Club Night - Nick Grainger - "The Voyage of the Aegre"
Our September club night will feature a conversation with Nick Grainger about his new book: “The Voyage of The Aegre – From Scotland to the South Seas in a Shetland boat”. Nick is an entertaining speaker, so don't miss this fascinating tale of an exciting adventure at sea.
The longer serving members of the WBA will know Nick Grainger, a member of WBA from about 1996-2002. He sailed the Caledonia Yawl Crazybird, often with past WBA member John Freeman and the late Colin Hunt, and one or more of his two (then young) daughters Erica and Mariko, and wife Tommy. The Gippsland Lakes, Port Phillip, Lake Wendouree, Albert Park and the SA Wooden Boat Festival were their usual haunts, but Nick had a sailing background that other members vaguely knew of, a voyage in his early twenties from the north of Scotland to the Pacific in a 21ft decked in lapstrake engineless Shetland boat. It all seemed rather unlikely. But then one evening at a club meeting, Nick told us the story and had the photos to prove it. ‘You have to write a book’, we all said.
But Nick was about to head off on another adventure, this time to sail around the world from Scotland back to Scotland via the three big Capes. This time on a slightly bigger boat, a 57ft ketch, with the couple who owned the boat. It was part of a campaign to raise awareness of the plight of the albatross, heading to extinction due to careless long line fishing in the Southern Ocean. After returning to Australia a year later Nick came to the Club one evening and told us that story too.
Well, Nick has finally written the book about his Shetland boat voyage. It was published in the UK in late June. John Quirk, of Afloat magazine, read an advance copy and wrote in his column in the June issue, ‘This has to be one of the greatest sailing stories I have ever read’. Nick is launching the book officially at the Tall Ships Festival in Lerwick, Shetland in late July, “The story of the shortest tall ship that isn’t there’ he jokingly says.
Nick will be at our meeting to talk about the Shetland boat voyage and the book. He’s hoping to have a limited number of copies of the book from the UK by mid-August. To reserve a copy (and numbers will be limited) go to Nick’s website (below) and use the Contact form to send him a note. Expected AU price is $30.00. At the moment no locally printed version is available, but currently on Amazon is a Kindle version and a US print. The format of the US edition is slightly different to the UK one, but the content is the same. However, the built in freight cost raises the price somewhat.
For more information on The Aegre voyage and the book, visit Nick’s website at https://nicholasgrainger.com.au
7:00 for 7:30pm start. Join us for a light supper after the presentation.