Maralyn

There was a time in the 1970s when daydreams of escape from suburban Britain seemed often to drift towards intrepid sea voyages. Thor Heyerdahl’s televised rafting adventures had something to do with it, and Francis Chichester’s fabled circumnavigation; those adventures stirred a salty restlessness in a generation of men who had grown up with the war stories of fathers and grandfathers and felt the need, in midlife, for tales of their own. One such individual was Maurice Bailey, a hot-metal typesetter from Derby. Bailey,…

When Maurice and Maralyn Bailey decided to build a boat and sail to the other side of the world, it was not on a whim. The couple from Derby had long hankered for adventures that would lift them out of their dreary suburban existence. Over six years, they diligently studied boat designs, routes, timetables and supplies. They gave up their jobs, sold their bungalow and the bulk of their belongings, and oversaw the building of a boat they called “Auralyn”, a composite of their first names. Auralyn would have no radio…