whole trip, after all I reflected she had really done little sailing before. We decided to head back and slowly wafted our way back into the Bay and on to our mooring. So much for our first sail.

Fortunately we did manage a few more trial sails - three more in fact, all of which increased our confidence in The Aegre as we got to know her better. On one occasion, heading out of Scourie Bay on a particularly blowy day (we wanted to test our stormsails), we encountered a very steep, short and violent sea just off Handa Island (not unexpected in those conditions). We were thrown about alarmingly and soon realised we needed a reef even in our stormsails. Tying it in was an education in itself and we were relieved to make it back to the shelter of the Bay.

Everything had worked well except for the self steering system. We hadn't actually been using this but it had been set up on the stern so that it could be used and whilst I had been tying in the reef a wave had actually broken over the top of the wind vane and broken it in half. Back ashore I took the remaining half up to Bob's workshop so see if he had any pieces of plywood the right thickness to replace it with.

Bob surveyed the broken vane and chuckled. "How long do you think it's going to last in mid-ocean?" he asked. From the time of its arrival Bob had been saying that the self steering system wasn't strong enough. "But it wasn't linked up," I countered, "If it had been linked to the tiller and steering the boat, the vane would have moved to absorb the impact of the wave, the resistance of the rudder to movement slowing this down. I'm sure it wouldn't have happened if it had been in use.

Bob wasn't sure at all, but unprepared to argue - after all it wouldn't be him that had to steer by hand if it should break again. In fact this was the only time that the vane was actually broken simply by the action of the sea. (Windsurfers capsizing over it in harbour don't count).

A new vane was made in time for our next day off from the hotel and as there was a reasonable weather forecast we planned a more ambitious sail, across the Minch to Lewis, the largest island of the Outer Hebrides, about 40 miles (64km) west of us, and back. Although we only had one day off a week, we decided this was really worth 36 hours as we could leave the night before.

We thought it just about enough time for the voyage provided nothing went drastically wrong. Accordingly we left in mid-evening and had a good overnight sail beating into a steady south-westerly, the wind freshening with the dawn causing us to tuck in a reef. We spelled each other on four hour shifts and discovered our thwartships bunk was a huge success, but that our deck mast seal wasn't. Phew, it was all so exciting to be far offshore in our own boat. We closed with the grey north east coast of Lewis somewhere north of Tolsta Head early in the morning before going about and heading back to the west coast of the mainland, forty miles back over the grey horizon.

A rusty freighter heading north rolled across our bow with no sign of having seen us at all. The wind eased to give us an easy reach back, the Old Man of Stoer, a prominent offshore rock stack west of Ullapool being the first to appear over the horizon to the southeast as we headed back to Handa Island and into Scourie Bay.

This, our first short, but significant, voyage went well. Infact we were back disappointingly early. The self steering system had steered most of the way back, much to my amazement. Up till then we had been on the helm ourselves, just for the sheer enjoyment of sailing The Aegre, but now with the vane system linked up to the tiller we found she would keep as good a course if not better by herself. To be sailing along quite unattended, the tiller moving as if by magic to keep us on course, was just wonderful.

Now we had the freedom to cook, eat, read, write up the log, whatever. Sleep too, though early on we decided that as a principle one of us would always be on watch.

On another day we sailed 10 miles (16km) up the coast to Ardmore to see John and Marie Christine Ridgway at the Adventure School. Too much good cheer meant we left a bit late and despite getting a tow right out to the mouth of Loch Laxford and the open sea, light winds saw us spending the night barely breasting the tide past Handa and not arriving back onto our mooring off Scourie until about 4.30am.

A couple of hours later Julie was back at work in the local hotel taking early morning tea around to the guests. (She wasn't quite so breezy that morning!).

A few days after this a severe gale came sweeping in from the Atlantic. All day the wind increased in strength. Scourie Bay where we had The Aegre moored was not very sheltered and only usually used as a short term summer anchorage. I had not been very happy about keeping The Aegre there, but in the end had decided that as it was by far the most accessible we should risk it. I would put down an extra heavy mooring and we would hope for good weather.

This I had done, making up an enormous block of reinforced concrete. Now it was going to be put to the test. By mid afternoon of the first day of the gale it was quite impossible to row out to The Aegre. I stood on the edge of the stone jetty with local fisherman Robert Mcleod, watching The Aegre tossing and straining at her mooring. Had I checked the canvas serving on the mooring warp when I was last on board? I thought I had. Attention to such details had been drilled into me when I was working for John Ridgway. We would soon see just how good my mooring was. All that night the gale blew. We lay in bed listening to the wind in the caravan we were living in above the beach. Big gusts made the whole van shudder. I had tied it down to huge stakes driven into the ground, but even so couldn't help wondering what would happen if the caravan blew over.

By next morning the gale had almost blown itself out and The Aegre was still there happily bobbing at her mooring but Robert's boat had disappeared! Even as I watched I saw him driving down to the jetty and so went down to give him a hand. We found his boat totally swamped but still attached to the mooring. Aboard The Aegre nothing was amiss.

Seeing our boat still there in the morning, the people in the village seemed impressed. Too many local fisherman had lost boats here under similar circumstances. Indeed many who had not really taken our venture seriously now realised we might in fact leave in the near future.

Everywhere we went we found ourselves being questioned about the voyage. Without being secretive we had tried to keep it to ourselves. We wanted to be free from ties and obligations, to be able to leave whenever we wanted, going wherever we liked, and to be able to change all our plans at a moment's notice. We were true children of the sixties...But somehow the press got hold of it about a week before we hoped to leave, and suddenly every phone call was for us.
"Are you going to sail across the Atlantic?"
"How long is your boat?"
"How many of you are there?"
Do you have a motor/radio/cat/dog/parrot?"

Every question needed an answer, and having been given one, became fact. We were leaving at the end of the week, sailing to the West Indies via Madeira, or so we read in the paper.

Walking along the jetty a little boy stopped me and said "Are you the man that's sailing to America?"

I smiled to myself as I realised I was.

July 19, 1973 was my 23rd birthday and five days later we sailed.

Now go to Part 3 which tells about the first half of the voyage south to Madeira...