2020 has been quite a year, as you can imagine. We set off with high hopes as it was Pilgrim’s 125th Anniversary. There was to be festivals galore and the Mayflower 400 commemorations. That all fell apart quite quickly as we went into lockdown and the focus for our charitable Foundation was to ensure our survival. Costs were cut to the bone, our skipper was furloughed and volunteers undertook essential maintenance tasks in strict Covid Secure ways. Sailing for the season was put on hold, as were our Anniversary celebrations. No effort was spared to seek financial support and in June we leaned that we had a grant from the Heritage Emergency Fund. When combined with our hard-earned reserves, we knew that would see us through to the 2021 season. Once the Spring lockdown was lifted, we started to tentatively plan some day sails for late Summer and Autumn. In July we undertook critical refit work and in early August we did some shakedown sailings to check out the boat and to train our volunteer crew. We had devised a different way of sailing Pilgrim that would allow crew members to maintain social distancing and we needed to prove it could work …and we did. We were thrilled when guests started to book or transfer earlier bookings onto our Day Sailing programme. From the middle of August to the end of September we managed to take sailing guests out into Torbay, Lyme Bay and Start Bay. It was wonderful as we did not think we would get any sailing in during 2020. Strict Covid control measures were put in place, we limited the boat capacity to 8 guests from no more than 4 bubbles. Everyone seemed to benefit from the fresh air and the thrill of sailing a 125 year
2020 has been quite a year, as you can imagine. We set off with high hopes as it was Pilgrim’s 125th Anniversary. There was to be festivals galore and the Mayflower 400 commemorations. That all fell apart quite quickly as we went into lockdown and the focus for our charitable Foundation was to ensure our
