The D-Day Channel crosser

To commemorate his father’s service in World War Two, Nigel Stoate and his son sailed the Channel and back in their 1944 OUKW’ truck

- OLLIE KEW

To give you an idea of the sort of man Nigel Stoate is, when we ask him to pull the star of this story, his amphibious GMC-manufactured DUKW landing craft out of his garage, he has to fire up the 9cyl, 400bhp radial engine of his Sherman tank to move it out of the way first. "My wife won’t like the mess the tracks make of the lawn," he grimaces.

Luckily for Mrs. Stoate, Nigel occasionally takes his pride and joy a little further afield than the back garden. Back in June 2024, he sailed his DUKW (military code for 1942 design utility all-wheel-drive tandem axle) to Normandy. It disembarked the Royal Marines mothership and waded ashore to the mournful sound of bagpipes at 07:25 sharp—the exact time British boots reached French shores 80 years ago.

D-Day commemorations complete, he simply turned it around and sailed it right back home, with only his 14-year-old son Ryan and mechanic Jason aboard in the load area during the 200km, 28-hour voyage, across the busiest shipping lanes on the planet.