I can’t remember the last time we ran a cruising article that caused as much of a stir as Ian Furby’s ‘Big Trip, Small Boat’ series. For those of you who are late to the party, Ian is mid-way through a five-part series about circumnavigating the UK in less than 12 days in a bog standard 18ft speedboat. This month’s instalment sees him sprinting up the east coast of Ireland trying to outrun a storm, running aground on a sandbank, getting caught in ferocious overfalls and coming face to face with a whale while crossing the Irish Sea to Scotland – all in the space of two days.
It’s a breathtaking read, made all the better by his wonderfully straight-talking Yorkshire prose. As one reader puts it in this month’s letters, “I am not sure whether to admire his seamanship or question his sanity. Perhaps a bit of both!”
However you look at it, it’s a remarkable achievement but the real reason it resonates with so many of us is because it demonstrates once and for all that the size of your boat (and your budget) bears no relation to the size of the adventures you can have in it. Ian paid just £25,000 for his Nordkapp Enduro 550 in 2015 and he sold it last year for £20,000. That’s a hell of a lot of fun for £5,000.
Clearly, I’m not suggesting we all start hammering around the UK in whatever craft we can lay our hands on, but if Ian can knock off 2,000nm in 12 days in an 18ft bowrider, I can probably go a little further than the 20nm from Poole to th
