VISITORS to the Whitsunday Sailing Club on the afternoon of July 22, 2025, would have been largely unaware that they were witnessing the arrival of a living legend.
Two-time global circumnavigator and award-winning, record-breaking sailor and author, Lin Pardey, was unassumingly headed from the dinghy dock to a long, hot shower, ahead of a presentation at the club that evening and an interview with the Whitsunday News newspaper in the lead-up.
In a similar vein to the title of the evening’s talk, ‘Passages and Adventures – Sailing through Life’, that morning’s short sail from the Whitsunday Islands to the anchorage beside the club had been merely one small part of a much larger journey leading to this point.
First Time Around
Lin and her equally iconic late husband, Larry Pardey, initially sailed to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in their second self-built, engineless timber boat, 29ft Taleisin, arriving from their newly adopted ‘home’ of New Zealand at the port of Townsville in 1988.
More of a side trip than a part of their second world circumnavigation – this time heading the ‘right way’ from east to west – the main purpose of their visit was participating in the indigenous-led ‘Festival of the South Pacific’.
It was during this eventful expedition that they ventured south to the Whitsunday Islands for about a month, a highlight of which was the Sailing Club’s annual Fun Race and ‘Miss Figurehead’ contest.
“The party here was huge afterwards, there must have been a couple of hundred boats,” Lin said, recalling: “actually a really odd-ball incident happened that night and I wonder if anyone else remembers it.”
Apparently, while all the sailors were racing by day and partying by night, about 100 of the inflatable dinghies tied up in the Airlie Creek had been quietly deflated and whisked away by organised thieves, whose truck was then intercepted on route to the New South Wales border by Queensland Police.
“I don’t remember all the details but we had a hard dinghy so we were okay,” Lin laughed.
While this may have been a narrow escape, the Pardeys’ onward voyage from the Whitsundays was not.
Bound for Mooloolaba, they unwittingly sailed into the eye of an out-of-season cyclone and some of the worst conditions they would experience in over 200,000 miles of sailing and decades of life at sea.
The result was a tale that would eventually be told in the pages of the nautical classic ‘Adlard Coles’ Heavy Weather Sailing’ and one of their own 13 books, the ‘Storm Tactics Handbook’.
“It was worse than Cape Horn, I’ll tell you that,” Lin shivered.
Embracing Difference
Four decades later, this second trip to the Whitsundays could not be more different.
Lin Pardey is no longer sailing her own famously hand-crafted, relatively tiny timber boats, and Larry Pardey is no longer with her, having finally succumbed to Parkinson’s Disease at the age of 80, in 2020, after rounding Cape Horn aged 67 and continuing to sail, intermittently, until his early 70s.
In her latest adventures, Lin, now 80, is partnered by David Haigh, a retired Australian environmental lawyer, originally from Ayr, who fortuitously sailed into both her home cove, on New Zealand’s Kawau Island, and subsequently her life.
The boat they now sail together is David’s 40ft steel van de Stadt Sahula, on which he has circumnavigated the globe himself, and which, unlike Lin’s previous two cruising yachts, is equipped with a conventional engine.
Given the Pardeys’ reputation for extolling the virtues of engineless cruising, these are sharp contrasts Lin cannot ignore.
“David’s boat is completely different, and David is completely different – the two men couldn’t be compared in any way except they’re both crazy enough to think I’m nice,” she quipped.
“And yes, the sailing is very different, so do I like sailing with an engine?
“Well, we get to go up rivers and do things I had never done before and, as an older person, I wouldn’t have the agility to sail a boat the way I used to – it’s a different game, and it’s a game that suits me right now,” she said – in the same breath revealing she had bought David a “nylon drifter” or light wind sail, “so that engine doesn’t get turned on anywhere near as soon”.
Enter the Whitsunday Sailing Club
Since joining forces on Sahula, Lin and her new beau have sailed the completing leg of David’s circumnavigation (from New Zealand to Townsville), as well as circumnavigating New Zealand and cruising to New Caledonia, where Lin’s latest book ‘Passages: Cape Horn and Beyond’ was written.
With grandchildren entering the mix for David, the couple had decided to return to Townsville, when a social media post about their plans caught the attention of the Whitsunday Sailing Club.
Venue Manager Amanda Black said it was thanks to a long-term member alerting her to Lin’s arrival on the Queensland coast (saying “you have to get her here!”), that the club had been able to reach out and catch her on her voyage north.
“We’d like to be able to offer opportunities like this to our members all the time but, as you can imagine, they’re rare as hen’s teeth when it comes to having someone of Lin’s calibre, so we were very lucky to snag her when we did,” she said.
The member in question, Lachie Wilson, said before setting off to Asia on his own 30ft Clansman Felicity, he had scoured the Pardeys’ many books for practical advice.
“I used them as my Bible,” he said.
