Sit down and watch this full length video, transferred from the original 16mm colour movie tapes of a two-year circumnavigation undertaken in 1965. Five young men and a girl departed Durban, S Africa on the restored Colin Archer ketch ‘Sandefjord’, built in Norway, 1913.
The true story of five young men and a girl that set out to circumnavigate the Earth with Sandefjord, a fifty-year-old lifeboat. 1965 – 1966 Sandefjord was first launched in 1913, and during her 22 years of service for the Norwegian Lifeboat Society, she saved 117 lives and assisted 258 vessels through fog and storm to safety. After being sold out of the lifeboat service in 1935, the ketch passed through a succession of owners, the last of whom all but abandoned her as a rotting hulk in Durban. It was a desperately sad shadow of the once proud and gallant Sandefjord that was found, half sunk at her moorings, by the Durban brothers Barry and Patrick Cullen in 1963. The task of refitting her required almost two years of hard work before she was ready for sea. She was taken from the water, stripped of all doubtful planks and timbers, and slowly restored to a state of complete seaworthiness. Finally, in February 1965, Sandefjord was ready. She was provisioned for 400 days and with her complement of five young men and a girl, she sailed from Durban on what proved to be her greatest adventure yet. Through the West Indies, Panama Canal…and on into the mighty Pacific. Sandefjord made her landfalls in the exotic South Seas in much the same way as Cook and other early navigators. Without exception, she was well met at all her ports of call. She made friends easily…for herself and her crew…as loyal and devoted a crew as any ship could ever wish to have. Sandefjord sailed 30,279 nautical miles in 21 months in this memorable circumnavigation, receiving a thrilling homecoming welcome in Durban, Tuesday, 8th November 1966.
@Sailing Sandefjord
The original 16mm colour movie of 1967 was transferred to video in 1990. As in the voyage when storms threatened there were some tense moments during the transfer process in Hollywood, when the only archive print available (after 23 years) passed through the telecine machine. Dedicated perseverance won, culminating in a beautiful high quality video master. However, that archive 16mm print did possess a few scratches! And these unavoidably transfer through the video master. The worst section is right at the start in the very first shot of Durban. Within a moment or two these scratches recede and we are confident that you, like us, will feel the intrusion thereafter to be slight – and acceptable in the broader objective of saving this film for the video screen.
@Sailing Sandefjord