How I built a 1m boat to cross the Atlantic

Microyacht adventurer Andrew Bedwell tells Katy Stickland how he resurrected his Atlantic ocean world record challenge

- Katy Stickland

The strops on the crane broke and Big C was dropped onto the concrete; it was smashed, causing irreparable damage. I was a bumbling mess, and everything came out: the grief about my father, who had died two days before I had set out. But then I decided that enough was enough; I had to redo it, create a version 2. That night, sitting down in a restaurant, probably not sure whether to use the serviette for tears or for drawing, I drew up a new boat, and 70% of that design is in the boat today.”

Microyacht adventurer Andrew Bedwell is no quitter. Even when his dream of crossing the Atlantic lay shattered on the harbour wall in Newfoundland, he dusted himself down and got back up again, with a vision for Big C V2.

Two-and-a-half years later and he is deep in sea trials and troubleshooting faults to make sure he is ready for May and the start of the biggest challenge of his life – a 1,900-mile crossing of the Atlantic, from St John's in Newfoundland to cross the finish line for the record off the western point of Ireland.

Time commitment

To get to this stage has taken “an awful lot of man-hours”. After sketching out the initial design on the back of a napkin, Bedwell used masking tape on his kitchen floor to mark out the design; he needed to check he could stretch out his legs in the vessel. Next, he used cardboard boxes to build a life-size model of the boat, marking out hatches, the mast and where the batteries would go; he now needed to find a naval architect. Jérôme Delaunay was chosen because he “just got it and was used to designing very small, unusual vessels. He later told me it was the hardest vessel he's ever had to design,” said Bedwell, who is a Jester Baltimore Challenge veteran, and has sailed around Britain and from Whitehaven in Cumbria to Iceland and into the Arctic Circle aboard his sparse 6.5m (21ft) Mini Transat, Blue One.