Hello and welcome aboard! My name is Michael Hurley. As some of you know, my wife Jill and I sailed our little boat, a 32-foot, 1967 Camper Nicholson sloop named Nevermore, some 7,500 miles from England to America between 2016 and 2019. The boat now lies at Long Island, New York. Beginning on June 28, 2020, I will set out back across the Atlantic on a 3,200-mile solo, nonstop passage to Plymouth, England, that will take roughly a month at sea to complete. A fundraiser for two great sailing charities on opposite sides of the ocean, The Ahoy Centre in London and Chesapeake Region Accessible Boating (CRAB) in Annapolis, Maryland, will coincide with this passage. Both organizations work to assist disabled persons and at-risk youth by providing access and training in sailing and other water sports.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving--they'll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity. So it's the most efficient way to donate--saving time and cutting costs for the charity. And by the way, none of the money raised goes to me or toward the boat or any expenses of the voyage. This is not a clever scheme to buy Mike a new winch. This is a chance to do some real good.

The Across Alone campaign has two pages--one for each charity. Team UK has its own page at www.justgiving.com/fundraising/AcrossAloneUK. You are on Team USA's page. 

Each team also has a shore captain. The shore captain of Team USA is long-time Annapolis racing sailor Skip Seidel. Skip can be reached at rwsjr1219@hotmail.com. The shore captains will stay in touch with me via satellite while I am at sea, post updates on the passage to Facebook and Twitter, serve as contacts for the press, and do their utmost to ignite a friendly competition between the Americans and the Brits to see which country can raise the most money for its charity before the boat makes landfall in Plymouth.

Once I get underway, daily updates on conditions at sea and the position of Nevermore will also be posted to my Facebook page.  A satellite map that can be viewed online will be continually updated with the boat's position in real time via a GPS signal from the boat. Anyone wishing to send me a message and receive a reply may do so via the message link on the satellite map.

For those of you not familiar with the story of Nevermore and her crew, I invite you to watch a short film, The Leap, about how the first steps of this journey began on the Camino in Spain over four years ago. That film was followed two years later by another, The Crossing, which in ten minutes will take you across the Atlantic from east to west on the passage Jill and I sailed for 28 days and 3,200 miles to the West Indies in January 2017.

P.S. Oh, go on then. Encourage your mates to do the right thing by your fine example and keep the momentum going for America by sharing this link on Facebook and Twitter. Cheers!