Catching up with Captain Justin Lawes, 40 years later

One of my favorite parts of the week is waving hello to Virgin Voyages’ Valiant Lady as she sails past my home on her way to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands.

It’s always nice to meet sailors and welcome the ship to the BVI when I get the opportunity. Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Valiant Lady's captain.

It turns out we had met before, 40 years earlier. As fate would have it, Captain Justin Lawes was part of the crew that rescued me in a banana boat back in 1984 during my first attempt at a transatlantic boat crossing. I just couldn’t believe it.

Virgin Atlantic Challenger

It all started back when we first launched Virgin Atlantic, with one plane and no marketing budget. We had bold dreams of changing the airline industry, but we were up against major airlines like British Airways. We knew we needed something extraordinary to get our name out there and so we set our sights on breaking the world record for the fastest transatlantic crossing by boat.

We built The Virgin Atlantic Challenger boat, put the Virgin logo on it and set out to sea. The adventure started off great, but three days into our journey, our boat broke up and sank just two hundred miles shy of our destination in England.

Virgin Atlantic Challenger

Luckily for us, a British banana boat heading back to Jamaica responded to our mayday call and rescued us. It was thanks to the nine crew on board that we avoided disaster. Among them was a young galley boy named Justin Lawes.

Fast forward to the present day, and here we are – welcoming Valiant Lady to the British Virgin Islands and who should be at the helm? None other than Captain Justin Lawes himself.

It’s remarkable to see Justin progress from a galley boy to Captain of a commercial cruise ship – and not just any ship, but a Virgin Voyages ladyship. He really does embody the Virgin spirit and I couldn’t be more grateful to reconnect with him all these years later.

In the end, our sinking boat made the front pages of all the newspapers in 1984, Virgin logo and all, and we went on to successfully break the world record on our second attempt the following year.

Virgin Atlantic Challenger - Richard Branson gets rescue

It’s always been one of my favorite stories to tell, and it’s even more fun now Captain Justin is part of the tale too.