Transcript: International Museum Day - WA Maritime Museum

Hi, my name is Kristian and I am a Visitor Services Officer here at the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle.

This Museum tells the story about Fremantle's past, present and future both as a coastal city and as a port.

Standing here, in the Tin Canoe to Australia II gallery, I’m going to tell you about one of my favourite objects in this Museum for International Museum Day.

The Parry Endeavour, sitting right behind me here.

Between May 1986 and March 1988, Jon Sanders took this yacht on a record breaking triple circumnavigation of the globe, by himself, nonstop and under strict rules and conditions set by the Guinness Book of Records.

Under these rules everything had to be prepared and stored in advance for the entire voyage at sea.

He had a shopping list of over 7,000 items before he departed, including 40 can openers and 50 jars of vegemite.

The only thing that Jon was allowed to take on board was letters and newspapers; they did two helicopter mail drops for him.

We’ve got one of the Australia Post mail bags here and they were so strict that they actually audited every single letter before he took it on board.

As he approached Cape Horn for the third and last time Jon found himself in the early hours of the morning with a really big storm approaching, he threw out the sea brake to try and slow down the boat but he estimated at the time that there was a 30-metre-high wave, which crushed over the boat, and you can see an example of him holding on to the mast here as he was staring up against that massive wave.

Here we have some of the videos that Jon took with him out at sea.

We have here ‘Raise the Titanic’, ‘The enemy below’, ‘Yellowbeard’ and ‘Raiders of the Lost Arc’.

If you have a think about some of the challenges that Jon faced by himself out at sea, then I personally find these videos a little bit amusing.

The Parry Endeavour isn’t just a story about record breaking feats; it’s a story about adventure, survival and the sheer force of mother nature, but most importantly the way that we’ve presented it here at the Western Australian Maritime Museum helps to bring the event to life for all the visitors that come through to look at it.

Thank you for watching this video.

I hope you enjoyed it and feel free to leave a comment.

If you ever want to come and see the Parry Endeavour up close, then feel free to come down and a member of the Visitor Services team will tell you more about it.