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British family set sail for Australia in self-built wooden boat

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-22 09:11

LONDON  – A British adventurer and his three-man crew set sail for Australia late Monday in a 37-foot (11-metre) wooden boat that he built himself, in a bid to re-create a 150-year-old voyage.

A handout image obtained on October 21 shows a wooden boat called 'Spirit of Mystery' pictured at Plymouth Sound and Rame Head in Cornwall in July 2008. A British adventurer and his three-man crew have set sail for Australia late Monday in the 37-foot (11-metre) boat that he built himself, in a bid to re-create a 150-year-old voyage. [Agencies]

In November 1854, a wooden boat called Mystery set sail from Cornwall, southwest England, bound for Australia with seven Cornishmen hoping to escape their lives of poverty and dig for gold Down Under, a trip that eventually took 116 days.

"After the long months of building, training and preparation it is great to be finally underway," said Pete Goss, a former royal marine, who has said the Spirit of Mystery project began "with an idea and a chainsaw."

His crew of four is made up of his 14-year-old son Eliot, brother Andy and brother-in-law Mark Maidment, while the boat has been built from wood taken from the area around Cornwall.

They will navigate using only the stars, just as the original Mystery did, on their 11,000-mile (17,700-kilometre) journey, and the boat is fitted with a satellite tracking device so others can view its progress on Goss's website.

Goss came to prominence in 1996 when, in the midst of the Vendee Globe single-handed race around the world, he changed course to rescue a stricken rival.

Four years later, he and his crew had to be evacuated from a four-million-pound (6.8-million-dollar, 5.1-million-euro), 120-foot Catamaran during sea trials because of a storm in the Atlantic ocean.