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May 2005
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May 2005
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April 2005
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Sea
& I
Spring
2005
 AquaLung
conquers the Atlantic
Facing the challenge of his life, yacht broker Nick Baker set off to cross the Atlantic single-handed in order to raise funds for his
AquaLung charity.
By James Shotton.
Personal challenges don’t come much braver than undertaking a solo transatlantic voyage when you’ve only been training for about ten months – yet that is exactly what yacht broker Nick Baker faced when he set out to cross the Atlantic single-handed in a Bowman 48DS. Facing the worst of the elements and his own high personal expectations, Nick embarked on the challenge of his life at the end of January 2005 in order to raise funds for the AquaLung Trust.
The cause of this ambitious quest dates back to June 2001 when Nick was diagnosed with lung cancer – all the more shocking as he was a non-smoker. He had one third of his right lung removed within days but in April 2003 he was notified that the cancer had returned, this time in both lungs. It was this news that caused Nick to reflect on the past and decide to do something very positive for the future. By no means a sailor, Nick took it upon himself to learn the necessary skills, make the infinite arrangements required for such a challenge, set up a charity for donations, raise awareness of the said charity and, not least, overcome his own personal apprehensions in facing such an endeavour alone.
All the money raised during his solo transatlantic challenge will go directly to the AquaLung Trust – established by Nick to collect and distribute funds to his four chosen charities: the Institute of Cancer Research, the Winchester Medical Foundation’s Magpie Cancer Centre Campaign, Merlin and Encompass.
Nick set out from the Canary Islands on January 29, heading for Antigua and anticipating many challenges along the way. These have all been wonderfully recorded in the log he has written and posted on his website each day of his voyage.
He arrived in Antigua on the 16 February and though his arrival was not as speedy as Ellen MacArthur’s a week earlier, his homecoming was equally as significant and celebrated by all his family, friends, colleagues and supporters.
For more information on the challenge or the charities involved, or to make a donation to the AquaLung Trust, please visit
www.aqualungtrust.org |
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April 2005
Solo sail for charity
In 2001 Nick Baker, a well-known yacht broker with Camper & Nicholsons, described as 'one of the industry's gentlemen', was diagnosed with lung cancer. Nick, a non-smoker, was operated on but the disease returned in 2003.
In January this year Nick left the Canaries sailing his Bowman 48
AquaLung on a solo sail to Antigua where he arrived on 16 February, to raise funds for four charities. Full details of his fund raising and his voyage on www.aqualungtrust.org |
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Southern Daily Echo
- March 9th 2005
 Solo
voyage swells charities’ coffers
His journey is not quite as long, fast, dramatic or record-breaking as Dame Ellen
MacArthur’s.
However, gutsy lung cancer sufferer Nick Baker says that now he can now fully appreciate how amazing her achievement was.
Nick, from Owslebury, near Winchester, has just returned home from sailing 3,000 miles from the Canaries to Antigua single-handedly to raise money for local charities.
He was diagnosed with lung cancer three years ago, despite being a non-smoker and had one third of his right lung removed in a bid to stop the illness. It returned two years later in the left lung.
Nick, a father of three, was motivated to take on the ocean to make something positive come from his situation.
‘I felt ok through the trip and I feel ok even now,’ he said. ‘I do have lung cancer but I don’t look ill and I don’t feel ill. It does affect me, I can’t do as much as I would have been able to do.’
Yachtbroker Nick raised ‘substantially more than six figures’ for charity through his 19-day solo effort.
‘It was an amazing, lovely and wonderful thing,’ he said. ‘There were exciting moments as you can imagine, but you have strategies for how you are going to do everything yourself, how you are going to sleep, cook and all those things.’
Nick’s solo effort has raised money for his charity The
AquaLung Trust which supports charities including the Institute of Cancer Research and humanitarian organisation Merlin. He also raised money for Winchester based Magpie Cancer Campaign, which is raising money to build and run a dedicated centre for cancer treatment at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital site.
A charity concert to raise money for The
AquaLung Trust will be held on Tuesday March 15th at St Swithun’s School, Winchester.
The concert will be a joint performance from Forres Sandle Manor and St Swithun’s School.