“If you were going cruising you read those books because they gave you an insight into what problems you might encounter and what you should or shouldn’t take with you; they gave me a lot of information I wouldn’t otherwise have had.”
An Inspiration
Accepting the Sailing Club’s invitation, Lin Pardey and the events team had just seven days to pull a public presentation together without impacting Sahula’s voyage plans.
Having previously travelled to various parts of the world on book tours and speaking seminars as part of ‘Team Pardey’, Lin was the proverbial ‘pro’ and also happened to have a collection of her books for sale aboard Sahula’s stores.
“This is the first time I’ve had an approach quite like that… but it just worked out wonderfully, and to put this all together as quickly as the crew here did – you’ve got to give them a real handshake over that,” she said.
Despite the limited lead-up, word on the water quickly spread and when the time came, it was a packed house, filled with a diverse audience including 2023 International Cruisers Awards ‘Best Instagram in Boating’ winner, Baden Le Sueur.
As a fellow female sailor introducing the event, Club Commodore Heather Sutton said it had been one of her aims to attract as many women as possible, whom she hoped Lin would inspire.
“Lin and her late husband Larry are legends in the sailing world, circumnavigating twice in wooden boats they built themselves, both under 30ft and with no engines or GPS – can any of us even imagine doing that?” she said.
With multiple awards for fostering and encouraging ocean cruising in small yachts, as well as recognition of their lifetime achievements and contributions to seamanship, inspiring other sailors and dreamers is something the Pardeys have always done in spades.
“Our whole goal was always to convince people to spend less money and buy a slightly smaller boat… we were always trying to get people back to basics and reinforce the idea that anyone can do this,” Lin said.
“We (also loved showing people) that they could use their own hands, so they weren’t completely dependent on spending money to get where they were going or hiring people to fix their boats.
“People called us the enablers… and I loved encouraging women – not just to sail but to try something different, to take a break, to challenge yourself, and (to remember) that it’s ok to fall.”
Sharing Stories from a Lifetime of Voyaging
Condensing 60 incredible years of ‘champagne cruising on a beer budget’ into a one hour-long slide show and talk, cannot be easy for someone with as many anecdotes and accolades as Lin Pardey.
With a combined 20-plus awards between them and their hand-built boats – from Larry’s Silver Medal for Land Yachting bestowed in 1967, to the couple’s induction into the US National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2022, to Lin’s literary recognition for her book ‘Bull Canyon’ – their list of achievements alone is outstanding.
Then there’s their world record as the smallest boat to have sailed south of all the great capes, contrary to the wind, with no engine or electronics, and flying a light wind sail at each.
But from meeting Larry when he took her to “see his etchings” – AKA the beginnings of the couple’s first 24ft timber cutter Seraffyn – to their Cape Horn rounding, and the many sea and land adventures in between, Lin regaled the crowd with snapshots from two truly extraordinary lives, speaking with exuberance, humour, and from the heart.
“There is nothing more rewarding than hearing people laugh and it is just so much fun to remind people that it’s all supposed to be about fun – and I just love that,” she said.
What’s Next?
After all these years of sailing – and while she might not have any aspirations to sail around the world again – Lin Pardey has no intention of leaving the sea behind any time soon.
Renowned for sensibly never revealing their future plans, she was characteristically cautious when it came to answering the question: ‘what’s next?’.
Writing projects for the US-based ‘Cruising World’ magazine, and a thrilling book concept expanding on “nefarious characters” and events from Seraffyn’s Indian Ocean crossing of 1977, are both in the works.
As for the sailing: “All throughout life people would say to Larry and me, ‘how long are you going to keep sailing?’ and we’d say, ‘as long as it’s fun’, but now, when people look at me and ask me, ‘how long do you think you’ll keep sailing?’ I just say, ‘as long as I’m able’,” she said.
To read more about the lives and extraordinary times of Lin and Larry Pardey, head to www.pardeytime.blogspot.com.
To buy copies of the couple’s books visit www.paracay.com, using the code Pardey 20 for a 20 per cent discount.
Author’s Footnote
Several years before crossing over to mainstream journalism, I was a freelance contributor for a number of nautical publications and, together with my husband Julian, a cruising sailor in my own right. To say that Lin and Larry Pardey had a huge impact on me would be an understatement. It has been an incredible honour and a professional and personal highlight to interview Lin Pardey for the Whitsunday News newspaper – I am exceptionally grateful to my friend and colleague, Managing Editor Deb Friend, for the opportunity. Like everyone else who attended the Whitsunday Sailing Club for Lin’s talk, I probably also owe Lachie Wilson a beer! I hope I have done justice to even a small part of Lin’s extraordinary story and that those of us who sail the Whitsundays can appreciate how special it was to have her here.
Fair Winds,
Sharon Smallwood.
