AUSTRALIA THE HARD WAY

The David Pyle Interview

- David Pyle

Back in 1969, just to prove it could be done, David Pyle and crew Dave Derrick set off in their 18-foot Drascombe Lugger Hermes, first across the English Channel toward France, and then down the Tigris through the Middle East, and on through to the other side of the world. Negotiating currents, governments, and pirates, the daring duo eventually landed in Darwin, Australia, having quietly undertaken the longest open-boat voyage ever.

We caught up with David Pyle after reading his recently reissued book, Australia the Hard Way.

Do you remember when you first got interested in boats and the first boat you sailed? The first time I remember was around the age of 3, at the end of the Second World War, when our family moved from Sheffield down to Gosport, close to Portsmouth Harbour. My mother and father often sailed their International 14 there before the war and in 1946 my father bought an 18-foot clinker keel yacht and started racing again with me on board, used as a form of moveable ballast. At age seven I was given a rowing dinghy which could mount a small sail. By now my father had purchased a 30-foot wooden lifeboat and converted it into a four-berth sailing ketch. With so many shortages after the war he had to find and use various items from a scrapyard, like masts from lengthy ex-Navy oars, a door to the “head” that had previously been the lid of a wooden bureau, and the engine a home-converted 4-cylinder model from a disused fire truck.