Henry Bomby

Henry comes from a South Devon sailing family and spent 5 years as a boarding pupil at Sexey’s (2002-07) and whilst here he continued to develop his sailing skills and knowledge as a member of Sutton Bingham Sailing Club near Yeovil. After leaving education at the age of 18, Henry set off to sail single handed around Britain, with a view to one day be racing across oceans and around the world as a professional offshore sailor.

Since then he has been fortunate enough to work with many great teams all over the world, helping him win the 2011/2012 Artemis Offshore Academy Scholarship. He has taken part in two seasons on the Figaro Circuit, the world’s most competitive solo offshore racing circuit about his boat “Rockfish”.  Representatives from school and Sutton Bingham Sailing Club managed to meet up with him during one of his stops in Torbay during the 2014 race.

He has spent two years racing onboard MOD-70 trimaran Phaedo 3 (the 7th fastest boat in the world) and in 2017 broke the Transpacific World Speed Sailing Record from the Canaries to Antigua.

Henry is now considered to be one of Britain’s most promising young sailors and in 2017 joined the Volvo Ocean Race aboard the United Nations flagged boat “Turn the Tide on Plastic”. With over 30,000 nm under his belt already, he is quickly adding to the total having made his first crossing of the Equator when he sailed on Leg 2 from Lisbon to Cape Town (7,000 nm) and then again on Leg 6 from Hong Kong to New Zealand (6,100 nm). He completed the hardest leg of the race, Leg 7 Auckland to Itajai, Brazil (7,600 nm) which involved his first venture into the southern ocean and a rounding of Cape Horn, which was a lifelong ambition of his.  He also completed Leg 8 from Itajai to Newport, USA, but had to sit it out and watch from the side for the remaining legs. TTOP finished the race in 6th place, a great achievement for such a young team. You can read about the 17/18 edition of the race here https://www.volvooceanrace.com

Henry has recently become an ‘Ocean Ambassador’ for The National Marine Aquarium and as part of the Turn the Tide on Plastic team, Henry and his crew mates are supporting scientific research by collecting water samples to investigate micro plastics in our oceans – often in parts of the world that are rarely analysed due to their distance from land.

We hope to welcome Henry into school at some point on his return to talk about his experience in the Volvo Ocean Race and hear about his passion for the oceans and why we should all look after them.