Sailing to Australia

This is the story of how my father and I set out to sail to Australia from Bristol, England in a small yacht in 1968. 14 000 miles across the ocean on a 26 foot yacht. It tells of our journey, the weeks at sea, the places that we visited, the exciting things that happened to us along the way, some of the people that we met and details about our boat and what we took with us. Whether you're a sailor or just want to read about an interesting adventure, there's something in it for you. To read the story in chronological order click the "Continue Reading" button at the end of each post.

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Our Story begins here


​My father Edgar ("Sim") Simpkins and I sailed to Australia from England on a 26 foot Stella Class yacht "Stella Mira" in 1968 /1969. At the time my father was 52 and I was 19.

Now that my dad is 100, I want to put this story down while he is still around to fill out the details. When my parents announced that they were going to emigrate to Australia I was 18, still at school doing “A” levels. I felt very rebellious, I didn’t want to go, I had a boyfriend and a social life, all my friends were here in Bristol. Then my dad announced that he was only going to Australia if he could sail there in his own yacht. That put the cat in the works with my mum who wanted to emigrate to join her sister and her family in Perth.

Eventually mum accepted that dad was going to sail but decided she didn’t want to sail in a small yacht herself. Then one day a family friend Tich who was a couple of years older than me told me that he intended to ask my dad if he could go with him and we started talking about all the places dad would visit on the way and I realized what a wonderful opportunity this would be to see the world so then came the next ultimatum, from me this time, “I’m only going to Australia if I can go with dad on the boat”

No boat existed at this time, my dad still had to buy one, but there we were both sailing to Australia. I was going for the adventure and travel and wasn't focused on the sailing so much, so I mostly remember all the exciting bits, whereas dad was focused on the sailing, the boat and the challenges so he remembers a lot more of the detail than I do. I recently discovered all the letters that my dad and I wrote to our family during our trip and will use them in this story. I'm starting with a piece that my mother wrote many years ago. Unfortunately Mum died in 2006, so this is the only piece I have from her. It gives her version of how we started.

For more information on Stella class yachts see http://www.stellaclass.org