Glory 11The most amazing things happen that sometimes never come to light. At other times, glimpses of incredible achievements momentarily appear on the scene, and one such relatively unpublicized voyage of a lone sailor is remembered by me and perhaps by others who are old enough to have been around at the time. The voyage to which I am referring is Sir Henry Pigott’s crossing of the Atlantic aboard his Mirror Offshore 19 foot yacht, similar to Dylan Winter’s.
No matter where I search on the Internet, precious little information is revealed concerning Henry’s voyage. A trifle more has been written about his circumnavigation aboard ‘Glory 11’, a modified 19’ 8”Colvic Watson motor-sailer. (See my previous Blog at: http://bills-log.blogspot.com/search?q=henry+pigott )
Henry's Blogger IconHenry, who must be in his mid 90s, is a follower of this Blog! You can see his avatar, icon or chosen pictorial image among those of the other 52 followers’. The tiny picture would appear to represent a scenic view over a stretch of sparkling blue water. In the foreground on the left-hand side there’s a colourful clump of foliage and on the right-hand side there’s a red, green, yellow, blue and white abstract design. A vessel, which may be Glory 11, takes up a central position, and beyond her there is a dark green shoreline.
When searching for information about an event, the rule is always to get it from the horse’s mouth, i.e., from those actually involved. If that can’t be done, seek verifiable information from eyewitness. On that score, looking back to my earlier Blog referring to Henry’s circumnavigation, I have discovered in the comments section that Ken says he has seen an article in the archives of the Yahoo! Corribee Coromandel Discussion Group about Henry preparing his Mirror for the crossing. Patrick also says he has sporadic contact with Henry, and confirms that Henry lives near the Solent.
Well, Henry, if you are reading this, would you like to bring us up to date with information about your many trans-Atlantic crossings, and particularly your early crossing aboard your Mirror Offshore 19. Did you modify her in any way, perhaps by changing her rig to junk? I imagine the standard Bermudan rig with its small sails would have been adequate for downwind sailing in the trade winds. Did you use a self-steering system? What route did you take?
Ken and Patrick, if you have any more information, maybe you could chip in? Thanks Patrick for the link to your ‘Voyage of the Foxglove’. (See link below)
Links
My Previous Henry Pigott Blog, including Glory 11
http://bills-log.blogspot.com/search?q=henry+pigott
Corribee Coromandel Discussion Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CorribeeCoromandel/
Patrick’s Blog – The Voyage of the Foxglove
http://www.yachtfoxglove.typepad.com/
6 comments:
Hi Bill,
It's Ken here again, though I don't recall the login I used on Blogger to leave a comment!!
there is an article by Sir Henry about his Atlantic crossing aboard Simba II, his Mirror Offshore. It is in the files section of the smallsailboatclub group on yahoo:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smallsailboatclub/
He did not carry out major modifications. An astrodome on the hatch, extra rigging, a swan neck in the exhaust, larger scuppers and foam in the bilge seem to be the major changes he made.
I would love to hear more about this adventure, especially from the man himself, so good luck in the search.
Hi, Henry is my great Uncle, and I may be able to convince him to talk to you. You can contact me
thorholt at hotmail.com
Keep up the blog!
Hi Bill its Henry Pigottt I now have Glory in my pond at the bottom of the garden where I can go to chill out and dream of days gone past
Hi Bill. I write a series called the Hall of Fame for the Junk Rig Association,and am currently working on one about Sir Henry Pigott and Glory 11, with Henry's assistance. I've got much of the article together but am slowly adding to it whenever Henry has the time to send me more notes. Hopefully, it will be ready for publication in early 2017, first in the JRA magazine, then on the public pages of the JRA Website, where you can already see a number of my Hall of Fame Pieces. It is going to be a fascinating story. One of the great small boat voyages.
Graham Cox (yachtarion@hotmail.com)
We met Sir Henry in Bonaire in 1996, shortly after he came through the Panama Canal. I have a photo of Glory anchored near us in Bonaire. He was certainly 'one of a kind'. I'm not sure how to post the photo here, but I have posted it on Facebook.
I knew Henry for many years and during the 80s he would send me tapes of his ramblings for a book he thought he might write. Maybe they have been used if he ever got round to writing it
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