A gripping tale of a 10-year voyage around the world in a 32-foot yacht piloted by Canmorites Florence and Ray Sliney is the perfect event to get ready for warmer weather and rekindle your adventurous spirit.
Being “green as grass” at sailing didn’t stop the dreams of the Slineys. The couple wanted to see the world and used the world’s oceans as their passageway for a trip of a lifetime.
Avilion: A Classic Sailing Voyage Around the World presentation takes place on April 7, at 7:30 p.m. at the Canmore Library, with admission by donation.
“The presentation is from the title of our book. We did it in the ’70s and ’80s. It actually took 12 (years) but 10 to take a certain navigation – we just kind of island hopped for a couple of years, Florence Sliney said.
“My presentation will generally be about our experiences and adventures as we travelled around the world in our little boat. In those days, everyone was on the move and we wanted to spend a few years seeing the world and we thought a boat might be the way to go. At that time there was an oil embargo by OPEC, so we thought other transportation would be halted. We thought a sailboat was the way to go.”
The couple were then living in Kamloops, B.C., but actually bought the Avilion in jolly old England. “We went over to England to pick it up, we crossed the channel to France and port hopped around the Bay of Biscay and down into the Mediterranean, then we started our big cruise after that,” said Sliney.
In no time, the couple were on their way down to Madeira and the Canary Islands, towards the jump off point to cross the Atlantic.
“It took 26 days to cross the Atlantic to Antigua in the West Indies and we spent the hurricane season and another sailing season in the Caribbean and then crossed over to Panama. We travelled in the canal and we were in the Pacific,” Sliney said. “Then we went down to the Galapagos and had a very long sail to the Marquesas about 3,000 miles, and it took us 32 days.
“We went all through the south seas. Tahiti, all the Society Islands, Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, Fiji – way up into the Solomons and Papua New Guinea. Then over the top of Australia to Christmas Island and into the Indian Ocean.”
The Sliney’s then made their way to the Cape of Good Hope, spent time in St. Helena, Brazil and then back up to the Caribbean. “We crossed our track and completed our circumnavigation,” Sliney said.
