Julie met Nick in Cambridge, England, at a youth hosteler gathering when they were both still at school. Julie was 15, Nick was 18. They never imagined that one day they would sail the world.
Julie spent her childhood and teens in Cambridge and later in London. Then she was accepted by Warwick University to study Mathematics. Had she stayed on at university her life might have been very different. But she didn’t, instead joining Nick in his quest to go ocean sailing. A brave move. She had never been on a boat smaller than the Isle of Wight Ferry. But that didn’t matter, she was clever, adaptable and in love.
Nick grew up in a small village north of Cambridge in England. An unlikely place to develop an ambition to go ocean sailing. Adventurous holidays camping across Europe led to cycling to northern Lapland and other places as a teenager. Then summer work in the North of Scotland for the 1966 Atlantic rower John Ridgway, as an instructor at his Adventure School inspired his ambition to go sailing offshore in his own boat. He asked Julie to come with him, which led to the Voyage of The Aegre.
Since The Voyage of The Aegre story was published many readers have asked about Julie and what happened to her after the voyage.
50 years after the voyage, Julie was happy for Nick to write the story and to quote from her letters and diary. She read drafts of the book and gave feedback and her approval but in doing so requested that her privacy be respected and that she not be identifiable today.
Nevertheless, be assured, Julie is well. No, she never went back to sea, but her story has been recognised with a piece about her in a soon to be published book ‘Stars to Steer By: Celebrating the 20th Century Women who went to Sea‘ by Julia Jones, published by Adlard Coles. Deservedly so.
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