Benjamin Shears

In the summer time when there weren't any emergency repairs I would deliver boats of various sizes between pontoons and anchorages on a dead line for our clients. I was also on call for our boats that were on guardianage whilst we had local foul weather.

In the winter, my responsibilities were:

• Gel coat repairs
• Basic GRP repairs
• Emergency structural hull repairs
• Rudder repairs
• Cosmetics (Polishing, waxing, varnishing, etc.)

We departed from Lorient, France on a 45Ft Lagoon Catamaran and made our way to Cape Verde with a couple of stops along the way. After careful preparation we made our way across the Northern Atlantic to Recife, Brazil in a time of 16 days. After navigating down the the coast to Salvador de Bahia, we departed for Cape Town, South Africa, a crossing that took 20 days. Reaching Richards Bay after doing almost the entire South African coast brought us to a halt as at the time Cyclone Cheneso was raging through the Mozambique channel. After cautious weather predictions and a ten day delay, we headed straight for Mahe, Seychelles. We completed this delivery a few days before our deadline despite the bad weather we had encountered in both the Atlantic and the Indian ocean.