Tickets costing £5 for adults and £2 for children can be bought by post from
AquaLung Trust Charity Performance, Longwood, Winchester. |
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Search
The Institute for Cancer Research newsletter
Issue 11 March 2005
 Atlantic Challenge
Sailing across the Atlantic is a gruelling challenge by anyone’s standards, but at the end of January, yacht broker Nick Baker embarked on this 2,800 mile journey single-handedly. What makes this feat even more remarkable is that in 2001, Nick was diagnosed with lung cancer – quite a surprise for a non-smoker. A patient of the Institute’s Tim Eisen, he was treated in the Royal Marsden, and within a week of diagnosis, he had a third of his right lung removed. Unfortunately in April 2003, Nick was told that the cancer had returned to his left lung.
It is difficult to imagine how any of us would react in this kind of situation, but Nick’s response was a determination ‘to make something positive out of this development in my life.’ Nick’s voyage will be raising money for the Institute and for three other charities. Nick admits that he sees it as an act of defiance in the face of his circumstances, but he is passionate about the ultimate aim of supporting the four charities. Without this, he says, ‘the project ceases to be meaningful and is just plain scary.’
To see Nick’s voyage diary, go to www.aqualungtrust.org |
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Tuesday
1st March 2005
The Brazilian website Náutica Online
has published
a story about Nick's voyage.
Click
here to read it.
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Friday
18th February 2005
A further article from The Daily Observer, Antigua
 My Biggest Adventure, Cancer Patient Says
By Joanne C Hillhouse
For lung cancer patient, Nicholas Baker, his Atlantic crossing aboard AquaLung was the indeed the adventure of a lifetime.
‘It’s been the biggest thing I’ve ever done,’ Baker told the Daily OBSERVER the evening of his arrival. ‘Incredible!’
Baker, a citizen of the United Kingdom, set sail from the Canary Islands on January 28 on a solo at sea adventure designed to help raise funds for four worthy charities; it was his way of turning the ironic tragedy of a lung cancer diagnosis, despite the fact that he was a non-smoker, into a positive.
He arrived in Antigua between two and three on the afternoon of Wednesday, February 16.
‘Today’s been a fantastic day,’ he said that evening during a cocktail reception at the Copper and Lumber Store, at which he was the guest of honour and which was attended by members of the local yachting community, ‘…from the minute I saw the islands this morning, just a dim in the distance, then my friends, my family came out on two other big yachts to join me for the last 10 or 15 miles; we sailed in together. It was a fabulous atmosphere.’
Baker explained why he has chosen to dock at the historic Nelson’s Dockyard. ‘I’m a yacht broker,’ he said, ‘and we do a lot of business here with the yacht charters, and we’ve come backwards and forwards to Antigua all the time. I love Antigua and it’s a big centre for yachting, and particularly, I love the history of English Harbour. It’s just a fantastic place to come and I wanted it to be somewhere significant and historical.’
Significant it its own right was the personal journey of a man battling the sea, turning tragedy into triumph and perhaps taking time to contemplate destiny.
‘It was extraordinary,’ he said of the journey, ‘everything I expected it would be and sometimes more.’
There were, inevitably, exciting and frightening moments. The latter having to do with those challenging times, for instance, ‘…when things went a little bit wrong and you have to sort out a difficulty with maybe too much sail when the wind gets up very quickly, and there were times also when ships suddenly appeared close by and you have to look out for them.’
Exciting moments had to do the ‘beautiful’ splendour of Mother Nature, which included whale and shark sightings.
Though he had sailed before, Baker confessed he had never done anything on this scale.
AquaLung is a Bowman 48. Baker admitted to being a little bit daunted on the eve of his adventure. ‘But I had a lot of instruction last year to get me up to a reasonable standard,’ he said. ‘My previous sailing had been small boats and dinghies. This is my first experience of large yacht sailing and also my first ocean passage.’
His inexperience and even the butterflies notwithstanding, he was confident that he could do it. ‘I knew that I could survive two or three weeks by myself,’ he said. ‘So, that was never a problem. The question was whether I would get myself into any severe difficulty with the sailing’ there was some excitement, but no. We got through everything.’
They have also been able to draw attention to the AquaLung Trust, which is committed to donating funds to the Institute of Cancer Research, Europe’s largest cancer research facility; the Winchester Medical Foundation’s Magpie Cancer Centre Campaign committed to raising funds toward a facility for cancer treatment and care; Merlin, which provides global emergency disaster response; and Encompass, promoting peace.
‘It’s been productive,’ Baker said. ‘We’ve had some very good response. People are encouraged by the story.’
