E-
OCCUPATION:
Retired Chemical Engineer and Businessman
MARITIME QUALIFICATIONS/LICENCES:
DTI Yachtmaster Coastal 1969
DTI Yachtmaster Ocean 1970 with Commercial Endorsement
RYA Short Range Radiotelephone Operator’s Certificate 2000
RYA Long Range Radiotelephone Operator’s Certificate 2001
Island Cruising Club Ocean Skipper 1979
COURSES ATTENDED:
Courses leading to above qualifications
RYA Shorebased Ocean Yachtmaster course (refresher) 2000/01
RYA Radar course 1999
RYA/DoT Small Craft Basic Sea Survival course 1999
MCA Ship Captain’s Medical Certificate 2001
STCW Basic Safety Training December 2008
CLUBS & AFFILIATIONS:
Royal Yachting Association: Member since 1988
Royal Institute of Navigation: Member since 1970
Sea Safety Group: member since 1993
Ocean Cruising Club: Associate member 2000, qualified as Member 2002
Island Cruising Club: Member since 1964 (Ocean Skipper 1979)
MEDICAL FITNESS:
BUPA Classic Health Assessment October 2008. Fit, no problems
BOAT OWNERSHIP:
1971 to 1987: joint owner of 36 ft Excalibur “Morgan le Fay”, by Van de Stadt
1989 to 2000: Owner of 35 ft Tradewind 35 “Desert Wind”, John Rock design
2001 to present: Owner of “Al Shaheen”, a 42 ft custom-
EXPERIENCE:
1956 to 1983: dinghy sailing and racing in many classes
1952 to 1958: sea time with naval cadets and Royal Naval Reserve. Attended many RN practical seamanship courses. Sailing experience in RN sailing craft to 40 ft.
1963 to 1988: sailing with Island Cruising Club in UK, NW French waters and Biscay on boats to 60 ft. Skipper from 1972 on boats to 60 ft. Annual mileage approx. 700
1969 to 1971: skipper on annual charter of boats around 35-
1971 to 1987: skipper of 36 ft Excalibur sailing mainly in S and SW coasts of England, N & W France. Annual mileage approx. 1200
1989 to 1999: skipper of family 35 ft Tradewind sailing mainly in S and SW coasts of England, W coast of Scotland, Ireland and N & W France. Annual mileage approx. 1200
1996 Watch Leader on STA TS “Malcolm Miller” on cruise from Aberdeen to Spitzbergen and return. Mileage approx. 3,000
From 2001: Owner/Skipper of “Al Shaheen” 42 ft custom-
2001: Cruises from Plymouth to West coast Ireland and NW Spain. Mileage approx. 2500
2002: Cruises from Plymouth to South coast of Ireland and then to NW France, NW Spain, Portugal, Madeira, Canaries and then transatlantic to Grenada, West Indies. Approx. mileage annual 5,600
2003: Cruising in Windward & Leeward Islands. 1,400 miles in season
2004: Cruising in Windward & Leeward Islands & Virgin Islands. 1,400 miles in season
2004/05: Cruising in E Caribbean then passage to Puerto Rico/Dominican Republic/Bahamas/ USA east coast to Maine. 4,500 miles in season
2006: Maine to Nova Scotia then Nova Scotia coastwise southwards along US east coast to Beaufort NC, then offshore to Virgin Gorda (1500 miles). 4,500 miles in the year.
2007: Cruising in the Eastern Caribbean. Haul out and store ashore in Grenada during Hurricane Season.
2008: Cruising in the Eastern Caribbean, Grenada to BVI/USVI. Haul out and store in Tortola for Hurricance season. Chartered a boat in British Columbia to sail in Desolation Sound for OCC Rally. Autumn 2008 cruising in BVI/USVI/Spanish Virgin Islands.
2009: Cruising in USVI/Spanish Virgin Islands. Puerto Rico to Bahamas, then northwards E coast of USA from Florida to Maine. 3,500 miles in year.
TOTAL SAILING MILEAGE: APPROX 80,000
JENNY CRICKMORE-
My mother always tells the story of how standing in the hot sun to watch the young Princess Elizabeth process through the streets of Durban with her royal parents in 1947 almost precipitated my birth! However, I’ve always had a good sense of timing, so arrived when planned, where planned, at the small hospital in Eshowe, Zululand, to very little fanfare.
Apocryphal stories have been passed down through the family for so long I don’t really
know whether they are really memories or just pictures of stories! Like being flung
through the air by my mother to escape being bitten by a snake; like sitting atop
a pile of suitcases in a little Anglia all the way from Durban to Broken Hill in
N. Rhodesia in 1952, squashed in by my mother’s Singer sewing machine and my baby
brother’s carry cot; like meeting elephants on the road on the same journey – I definitely
remember being frightened out of my skull by the plate-
Wonderful memories of colonial life follow: even as blue-
Leaving school, I’d planned to go to university, but ended up getting married instead.
Ian Crickmore-
In pretty quick succession, Ian and I had 3 children, James, Tracy and Garth. And suddenly I found myself having to do all those things that had always ‘been done’ for me before – I now had to do the cooking, the cleaning, the washing, the ironing. And with not much income, there was no money for servants now! Not too surprisingly, Ian’s first Christmas present to me was a large yellow Mrs. Beeton’s cookery book. Things did improve, but I have never ever laid claim to being a natural or enthusiastic housewife.
But life generally was good – we had 3 great kids, we managed to save enough each
year to take a 3-
It didn’t take long for the round of nappies and social chit-
It was an exciting period, entailing much overseas travel and many late nights behind
a sound desks in some recording studio. At the same time, my kids were growing, with
lots of demands of their own, and the country was changing from an apartheid-
Some 14 years later, a lifetime later, I had bought a beautiful 52 hectare property
out in Broederstroom, some 50 kms from Johannesburg, closed Grace Music down, now
had 4 fantastic grandchildren and a horde of dogs and cats, and was freelance editing,
working for several publishers, when I answered an ad in a sailing magazine for crew
for a trip to the USA and back. Why? Who knows! It seemed like the right thing to
do at the time! I wasn’t a sailor, had in actual fact never been on the sea in my
life, but didn’t crewing a little 19 foot day sailor on the lake count for something?
And in the back of my mind there was a long-
Of course, by the time my postcard from SA got to John Franklin in the UK by fork-
So are life-
31st October I landed in Grenada via Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lagos, and Tobago – into the maelstrom of mud and rain and wrecks that was the end of Hurricane Ivan – and stepped aboard Al Shaheen to take my first ocean voyage. The rest, as they say, is history.
In Charlotte Amalie, just before my 6 months were up, John proposed – just before we hauled out in August 2005, we were married in South West Harbor Maine. It’s been a whirlwind life, the past few years! And I’m loving it.
ABOUT JOHN & JENNY