MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Baby Thomas - Falklands Adventurer.Off on his travels before he was born!

Baby Thomas is a Falkland Islander who has never set foot in the Falkland Islands. He is the son of Stanley resident, Andrez Short, and school teacher Alison Davies, who taught for several years in Stanley Junior School, and was briefly a fisheries inspectorate observer, flying with FIGAS ( Falklands Government Air Service).

Thomas was already well travelled even before he was born. Now 14 months, he is setting off again on his travels on Easter weekend, from the United Kingdom to sail to the far north of Norway with his adventurous parents. They are now nearly half way through an adventure of a life-time, a voyage in a thirty-feet (10-metre) long boat travelling about thirty-thousand miles in three years.

Soon after they left the Falklands in June 1999, Alison was repeatedly sick, not realising she was already pregnant. It was not until they reached Montevideo this was confirmed at the British Hospital. They were helped in Uruguay by Mercopress Chief, Gus Meikle, and continued on their voyage by way of Brazil to Trinidad, where Thomas was born and faced his first great challenge.

He had no heartbeat for several minutes and could not breathe. Intensive care by Trinidadian doctors and nurses brought him through his crisis. Now he is a healthy, active toddler, ready for the next left exacting leg of his journey.

After the trauma of Tom's birth, Alison flew with her baby from Trinidad to Worcester to be with her parents, while her father, Mervyn Davies, flew in the opposite direction to join Andrez to help crew the Alpha Carina. At the age of 63, he had no previous experience of sailing. They sailed up the Caribbean and across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom where, coincidentally, the Alpha Carina is berthed in Bristol only a short distance away from the liner,ss Great Britain, brought back to Britain from the Falklands in 1970 and now a major tourist attraction.

Andrez, aged 44, and Alison, 38, left their jobs in the Falkland Islands nearly two years ago to set sail in their boat, Alpha Carina -- named after the brightly shining Southern hemisphere star --- from the far south to the far north. The boat, brought to the Falklands in 1981, lay derelict at North Arm in 1981 before they acquired and renovated it and taught themselves to sail, first around the Falklands coast, then to the Argentine Islas de Los Estados, off the tip of Cape Horne, to gain experience for their three-year trip.

They are less than half way having spent several months living in England with Alison's parents in Worcester, where Alison