As to what encourages him, or rather how he manages to seem so optimistic even with such a dire prognosis – having first been diagnosed in 2001 and then learning of the cancer’s return in 2003 even after having one third of his lung removed – Baker said, ‘you may as well do something with the time.’
He is still fighting, he said, though the prognosis is not good. But he chooses to see the glass as half full. ‘It’s given me this opportunity,’ he said of the cause-effect relationship between his diagnosis and sailing adventure. ‘I wouldn’t have done this otherwise. I would never have done this otherwise.’
Nicholson’s Yachts Charters coordinated arrival plans on this end, in collaboration with the Camper & Nicholsons office in Monaco.
Baker had a number of corporate sponsors for his journey, including Ansbacher, Clyde and Company and others. He is a husband and father of two. |
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Thursday 17th
February 2005
Nick's successful trip made the front page of
Antigua's The Daily Observer, with rather amusing
consequences... |
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Monday 31st January
Click
here to read the article on The Times Online website
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 A buoyant approach
Penny Wark
What do you do when you’re 46 and have cancer? Nick Baker is sailing the Atlantic for charity.
NICK BAKER has no great ambition to sail across the Atlantic, let alone single handedly, and it is not a prospect he relishes. Plain scary, is how he describes it. So why is he doing it? The short answer is for charity, to give something back to a world in which, until recently, he has had a pretty fortunate ride. The longer answer is more complicated and one that he can barely articulate.
In June 2001 Nick, then 42, discovered that he had lung cancer. No, he isn’t a smoker and neither is anyone in his family, though he admits he worked too hard and was averagely unfit — he got his exercise running for the last train from Waterloo to Hampshire. But he felt and looked well, and he still does — he is one of those people who radiates vigour. So the diagnosis, which followed a casual remark to his GP about a rattly cough, was surprising.
Within a week surgeons had removed a third of his right lung and as he lay in hospital he wondered how he might react positively to his situation. “It’s the corny thing, this is your chance to put something back,” he explains. The idea passed and as he returned to his life as a yacht broker, husband and father, daily concerns took over again.
Then, in April 2003, tests revealed that the cancer had returned to his left lung. Aware that 95 per cent of lung cancer patients die within five years of diagnosis, Nick remembered his good intention and decided that this time he must follow it up. So on Friday he left the Canaries in a 50ft (15m) boat called
AquaLung with the intention of sailing to Antigua, and the aim of raising as much money as possible for four charities — the Institute of Cancer Research, the Winchester Medical Foundation’s Magpie Cancer Centre Campaign, Merlin and Encompass.
To this end, his City contacts have been good to him: the finance for the boat has been provided by the bankers Ansbacher, and Pantaenius Insurance has covered him even though he is, in their words, “a crap risk”.
Nick is a tall, skinny man who fizzes with enthusiasm. He is also a product of Eton and Oxford, and not given to negativity or emotional outpourings. He smiles a lot too, but if I am any judge, he is also a realist. So Nick, is this response to the cruel circumstances in which you find yourself merely a positive way of using them, or is it a way to distract yourself, perhaps an act of defiance?
“It’s definitely a way of turning a negative thing to some good,” he says. “Yacht broker with lung cancer sails the Atlantic sounds dramatic and I hope I can raise a lot of money. So I’m afraid I’m using it. Psychology behind that? Wouldn’t want to look at it too closely. Yes, it’s defiance to a certain extent. I’ve always had a charitable urge and it’s easy to write the cheque and think you’ve done something. Buying and selling expensive yachts doesn’t help people in difficulty. It’s no good me flying to Africa to help starving babies because I’m not qualified and I’m a bit squeamish. But I can help to raise some money so that someone else can do it.”
By doing something risky? Nick has sailed since he was 14, though he describes himself as no expert. But with his characteristic good cheer (not to say understatement) he insists that what he is doing is no big deal.
“Statistically the chance of a gale where I’m going across is 5 per cent,” he says. “I’m living on a 5/95 spread already, it’s just another one. Some insurers did ask, is he likely to commit suicide in the Atlantic? Absolutely not. If something goes wrong it’s an accident. Very straightforward. I’m really, really, really not ready to die. Which is fair enough for a man of 46. And some days, I understand, it can be incredibly pleasant: sunny, music on, something nice on the cooker, tranquil, a book.
