Experienced Skippers

Lizzie May goes to sea with a skipper and often a mate to ensure up to 4 clients (5 for a group booking) enjoy their experiences to the full.

Jerry Headley was very young when he started messing around in his father’s small wooden sailing dinghy and has in later life baptised both his children by sailing in larger boats when they were babies. He says being on the water is a great release from the conventional workaday world and being associated with Lizzie May has been an adventure from the beginning. His previous two boats were both gaff rigged designs on the lines of Falmouth Quay Punts…

…and Lizzie May in many ways is very similar, just four times larger. Before succumbing to boat ownership Jerry sailed the West Coast with several very experienced skippers who had long experience of cruising and the West Coast waters, including a former pre-war battleship officer and commander of the Royal Yacht Britannia. He has skippered charters since 1998 and enjoys introducing guests to the arts of traditional sailing and West Coast waters. It’s quite a commitment being custodian of a wooden boat requiring careful balancing against other priorities. But he says all the time and other resources spent maintaining her are worth it for the people and places she introduces him to. For him sailing a traditional boat like Lizzie May is more rewarding than sailing a modern yacht and sailing on Scottish West Coast waters is his favourite thing to do. It’s the perfect antidote to a busy working life.

All of our skippers and mates place a high priority on providing good food and enabling the crew’s full participation in all aspects of running the boat.

Pictured here are our Skippers for 2014, Don Hind and Lizzie May’s owner Jerry Headley.

If you would like to speak to a skipper in advance about any aspect of your planned cruise please call the office on 07789 036 515 and we can arrange for the skipper to contact you direct.

 

 

Don Hind, as well as being the MD of The Corpach Boat Building Company, is a pioneer of traditional sailing in the UK from the days when he owned and operated Lorne Leader, a Brixham trawler, in the same waters in which Lizzie May now plies her trade, skippering vessels from Shetland to the Isles of Scilly, Latvia to the Caribbean and Mallaig to the Med.