Introducing...Colin Speedie

Hi, I’m Colin Speedie and over the coming months I’ll be passing you thoughts and observations on what we encounter from a marine conservation perspective during our voyage aboard our Ovni 435 yacht ‘Pèlerin’. We’re currently in Rabat, Morocco, after a slow start from the far northwest of Scotland in 2009, and hope to be crossing the Atlantic to Brazil late this year.

I’ve been an MCS member for over 25 years, and during that time have worked with MCS on a range of projects as a field researcher, including turtle, jellyfish and marine litter programmes, whilst carrying out surveys along the western seaboard of the UK into the distribution of the basking shark. But after nearly 20 years of that work my wife Louise and I decided to build our own boat built and set off on an open-ended voyage around the world, taking in many of the richest marine life areas.

Our boat is heavily built in aluminium, and has a lifting keel and rudder that mean she can float in less than a metre of water, ideal for exploring lagoons and rivers. She is like an ocean going Land Rover, and has many modifications to make her as self-sufficient as possible, such as extensive wind and solar power, and we sail her whenever there is enough wind to make progress.

Living afloat, we are not only aware of the rhythms and moods of the ocean, but are also able to witness it in a way that few others can – we’re very lucky, as there’s still so much to celebrate about the oceanic world. But at the same time, as we all know, it’s not all good news for our blue planet, and so we’ll be hoping to bring you thoughts and images from that world, for good or ill, that we hope will interest you.

Oh, and the name of our yacht, ‘Pèlerin’? French for basking shark – of course!