After years of financial struggle, the Jubilee Sailing Trust has announced the closure of the company that owns and operates the tall ship SV Tenacious.

The charity Jubilee Sailing Trust (JST) was founded in 1978 and has taken over 55,000 people to sea. The future of a charity offering sailing experiences to disabled people is uncertain after its associated company went into administration.

The SV Tenacious is a modern British wooden sail training ship, specially designed in the 1990s. When completed in 2000, it was the largest wooden ship to be built in the UK for over 100 years. Along with the STS Lord Nelson, the two vessels are the only tall ships in the world that were built so that both disabled and non-disabled people can sail as crew, not passengers.  The Lord Nelson was put up for auction in June of 2023. 

From the Jubilee Sailing Trust announcement: 

The last 4 years have seen two large-scale funding appeals, refinancing, several restructures, and a reduction in fleet size to one ship – and of course a pandemic. With much internal and external consultation we have tried different funding models, most of which have been heavily reliant on fundraising, or, trying to attract partners willing to pay full price to charter the ship. For the last 15 months we tried a funding strategy that was more reliant on income from our voyage crew paying for 75-80% of the cost of a voyage (or using bursary funding secured for this purpose).

Unfortunately neither our voyage sales nor our fundraising efforts have been successful in meeting the c.£150k/month required to operate Tenacious and keep her legally compliant to deliver our voyages, nor to repay the historic debt (c.£477k) accumulated prior to the September 2022 change in strategy.

Whilst we have been investigating several options to change our situation, including loans and alternative business plans, we recently learned we were also unsuccessful in being able to raise the full amount required to put Tenacious through her regulatory dry docking in time to deliver our planned Atlantic crossing. If we were to attempt to re-start the programme in the Caribbean, sailing as a ‘delivery voyage’ (without voyage crew having paid to sail and meet the voyage costs) to the Caribbean would incur significant new expenditure that we would not be able to meet with the rest of the winter voyage programme. This means there is no viable way to fulfill our Caribbean voyages, and as such all voyages up to April 2024 needed to be canceled.

Without the funds from the balance payments for those winter voyages (of which almost £100k would be due now), and knowing we would be unable to refund the voyage crew whose voyages have been canceled, we initiated emergency talks with our Board, financial and legal advisors, and other key persons with long-term connections to the JST history.

Unfortunately, as we are now without identified income to meet our imminent expenditure in December (including the wages of our crew and shore-based team) we no longer have the time to pursue other financing options, nor a public fundraising appeal, and our legal advisors view closure as the only option available. Tenacious and all assets owned by JST(T)L will pass into the hands of the Official Receiver, appointed by the court. All staff (ship and shore) are employed by the JST(T)L company and as such will no longer be in post.