Sailor crosses Atlantic

Press, 27 June 1983, Page 10

Sailor crosses Atlantic

NZPA St Mary’s, Stilly Isles A retired American fireman who set sail on a solo voyage from Massachusetts arrived in the Scilly Isles, off England’s south-west tip, on Saturday morning (N.Z. time), and said that he planned to return to the United States the same way. The trip across the Atlantic had taken him 47 days. “A man just can’t sit back and do nothing because he’s retired from work. That’s why I’ve done it,” said Jerry La Pointe, aged 66. “But I won’t be really content until I’ve sailed back again.” Mr La Pointe, of Holyoke, Massachusetts, set out last month from nearby Scituate, in his 4.3 metre glassfibre hull boat named Loner. A fireman for 30 years, he took up sailing in 1969. He had been battling heavy winds for a week when he accepted a yachtsman’s offer of a tow 3km from Land’s End. “I set my heart on getting across, but the last few days were difficult and very frustrating,” he said. Safe in the tiny harbour at St Mary’s, the largest island in the Scilly group, Mr La Pointe said that he planned to sail to Falmouth on England’s southern coast before starting the trip home. Mr La Pointe’s boat is not the smallest to cross the Atlantic. That record is held by a boat under two metres long that sailed from Morocco to Miami 15 years ago. Last year an American, Bill Dunlop, crossed to Falmouth in a boat just under three metres long. He arrived two weeks after an Irishman, Tom McClean, made the crossing in a three-metre boat. Mr McClean, aged 39, is at sea again, two weeks out from Newfoundland and heading for Falmouth in a 2.3-metre boat.