A Vertue and a necessity

Let me introduce myself: I am an intruder. I am a small entrant in a big game. I’ve just being granted a wild card to participate double handed in the Round Britain & Ireland race - my boat, at 25’, being smaller than the minimum length allowed. Not only she is small, perhaps the smallest boat ever to enter the race, but she is for sure the oldest. She is a Laurent Giles Vertue, built by Cheoy Lee in Hong Kong in 1959, teak planks on ipol frames. Her name is Mea, meaning 'Beauty and Grace' in Chinese. Mea has already put quite a few miles below her keel: she has sailed from Hong Kong to the UK, then to the Baltic, then to the Caribbeans and back, but she has spent the last quarter of a century in semi-retirement, like many older boats. I bought Mea in 2018