CUSTOMER REVIEWS THE RENEGADE
Mike Dorsett who, with his partner, purchased a Renegade 43 in 1999 recently wrote:
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Hi Peter,
It’s good to hear from you after all these years. The White Princess has sailed over 57,000 miles since we launched her at Weymouth, and circumnavigated the globe 1.5 times. We are now in Fiji and she is now for sale should you know of anyone looking for a used steel yacht.
As you know, after leaving Weymouth in 2002, we sailed her down the coasts of Spain and Portugal and into the Mediterranean as far as Malta and Sicily. Then a war got in the way so we turned round and headed out to the Canary islands and from there across the Atlantic to Barbados. We then spent 1 year cruising the islands before commencing a 4 year circumnavigation in November 2004.
We started from Barbados and sailed to Cuba then down to Panama via Grand Cayman. After crossing the canal we sailed across the Pacific to the Marquesas, and then Island-hopped across to Bundaberg, Australia.
After the cyclone season we headed back out into the Pacific, then north-west through Micronesia (where we sat through a developing cyclone) and the Philippines and Malaysia before crossing the Indian Ocean to Mayotte. We sailed from there direct to South Africa and round the cape (no big deal) then sailed north to Namibia. From there we sailed direct to West Africa and sailed 150 miles up the river Gambia before crossing the Atlantic and returning to our start point.
Since then we have slowed down a bit. We didn’t like the Caribbean any more so we returned to the Pacifc and spent a whole year in French Polynesia, then sailed on to Tuvalu where I got a job and the Princess stayed at anchor for a year. We are now trying to renovate her ready to sell as we hope to settle in Fiji.
Throughout, the Princess has been a solid boat, we have sailed in winds up to 55 knots without problems and we never have to worry about hitting a reef or anything else – which is just as well since we sail in areas that are very poorly charted. We have been blown onto a beach once (and got her off again), been knocked down once, hit a LARGE floating tree trunk at night, and despite our best efforts we have hit several reefs but all it does is scrape off a bit of paint (the tree trunk slowed us down a bit).
Yours sincerely
Mike Dorsett