“There is a danger one would be introspective, maybe on the sixth, seventh, eighth day when you’re still not half way.. I think that would be very dangerous. I do recognise that lung cancer may kill me, I don’t recognise that it will kill me. That’s the denial, isn’t it?
“I do not believe I’m in denial, but that’s what denial is. If not letting it rule my life is denial — I don’t know, I’m not sure that denial is actually bad. I think you can accept certain realities but you don’t need to force them on yourself. I don’t wake up every morning and say, ‘Oh my God, I’m dying of lung cancer’. I view myself as living with lung cancer, which is a different thing altogether. I emotionally acknowledge that statistically it is very likely to kill me, and there are days when I think this is a bit of a bugger, frankly, but you can’t stop it. I can’t sit at home being miserable, so I don’t. You have to try to cope with it as best you can by being positive.”
Nick’s cancer is not being treated as it does not respond to chemotherapy or radiotherapy, and there are no proven drugs available. He has found the last few weeks stressful: finding sponsorship, getting the boat to the Canaries, ensuring it is in good condition, and trying to find time for his family — his children are 16, 14 and 11. “I’m not a brilliant father, certainly, but I’m certainly not so immersed in my work that I don’t know my children. I love being with them,” he says.
“I’m very much looking forward to it being over and coming back to Hampshire and living tranquilly, resuming whatever is a normal life.”
To donate to Nick Baker’s nominated charities, go to http://www.aqualungtrust.org/, or send a cheque to The
AquaLung Trust, c/o Clyde and Co, 51 Eastcheap, London EC3M 1JP |
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Monday 17th January
Click
here to read the article on the Hampshire Chronicle website
Sailing the Atlantic to help others
| Cancer sufferer, Nicholas Baker, is turning his serious illness into an opportunity to help others.
The 46-year-old yacht broker, from
Owslebury, near Winchester, plans to make the voyage of his life by sailing the Atlantic single-handed to raise money for several charities.
On Tuesday, January 25th, he will set out from The Canaries on the 50ft yacht,
AquaLung, to begin a 2,800-mile journey to Antigua. |
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Nicholas Baker and his family, wife Karen,
daughters Roseanna and Francesca and son Charlie send out sponsorship requests for a single handed yacht crossing of the Atlantic which Nicholas is planning to raise funds for four charities.
Photo courtesy Hampshire Chronicle |
Nicholas, a non-smoker, was diagnosed with cancer in his right lung three years ago. One third of the lung was removed. Then, in April, 2003, he received confirmation that the cancer had returned and was in both lungs.
His wife, Karen (43), said: "He is determined to make something positive out of this totally unexpected development in his life - hence this fund-raising venture."
Nicholas explained: "When I was ill, I looked at a way of turning it to good use and raising money for charity. A friend said: 'Sail single-handed across the Atlantic' and I said: 'Absolutely not!' Now I think I am just beginning to get used to the idea."
Despite his illness, Nicholas says he is reasonably fit. He has been training with a Winchester-based yacht instructor, Martin Musgrove, for a year.
"I have been sailing since I was 14, but this will be the first time I have done such a long distance," he said.
The couple's children, Rosanna (16), Francesca (14) and Charlie (11), are right behind the project, helping this week to mail off sponsorship requests.
Nicholas paid tribute to Ansbacher, the merchant bank in London, which, when he asked for sponsorship, generously agreed to buy the yacht for him.
"Without Ansbacher, this would not be happening - we have to sell it afterwards," he added.
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AquaLung Trust has been set up to handle the fund-raising and the good causes that the money will go to include the Magpie Cancer Centre Campaign at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital, the Winchester Medical Foundation, which is raising £2.5m to buy extra equipment and fund facilities there, and the Institute of Cancer Research.
Also benefiting will be Merlin, which provides immediate response to medical emergencies throughout the world and which is now involved in relief work in the Indian Ocean, and Encompass, a charity formed after Daniel Braden, the son of yachtbroker, Alex Braden, was killed in the Bali bombing in October, 2002.
Encompass aims to "fight terrorism peacefully" by promoting understanding and tolerance between young people of different backgrounds, faiths and cultures.
Sponsors can specify that their money should go to one of the charities or simply to the trust so that it can be divided equally.
Donations may be sent to the
AquaLung Trust, c/o Clyde and Co, 51, Eastcheap, London EC3M 1JP. Information is also available at www.aqualungtrust.org
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