After years of dreaming, saving and preparing for a solo voyage across the Pacific to Australia, Luke Benson is just a few weeks away from departure. However, vital but costly items for his boat still threaten to blow the voyage off course.
The 27-year-old Australian adventurer has spent most of the last two years living and working on the Sunshine Coast. Last summer in Gibsons, he sold everything but his carpentry tools to buy Willow, a 10-metre Windward sloop.
He’s spent the last year living on a shoestring budget in order to equip Willow with the essentials needed for an offshore voyage: an auto-helm (self-steering), life raft and EPIRB (distress radio beacon), to name a few.
With one eye on the weather, he’s aiming to leave Gibsons in early September for Queensland’s Gold Coast via San Francisco, San Diego, the Marquesas, Penrhyn Atoll and Fiji. Despite having almost no experience in offshore sailing, he can’t wait to embark on what he calls the Onboard Project.
“I’m hungry to live the adventure,” said Benson. “I can’t read books about this anymore.”
Benson said he’s confident Willow will be “bullet-proof.”
“It’s just that everything seems to cost $500 more than budgeted.”
Benson is appealing for donated items, such as fishing lures, snorkel, mask and fins, a speargun and/or rod, plus other sailing gear — “stuff that people may have that they’re not using any more, which will help me preserve what little cash I have left for the voyage.”
“The people on the Sunshine Coast have just been fantastic,” says Benson. Garden Bay’s Bill and Lyn Charlton, for instance, donated a sail worth $1,000.
If you can help, call Benson at 778-986-2159. For updates from the Onboard Project, like facebook.com/theonboardproject and subscribe to youtube.com/theonboardproject
Editor’s note: Benson will also be featured in September’s Sunshine Coast Life magazine.
