Edward Allcard

Edward Cecil Allcard (31 October 1914 – 28 July 2017) was an English naval architect, marine surveyor, yachtsman and author. Allcard was educated at Eton College. He went on to take an apprenticeship in the shipbuilding yards of Harland & Wolff, in Glasgow, and later with D & W Henderson, on the Clyde, and qualified as a naval architect before World War II.

In 1949 Allcard crossed the Atlantic Ocean single-handed, in 81 days, During the return crossing, after leaving the Azores, he found a 23-year-old female stowaway aboard his yacht – an event widely reported at the time in the international press. On a subsequent Atlantic crossing in 1957, Allcard challenged fellow yachtsman Peter Tangvald to what would be the first ever east-to-west single-handed transatlantic race. fifty years after this part of his pioneering voyage.

In 1967 Allcard met his future wife, Clare, 31 years his junior. In 1968 they drove from the UK to Singapore in a Land Rover. In 1969 their daughter Kate was born. After Allcard had completed his circumnavigation, the family bought the 69 ft gaff-rigged ex-Baltic trader Johanne Regina, built in 1929. before eventually sailing back to Europe.

In 2006, at the age of 91, Allcard sold his last boat, Johanne Regina, to the sail-training organisation "Associació Amics del quetx Ciutat Badalona", and moved ashore to a house in the mountains of Andorra, Allcard released his last book Solo around Cape Horn – and beyond in late 2016, at the age of 102. It describes his 1966 voyage around Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, as part of his solo circumnavigation.